arXiv
arXiv
[Megan and Ponytail are standing together. Megan is talking to Ponytail.] Megan: Wait, all the papers in your field are posted as free PDFs on arXiv? That must be killing big science journals, since they charge such huge subscription/publication fees.
[Ponytail responds with her arms wide, palms up.] Ponytail: Nah, we’ve been doing it since the 90s and nobody seems to care.
[Megan contemplates, speechless.]
[Megan slightly raises her arms and Ponytail puts up a hand to shush her.] Megan: That makes no sense at all!! Ponytail: Shhh, you’ll jinx it!

arXiv is a free online repository of electronic preprints of scientific papers in various fields, particularly in physics, math, and computer science. Scientists typically publish "preprint" versions of journal articles to arXiv, which are free to publish to and read. In this comic Megan remarks that academic journals must have a hard time getting by since their primary revenue is from researchers who pay to publish articles and readers who pay for subscriptions. Her remark seems to assume that arXiv must be a recent development, perhaps similar to the Sci-Hub project which began in 2011. However, Ponytail informs her that the arXiv project has been around since the 1990s (1991 to be exact).
After a panel of Megan looking contemplative, she remarks that that does not make sense at all. After all, why would publishing companies be able to make money from something that is free online? Ponytail tries to stop her from freaking out, so that her outrage does not inform others about the current arrangement and thus ruin the system. She uses the term " jinx ", which in common usage means to affect negatively by speaking about, to imply that this system is one that could break down if discussed.
Ponytail expressing confusion about the continued existence of scientific journals previously happened in 2025: Peer Review .
The title text refers to another project that is invaluable for internet research, the Internet Archive ( link to it here ). Internet Archive is a public archive of information, including public domain books and music. Internet Archive runs the Wayback Machine , an archive of backups of web pages all over the Web at various times that can be used to see past versions of a page, even if that site has since shut down. Internet Archive accepts submissions of any type of information, including new backups of web pages and newly-made public domain content. The title text argues that these two projects are so useful, yet make so little economic sense, that, if they did not exist, we would dismiss them as ideas that would never be viable. In addition, as "arXiv" is intended to be pronounced the same as "archive", both sites have URLs with a common pronunciation.
[Megan and Ponytail are standing together. Megan is talking to Ponytail.] Megan: Wait, all the papers in your field are posted as free PDFs on arXiv? That must be killing big science journals, since they charge such huge subscription/publication fees.
[Ponytail responds with her arms wide, palms up.] Ponytail: Nah, we’ve been doing it since the 90s and nobody seems to care.
[Megan contemplates, speechless.]
[Megan slightly raises her arms and Ponytail puts up a hand to shush her.] Megan: That makes no sense at all!! Ponytail: Shhh, you’ll jinx it!
