Is a free alternative to MathSciNet possible? 
How could a free (i.e. free content) alternative for MathSciNet and Zentralblatt be created?

Comments


*

*Some mathematicians have stopped writing reviews for MathSciNet because they feel their output should be freely available. (The Pricing for MathSciNet is not high, but it is not the point.)

*Two related questions: Are there any good websites... and Errata database?;
see also r-forum, nLab and wikademic.
What can be done (based on answers below)


*

*One thing that can be really useful and doable is to create (and maintain) a database of articles (and maybe abstracts), where you can find all the articles that were referring to a given one. 

*Once it is done we can add lists of errors --- it will add something new and valuable for the project (but this will take a while).

*The above two things might be already enough for practical purpose. It will be even better if it will attract enough reviewers to the project.
 A: It seems strange that nobody has mentioned (as far as I see) that Zentralblatt allows for restricted search for free, meaning that you only get the first three results out of the whole matching items. Concretely, if you know "enough" about the paper you are looking for, you are pretty sure to pin it down uniquely, and access the review. This is basically the only reason why I keep on writing reviews for Zentralblatt – because I think this is a great tool.
As for MathSciNet I second some answers above saying that not being free is a feature, not a bug. I write reviews and consider it part of my job as mathematician and I am happy with the constant friendly and extremely professional contact I have with MR people each time I have a problem – it would not be equally easy to provide professional editing only relying upon mathematicians. Moreover, as it seems that one of the issues motivating this question was about not being able to access MathSciNet from outside an academic Institution, an "AMS Mobile" service has been introduced some six months ago allowing you to install some cookie on your Notebook/Tablet/Mobile allowing you to access MathSciNet (and many AMS Journals) from everywhere in the world.
It seems to me that the discussion is also somehow turning into a political debate as whether these tools (and someone may wish to include even publications) should or not be free. It seems to me that the main arguments for this is: since the job of mathematicians has already been paid by University, they should not paid for it twice. I personally find it a non-argument, because


*

*One can simply say that the cost for University is not only paying employees (like researchers) but also for "machineries" which in our world does not mean proton synchrotron boosters or tons of chemical products (which nobody asks chemical industries to give to Universities for free) but could mean MR

*The day that MathSciNet became free, it means it would be paid by someone without it being noticed by others – namely, US citizens would have to pay for it and in the rest of the world it would be really free. So, in this case, non-US University would pay for the job zero-times, not twice...

A: I've been thinking about this and similar issues myself lately. 
There have been two aspects that were raised in this discussion and I would like to address both.  First, the website for reviewing papers, noting errors in papers etc. A few months back Scott Morrison, Jessee Johnson and myself were chatting and decided to open such a website. The result, a wiki, is wikademic.org and it has very few submission and even fewer users...I am the main user and I use it as a sketch pad for scribbling my notes about papers that I read. The current idea for wikademic.org is that it will be a place to discuss papers: the difficulties therein, the mistakes, the missing references, a summary that isn't just what the authors want it to be, the nice parts, the parts that are an obvious copy from a different paper...you get the point. 
So far it has failed to attract people because it is small, and vice versa. I have recently discovered another, slightly larger website that has a similar goal (but it leans more towards the humanities), acawiki.org and was thinking about integrating the two websites. This has yet to happen, and I'm not sure it will. I think that some sort of institutional backing is very important so that the people who donate their time and effort to writing in the site feel that whatever they write will be available to them later if they want. Perhaps this can be solved technically by providing an easy way to email a review page or a set of pages to yourself or something like that.
If you are interested in wikademic.org please drop me a note.

The second thing that was mentioned in this discussion is the possibility of finding papers that are interesting to you. I was just thinking about how such a program would be a fantastic time saver. Imagine having a program/webiste know the people and papers that interest you and by looking at the arxiv and other various (free or locked) sources of titles/abstracts/authors/fulltext could alert you whenever a paper that you "should" read comes up. This could happen because the paper is new, or because your interests have shifted/expanded (the program should find this out by trivial actions on your part such as downloading a new paper to your computer, or adding a contact to your email program, or by starting to write a new paper yourself, and not by explicit actions such as you creating a filter or somesuch). 
If such a program exists, I'd love to hear about it. And if someone wants to write it, I would applaud them, and possibly help too!
A: I could be mistaken, but the way I understand it many people on MO are voting members of AMS, and combined together could ask it to change MathSciNet's current policy. 
However, as others pointed out, MathSciNet works as a funding channel for AMS which would have to be either replaced by some other method of funding or leave AMS with less funds overall. A responsible proposal for making MathSciNet free would also somehow address the above alternative.
A: It seems to me, that one thing that can be really useful and doable is at least to create a database of articles, where you can find all the article that were referring to a given one. This is one of the main skills of MathSciNet.
A: I discussed similar ideas with Peter Storm and Tamar Ziegler about a year ago. It is not that hard to build an abuse safe system - everything gets some score:
Any review has two scores:


*

*The review reputation, dependent on votes from other reviewers, and the reviewer reputation and the score it assigns to a paper.

