[tempnow987]

"sharing research via PDF must inevitably come to an end."

Maybe instead of using the obsolete toolset arxiv provides, they could host their groundbreaking research on their own platform? The combination of ground breaking features and insightful commentary would draw users?

Actually, many of the negatives they list are positives in my book. The latex barrier screens out a ton of garbage in my view - I'm on some social science / word based research lists, and the quality of stuff is mind bogglingly bad.

Getting stuff it fit into a PDF (instead of the NY times new scrollable story stuff) makes grabbing or print off or even reading easy - less dynamic is good in my book.

[pasadenasunset]

I had a similar reaction. When you combine this concept with some of the fringe open science silliness, you are essentially telling scholars (what and how) they must share, AND (what and how) they are prohibited from sharing, leaving what is essentially a forced path:

"PDFs are prohibited, especially shared in private. All data, hypotheses, references, tables, code, must be presented in formats that are conducive to steali ^H^H^H^H replication and fostering a global science ethos of sharing."

"Authors who obey will have a beautiful platinum star printed next to their author nameplate. Extra star opportunities will exist for authors who announce their papers on Twitter with required levels of irony, hipness and verve!"