AthenXiv/athenxiv

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In the age of AGI, the human frontier of knowledge is coming within reach. Working with mathematicians, GPT-5 supplied the missing step in the proof of Erdős Problem 848 — a question that had stood open for decades — and many of us saw for the first time a model stand inside a conclusion nobody yet knew, instead of restating what was already known.

The right to explore, and the right to publish what that exploration finds, should belong to everyone. It should not wait for an institution's nod, nor pass first through a filter of degrees, titles and grants. AthenXiv was built for that reason, and its source code is released here so that more people can join in and stand up more open platforms for publishing papers.

An open, multidisciplinary archive for research papers, with OpenTimestamps proofs, in-browser PDF reading, and a thirty-language interface.

Live site: https://athenxiv.com/

AthenXiv accepts a paper from anyone — no degree, position, affiliation or sponsor is required. Every upload is hashed and stamped with OpenTimestamps, so readers can verify that a file existed at a given moment. The archive also preserves open-access works published elsewhere, marked as such and shown with their original publication date and licence.

Two things are already wired up, so a new instance is useful the moment it is online — no extra configuration:

1. Google Scholar is already handled. Both athenxiv.com and this open-source build emit the Highwire citation_* metadata Scholar reads, serve /paper/{uid}.pdf with Content-Type: application/pdf, and generate /sitemap.xml from the database on every request. Stand up your own copy, keep the content quality good, and Scholar can index it.
2. OpenTimestamps is already configured. The public opentimestamps.com calendars are wired in by default, so an operator who changes nothing still gets a free, independently verifiable timestamp for every uploaded paper — a cryptographic receipt of the publication date that protects the author's priority.

The site's own content pages (about, guidelines, policy) are timestamped in the same way: run php bin/ots-stamp-pages.php once after the first deploy, and every later edit to a page re-stamps it automatically.

• Zero dependencies. No Composer, no npm build step: plain PHP 8.1+ with a small MVC core, PDO for storage, and vanilla CSS/JS served straight from disk.
• Dual database. MySQL (production) and SQLite (development and tests) share one schema layer; the SQL is written once and rewritten per driver.
• OpenTimestamps. Uploads get a .ots proof, calendars are aggregated, and proofs upgrade from pending to confirmed on their own.
• PDF.js viewer served through the application, so hosts that do not know .mjs still render correctly.
• Thirty languages with Accept-Language negotiation and per-page hreflang, plus administrator-editable content pages.
• Google Scholar ready: Highwire citation_* metadata, a /paper/{uid}.pdf URL that answers Content-Type: application/pdf, and a sitemap generated from the database on every request.
• Moderation workflow with an optional AI pre-review, version history that keeps unreviewed revisions away from readers, and a crawler-visit journal for hosts whose access log is out of reach.

• PHP 8.1 or newer with pdo, pdo_mysql or pdo_sqlite, mbstring, json, curl and openssl
• MySQL 5.7+ or SQLite 3
• A web server; the application supports two layouts — document root pointing at public/, or the whole project in the web root with a front controller (/index.php/...) for hosts without URL rewriting

git clone https://github.com/AthenXiv/athenxiv.git
cd athenxiv

# 1. configuration: config/config.php ships with SQLite defaults, so the
#    commands below work as they are. For MySQL, edit config/config.php — or
#    keep the credentials in config/config.local.php, which is not versioned.
#    Every option is documented in config/config.example.php.

# 2. database (SQLite is enough to look around)
php bin/install.php --driver=sqlite \
    --email=you@example.com --password='change-me-please' --nickname=Keeper
php bin/migrate.php

# 3. run it
php -S 127.0.0.1:8000 -t public public/router.php

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000/. The administrator account is the one you created in step 2.

For a production host, point the document root at public/. If the host cannot do that (shared hosting usually cannot), copy the contents of public/ into the web root and set app.front_controller to index.php in your configuration, so every URL is prefixed with /index.php.

php tests/lang_audit.php                        # every key used in code exists in en.php
php tests/v2_test.php                           # services, models, mail, versions, OTS codec
php tests/e2e_smoke.py   http://127.0.0.1:8000  # public pages and flows
php tests/e2e_admin.py   http://127.0.0.1:8000  # administrator console
php tests/e2e_i18n.py    http://127.0.0.1:8000  # thirty languages
php tests/scholar_check.py https://athenxiv.com # Google Scholar compliance, live

The Python suites drive a running instance; the PHP ones run on their own, against a throwaway SQLite database. Some suites need the fake external services in tests/fixtures/ (AI endpoint, calendar, SMTP). The credentials those suites use (*-password-2026, the demo administrator) belong to databases the tests create themselves — they are fixtures, not configuration.

app/          Core (router, request, response, i18n, settings), Models, Services, Controllers
bin/          CLI: install, migrate, imports, translation appliers, OTS upgrade
config/       configuration template and your local override (never committed)
database/     schemas, seed data, translation sources for content pages
public/       web root: front controller, assets, vendored PDF.js
resources/    views (plain PHP templates) and thirty language files
routes/       route table
tests/        unit-ish and end-to-end suites, plus fixtures

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. Please run the suites above before opening a pull request, and keep the language files complete: tests/lang_audit.php fails when a string used in a template is missing from resources/lang/en.php.

MIT — see LICENSE. The papers and other content published on the live site are not covered by this licence; each work keeps its own rights and licence, which the site displays on the paper page.