Docs / Seed collection

The seed collection

PubPhys starts from a seed collection of 1,761 problems under 360 topics in 18 fields, compiled for PubPhys on 1 and 2 October 2026 with the help of AI research agents and reviewed by the editors. It is a starting point: every problem can be refined, split or contested once contributions open.

How it was prepared

• Duplicates were merged: 58 problems and 5 topics that asked the same question were folded into one copy.
• Every topic's review reference was checked against Crossref or arXiv; 3 were corrected.
• Status notes that mention work from 2024 on are marked unverified (742 notes): they were partly written without a live literature search.
• Formulas written in plain text were converted to typeset notation by AI. Each formula was checked automatically: the text around it is unchanged, it covers whole words of the original with the same symbols in the same order, and it typesets. Where only some of the proposed formulas passed, those were kept and the rest left as plain text. A random sample of the conversions was reviewed by eye.

Timestamp

The import manifest, which lists every topic and problem with a hash of its content, is timestamped in Bitcoin through OpenTimestamps. Anyone can check that the collection existed in this exact form no later than the anchoring block.

• Manifest: 362bc6b25f5a841c… Timestamp pending
• Item list: 614d670cecf03d64… Timestamp pending

Imported 2026-10-03 07:17 UTC.