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The reason the French can’t build these things is the same reason they shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge. It’s a preprint PDF host. Just make your own if you can run this one.

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They do have their own: https://hal.science/

It is actually quite common to come across HAL in subfields of mathematics in my experience.

HAL is decidedly second-tier. Given the option, everyone would pick arXiv over HAL. Hence, HAL hosts lots of stuff that didn't (even) make it to arXiv => lots of subpar dredge.

I agree that dredge is a huge problem with HAL, but it's getting better. While arXiv is still stuck with a unfriendly UI.

> HAL is decidedly second-tier. Given the option, everyone would pick arXiv over HAL.

Can you elaborate on that?

That’s great. People will use whichever one is better.

Turns out that "better" for many people means "better moderated", since static hosting is hard to differentiate. And at present Arxiv is winning that one (at the expense of considerably higher running costs due to said moderation)

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