*The reviewed paper score.


Reviewers have scores which are a function of the scores of reviews they write, and the papers they write.
Papers have scores, which are a function of the reputation and score of the reviews they get (yes, a paper may have several reviews).
This system assures that important papers will be reviewed very fast and very thoroughly. The downsides we saw are:


*

*As Peter put it: it would be an excellent system for Vulcans, but mere humans may get hurt.

*bootstrapping 
A: One alternative would be to make it free for "independent users" but fee-based for universities and other institutions around the world. One could in worst case maintain a large database of IP addresses to sieve out universities and (e.g.) companies from "independent users".
This is a trust based system and, of course, there would be scammers but I think most universities are honest and would pay the license fee. But then again, what stops ScamA Uni., ScamB Uni. and ScamC uni. from creating a VPN tunnel, splitting the fee and getting by the system that is used right now? 
A: It seems an alternative has just been created :  it is called the Selected Papers Network, and Tim Gowers has blogged about it here.
A: This was discussed a little on the algebraic topology list last autumn, you can look up the archives to see what was said.
Technologically, this is easy.  The problems come in when you think beyond that.


*

*How would such a site start?  Initially, there would be very few reviews so no one would have a reason to visit the site (the probability of the paper wanted being reviewed being almost nil).  For obvious reasons, importing an initial dataset from MathSciNet or Zentralblatt is extremely unlikely.  If no-one visits, no-one's going to contribute.

*How would such a site maintain itself?  The big problem with reviews is that the person writing the review gets almost no gain from it but (to do it properly) has to put in a fair amount of effort (which is why so many reviews on MathSciNet and Zentralblatt are so appalling, just copying out the summary of the paper, and why the few gems are so greatly appreciated).  That's a huge imbalance.  MathSciNet sorts this out by awarding "points" to reviewers ("And points mean prizes!").  What would a free alternative offer?

*How would such a site maintain its standards?  Here, one gets into extremely murky waters.  One idea suggested on the alg-top list was to use something like the stackoverflow model, but as this is going to involve opinions it could be extremely dangerous.  Often, the most useful information in a review is a reason not to read a given paper - if you're looking at the review, you are probably already inclined to read it - and some of the classic reviews are those that rip apart a paper.  Who's going to write those on an open system?
There are other ways of essentially filling the same role as reviews.  You read a review to find out whether or not it's worth reading a paper.  But the main problem comes before that, which papers should I read?  Once I've found that, then I use the review more to figure out whether or not I should bother finding the paper in my library or not.  If the paper is freely available, it's almost as quick to read the paper itself as to read the review (but I often read the review first because I find the paper via MathSciNet so the review is there anyway).  So I would much prefer something to speed up finding papers.  A better system of linking papers together: "If you enjoyed this paper, you might also enjoy ..." sort of thing.
So a really useful thing to do would be to have a "related papers" section linked to a given paper.  This could be started by the author - who would have every incentive to do so (since it increases the likelihood that their paper is understood) and who would find it very easy to do (since they would have such a list of papers lying on their desk - it's all the articles, books, and so forth that they read when writing the paper in the first place).  Basically, it's an expanded and commented reference list, and one which can be added to by others (so that if reading a paper, you find some other paper very useful which the original author didn't know about, or knew so well they didn't think to mention it, then you can add it).

Added later in response to some of the comments and the changes in the question.
First, a minor point.  MathSciNet and the arXiv already have the capability to link articles together.  If you look at a typical MathSciNet review then you'll see at the top right corner a box linking to where the article was cited, either in articles or reviews.  I've found this an invaluable tool and I hope that the AMS will extend it historically (the links are only to recent articles where this data could be found fairly automatically).  The arXiv has experimental support for full text search, so you can search for the arXiv identifier of one of your articles and find all those that cite it, for example.
Now on to my major point.  "Someone should set up a site that ...".  Who's to say that this has to be centralised?  After the discussions on the alg-top list and the subsequent discussions on the rForum, I've come to the conclusion that having a central system isn't the best idea.  All that is really needed is a central place from which all other places can be reached.  And that already exists.  It's called the arXiv.  The arXiv accepts trackbacks (subject to some approval) so when you blog about a paper, send a trackback to the arXiv and then you should get linked to from the page on the paper.
Of course, this only works for articles that are on the arXiv.  So then lobby the AMS to accept trackbacks as well (they can bung their standard "the AMS has no responsibility for non-AMS sites" disclaimer on).  The basic information in MathSciNet is freely available, these trackbacks can easily be added to those.
In the meantime, instead of waiting for someone to come along with some central setup (which probably won't be quite what you personally were thinking of) simply put your notes online.  Here's the message from the front page of the nLab:

We all make notes as we read papers, read books and doodle on pads of paper. The nLab is somewhere to put all those notes, and, incidentally, to make them available to others. Others might read them and add or polish them. But even if they don’t, it is still easier to link from them to other notes that you’ve made.

