Catherine Hulshof
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hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof
@hulshof.bsky.social
1.7K followers 210 following 130 posts

Chicana ecologist and poet. Biodiversidad y cambio climático. Associate Professor. Founder Big Red Pen Grant Review. biodiversityresearchlab.com

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Environmental science 55%
Agriculture 16%
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hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 1d
The @esajournals.bsky.social is hosting a cross-portfolio conversation next week. If you are a subject matter editor like me, come and voice your ideas. It's gonna take brave, bold, new ideas to push back against this multi-headed beast.
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 2d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

markabelan.bsky.social
mark belan | science illustrator + info designer @markabelan.bsky.social · 2d
Full infographic available here: www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biom...
All the Biomass of Earth, in One Graphic
Our planet supports nearly 8.7 million species. We break down the total composition of the living world in terms of its biomass.
www.visualcapitalist.com

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Colin F. Camerer, Ben C. Sheldon , and 33 more

hansonmark.bsky.social
Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 2d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Reposted by Julie L. Lockwood, Tommaso Jucker, Catherine M. Hulshof , and 1 more

jlembrechts.bsky.social
Jonas Lembrechts @jlembrechts.bsky.social · 3d
How to not be swamped by your microclimate data?

The rise of microclimate data may have opened Pandora’s box. Gone are the days of simple bioclimatic variables — now heads spin trying to summarize these timeseries.

A much-needed paper by @krystofchytry.bsky.social:

🔗 the3dlab.org/2025/11/11/h...
How to not be swamped by your microclimate data
Microclimate data are finally finding their way more routineously into ecological models – and rightly so. Hooray for that! The growing availability of in-situ measurements is helping us brid…
the3dlab.org

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 7d
Anyone know how to revoke a submission with Wiley's shitty AI system? 6 months with no reviewers? Hellnah.
jacquelyngill.bsky.social Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · Oct 6
The new Wiley journal review system is an absolute nightmare. Editorial assistants have been replaced by a clunky, AI-enabled website that makes it harder to find and invite reviewers. Associate editor workloads have increased. I'm not convinced the invitations to reviewers are even going through.

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 10d
Anyone else tightening up that family #budget? Just switched from T-Mobile to Mint Mobile for a $1200/year #savings. DM me if you want the referral coupon. We also cancelled Netflix (gasp). Any other easy ways to save? www.mintmobile.com
Mint Mobile | Wireless that's Easy, Online, $15 Bucks a Month
Mint Mobile re-imagined the wireless shopping experience and made it easy and online-only. No stores. No salespeople. Just huge direct to you savings on nationwide phone plans.
www.mintmobile.com

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 14d
A la Stanford's d.school, ASU's Center for Science and the Imagination, @austinkleon.bsky.social

who else?

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 14d
Hey creatives: who do you follow for inspiration? Trying to cut out slop and surround myself with incredible, bold, pie-in-the-sky ideas.

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

climatica.coop
Climática @climatica.coop · 14d
‘El río no tiene culpa’: la canción de una pareja afectada por la DANA

'El río no tiene culpa': la canción de una pareja afectada por la DANA - Climática, el medio especializado en clima y biodiversidad
Un año después de las lluvias e inundaciones donde perdieron la vida 227 personas, Alejandro y María Laura, artistas afectados por la DANA, lanzan junto a Greenpeace una canción inédita que transforma el dolor en un himno por la justicia climática.
f.mtr.cool

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 16d
Come work in Richmond, Virginia. Assistant Professor, Earth Systems Science @ VCU.

vcujobs.com/jobs/assista...
Assistant Professor, Earth System Science, School of Life Sciences and Sustainability - VCU Main Campus, Virginia, United States
Unit: College of Humanit and Sciences MBU Department: School of Life Sci & Sustainability Duties & Responsibilities: The School of Life Sciences and Sustainability (SLSS) at Virginia Commonwea...
vcujobs.com

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · 24d
No new lab papers. But here's my first try at digital collage from souvenirs I picked up in #Oaxaca #Mexico during the #ATBC meeting. #arte-ciencia #collage

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

npr.org
NPR @npr.org · 29d
Silvana Estrada's powerful, yet elegant voice finds a way to bend wounds to her will and become whole. n.pr/4oat8DP
Silvana Estrada: Tiny Desk Concert
Silvana Estrada's powerful, yet elegant voice finds a way to bend wounds to her will and become whole.
n.pr

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Oct 12
If I had to stab a guess...I'd say serpentine serpentine serpentine.

