Stimulus funds provided in the form of a grant from the National Science Foundation will help Cornell scientists at the frontier of their fields explain their research to those within the scientific community as well as those outside it, according to the University.

The three-year $883,000 grant is expected to give Cornell's e-print arXiv (pronounced “archive”) of scientific papers a major face-lift, turning this simple database into an interactive site. The goal of such a transformation is to facilitate discussion among readers as well as authors about the major concepts covered by the research in the database. Thus, while previously articles were only linked by the citations they contained, they will now be linked by concepts. This new technique aims to foster greater understanding of the research among those without expertise.

While the arXive currently consists of close to 600,000 papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics, some 5,000 new papers are submitted each month, according to the University.

This initiative is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, from which Cornell has been a major beneficiary, receiving 124 grants that total more than $99 million as of Nov. 1, according to the University.

Prof. Paul Ginsparg, physics and information science, created arXiv and will lead the project. He told the University that equality of opportunity was a major determinant driving the transformation of this online research-sharing database.

“One of the underlying concepts of the arXiv was leveling the playing field,” Ginsparg said. “Formerly, new research was available only to a few privileged people. Now everyone has equal access, but because of differential levels of expertise not all scientists can as easily assess significance. We will be working on automated tools to help identify and highlight the most important concepts.”