On the nLab you will find information about papers that people have found useful.  You can search for a particular paper to see if anyone's commented on it, use it, or cited it.  Some papers/books have their own pages.  Here's one example http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Topological+Quantum+Field+Theories+from+Compact+Lie+Groups and here's another http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Elephant.
The basic point is that you can do this yourselves, now, without needing someone else to say "Here's the way to do it".  You benefit right now without doing loads of extra work, and everyone else benefits incidentally as a result.  Everyone wins.  It doesn't have to be the nLab, you can use whatever software you like.  Just put it online.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.  Stick the arXiv/MR identifier somewhere prominent and the search engines will pick it up.
Then the rest of us will get into the habit of searching on the internet for articles of articles and find your comments.
(Incidentally, along with this, make sure that you put your own articles on your webpages.  Every journal that I've ever encountered allows you to do this and this is really a Must-Do for academics.  Even if you just put a scan of older papers, it's invaluable for those whose libraries don't carry subscriptions to every single journal under the sun (and those that have no library at all).  There is No Excuse for not doing this, especially given that photocopiers now can easily scan straight to PDF.)
A: In my view, the non-freeness of MathSciNet is a feature, not a bug.  The MathSciNet fee is essentially a tax on universities by the AMS; when you pay for MathSciNet, you're actually paying for everything else the AMS does: the employment services (without the AMS, there would be no MathJobs!), the lobbying, the conferences, the public awareness.  It's not clear to me that the other things that libraries would do with that money would bring as much benefit to the mathematical community as a whole.
Of course, there is a certain redistributivity involved, in that most AMS money stays in the US, and lots of foreign schools subscribe to MathSciNet, but it is worth pointing out that AMS does do discounts for institutions of poorer countries (as Bjorn noted), and plenty of US universities subscribe to Zentralblatt.
A: Rather than creating a "free alternative for MathSciNet", it seems more useful to do what MathSciNet does not, e.g. make a site that maintains lists of errors in published papers. 
I personally think MathSciNet is a great product, very much worthy of support, and I do not get the argument "since MathSciNet is not freely available, one should not support it". 
Just stop using MathSciNet for a few months and see how it feels. Finally, posting your reviews on your own homepage will make them publicly available; I see no problem here as well.
A: I stopped to write reviews for MathSciNet because I think such information should be completely free. 
You are a kindred spirit : so did I.  I no longer write for Zentralblatt either.  Why should I review papers which are not freely available to me, or to almost everyone ?
It did occur to me to review papers from the arXiv that I like, but there is no place really where these reviews could appear.  If someone starts a substitute for MathSciNet or the Zentralblatt, I would be willing to contribute in my small way.
A: According to this, zbmath will go open access by 2021. I haven't seen the fine print, though.
A: The answer to the question (if one interprets "free" in the strongest sense) is obviously NO:
 there are hidden costs associated to almost any such system.   For example, the arxiv is far from cheap to run, and it may need to switch to a new funding model. See http://arxiv.org/help/support/whitepaper. 
A: Everyone I know in the AMS would like to make MR/MathSci free, but the problem is that it costs millions of dollars to produce and maintain (it requires a large staff in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, including many mathematicians), and no one has managed to find any other way to pay for it*. This is certainly something the mathematicians in the AMS are aware of and have thought about. The AMS attempts to make it as widely available as possible given the constraint that it has to be paid for. As far as I know, the revenue from MR/MathSci only pays to support it, not any of the AMS's other activities [not so; see below.]
Posters don't seem to realize the huge effort that goes into maintaining a project like this (for example, every article has to be assigned to a reviewer, and every review has to edited). Certainly, I don't believe a free alternative would be able to come anywhere near the quality MathSci maintains, so my answer is no, a free alternative to MR/MathSci is not possible.
Perhaps free supplements to MathSci could be useful, but anything that drew potential reviewers away from MR/MathSci would harm, not help, what is an extremely valuable resource.
*Of course, the intelligent thing would be for the funding agencies in the wealthy countries (US,EU,Japan,...) to pay for MR/MathSci directly, so that it could be distributed freely, but getting them to do this seems to be hopeless.
Added: In response to Anton Petrunin's comment, here are some numbers. The AMS employs 15 mathematical editors (i.e., mathematicians) and a total staff of over 70 at Mathematical Reviews (in Ann Arbor). The total direct cost of producing MR/MathSci in 2008 was 6,569,000USD. However, contrary to what I thought, the AMS does use the revenue from MR/MathSci and its other publications to support a large part of its other activities (Member and professional services, general and administrative expenses). In 2008, about 24% of total publication revenue was used in this way. See 2008 report and ad.
A: There's not much of a theoretical difficulty, is there?  You just need to scrape titles and abstracts from whatever journals' websites that you choose to include -- this seems like something a reasonably net-savvy programmer could put together rather quickly (heck, you could probably write a quick GreaseMonkey script to do most of this).  Then you just need a user-base of "open-source reviewers," a catchy domain name and some web-hosting, and you're good to go.
If you're talking about the added access to articles through MathSciNet, then I think you're out of luck for the immediate future -- support the Arxiv and free online journals and hope for the best.