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Oct 11
Also called growing up with a Mexican mom. #chancla

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

laimosemion.bsky.social
Bruce Stallsmith @laimosemion.bsky.social · Oct 8
This is Portland, Oregon. Photo: Fabian Bimmer. #USA#Trump

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Oct 6
And read about why here. TLDR: One part rainy day fund, one part do what you're good at and enjoy, and one part quiet subversion. As one does. biodiversityresearchlab.com/field-notes/...
Why I’m Offering Grant Reviews — Catherine Hulshof, PhD
This year, I was offered an NSF rotator position. I’d spent a decade serving on panels, built an incredible track record of funding, and was ready to contribute in a new way. Then the offer was pulle...
biodiversityresearchlab.com

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Oct 6
Excited to launch Big Red Pen, grant review services, because NSF funding is only getting tougher, but strong proposals still rise to the top. I have decades of NSF success and 10 years of panel experience. Let’s get funded. #NSF from #GRFP to #CAREER.
biodiversityresearchlab.com/grant-review
Grant Review — Catherine Hulshof, PhD
NSF grant review consulting for biology, life sciences, and STEM fields from GRFP to CAREER and everything in between
biodiversityresearchlab.com

Reposted by Delphine K. Farmer, Zen Faulkes, Brian Weatherson , and 3 more

jacquelyngill.bsky.social
Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · Oct 6
The new Wiley journal review system is an absolute nightmare. Editorial assistants have been replaced by a clunky, AI-enabled website that makes it harder to find and invite reviewers. Associate editor workloads have increased. I'm not convinced the invitations to reviewers are even going through.

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Oct 2
@nceas-ucsb.bsky.social @cu-esiil.bsky.social

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Sep 26
This inventory is where I got my start in tropical biology, as a lab and field assistant with Dan Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs at UPenn and Costa Rica and the many taxonomists and ecologists I was lucky to meet along the way.

So many incredible ripple effects for so many people.

Reposted by Brian J. Enquist

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Sep 26
"After 55 years, the world’s most ambitious caterpillar inventory will come to a close. This monumental project in ACG has reared 870,000 caterpillars, of 8,000 species of butterflies and moths, and 18,000 species of wasp parasites—all documented by a team that grew to 30 local parataxonomists."
gdfcf.bsky.social Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund @gdfcf.bsky.social · Sep 26
Happy to share our latest newsletter! The latest GDFCF and Area de Conservación Guanacaste news is here: mailchi.mp/54601d57a15d...
Greetings from the Late Rainy Season
mailchi.mp

Reposted by Brian J. Enquist, Catherine M. Hulshof

gdfcf.bsky.social
Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund @gdfcf.bsky.social · Sep 26
Happy to share our latest newsletter! The latest GDFCF and Area de Conservación Guanacaste news is here: mailchi.mp/54601d57a15d...
Greetings from the Late Rainy Season
mailchi.mp

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Sep 24
Dial-A-Poem

dial-a-poem.org
dial-a-poem
dial-a-poem
dial-a-poem.org

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Sep 20
Commemorating Hurricane Maria by working on a manuscript combining remote sensing, soils, and plant traits. Serpentine plant communities are more resilient, and soils are an important (but overlooked) part of the forest recovery story.

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Sep 20
Absolutely hilarious.

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof, Romain Lorrillière, Paul J. Taillie

thebirdist.bsky.social
The Birdist @thebirdist.bsky.social · Sep 15
I wrote about the Reiser brothers and their hilarious, disgusting Listers documentary for Slate:

slate.com/culture/2025...
One of the Funniest Documentaries of the Year Is Streaming for Free on YouTube
Listers is a journey into the dark and cringy heart of one of the world’s most peculiar hobbies.
slate.com

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

markuseichhorn.bsky.social
Markus Eichhorn @markuseichhorn.bsky.social · Sep 12
It depends on the group. For trees and other woody plants I learnt a lot from Keller's book. link.springer.com/book/9783764...
Identification of tropical woody plants in the absence of flowers
This revised and extended second edition of "Identification of tropical woody plants" is a concise representation of vegetative characters of woody taxa. It presents a unique identification system, pe...
link.springer.com

hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof @hulshof.bsky.social · Sep 12
Tropical botanists: what's a good resource for learning neotropical plant families. Gentry is good but not great for newbies. Any recommendations? Online or otherwise? Gracias!

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

aeon.co
Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · Sep 10
‘There are people who have everything and have achieved nothing. But then there are people who have nothing and have achieved a lot.’ Wilkin, 12, is growing up in a sugar mill town in the Dominican Republic. Hear his thoughts on joy, poverty and baseball in this video by PDA Films
​​A neglected Dominican sugar town, as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old local | Aeon Videos
Wilkin, 12, is growing up in a sugar mill town in the Dominican Republic. Hear his thoughts on joy, poverty and baseball
buff.ly

Reposted by Catherine M. Hulshof

grist.org
Grist @grist.org · Sep 3
Puerto Ricans are devising the food system of tomorrow.

Following a history of disinvestment and destructive climate disasters, communities across the archipelago are developing living blueprints of food sovereignty.

grist.org/food-and-agr...

#PR #Disaster #PuertoRico #Food #Farms #Farming
Puerto Ricans are devising the food system of tomorrow
Following a history of disinvestment and destructive climate disasters, communities across the archipelago are developing living blueprints of food sovereignty.
grist.org