Vivum: An Open Index for Interactive Scientific Publishing
Science publishing is broken in a specific way: the dominant format is a static PDF designed for print, yet the research it describes increasingly relies on simulations, interactive figures, and reproducible computation that a PDF cannot express. Vivum is an open index for interactive scientific articles, and this work requires the web medium to make its argument. Authors self-publish at any public URL and retain full ownership; Vivum provides discovery, community peer discussion, and a formal review pathway. When an article crosses a community threshold of votes, it enters structured peer review covering significance, reproducibility, and clarity, resulting in a citable DOI via Zenodo. Vivum itself is the demonstration of its own thesis: this platform is a live, interactive system, not a document, and every design decision is inspectable and open.
The Living Article
The scientific paper has not changed in form since 1665. It started as text with static figures and in 2026 it continues being that way. This article argues that the web-native format is not merely a more convenient delivery mechanism for the same content, but a medium capable of making arguments that a PDF cannot, while also serving as one of the founding submissions to Vivum, demonstrating the format it advocates.