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eschares.bsky.social
Eric Schares
@eschares.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.1K following 340 posts
Collection Analysis Librarian, Iowa State University; Research Associate, ScholCommLab; PhD candidate, CWTS. Views my own.
Data science, bibliometrics, python, Open Access, academic publishing, causal inference, Learned League.
More at eschares.github.io
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eschares.bsky.social
Eric Schares @eschares.bsky.social · Dec 9
Very excited to announce that I have been awarded a 3-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the economics of the academic publishing market!

Analysis will include hybrid journal subscription prices and daily APC price changes.

More to come in 2026.

@sloanfoundation.bsky.social
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation logo
eschares.bsky.social
Improving the #OpenAlex document type classification is needed. Meeting abstracts and book reviews are very often grouped under "article", skewing the counts. This new classifier from Nick Haupka is a good contribution toward fixing that problem.
Presenting a classifier to improve the identification of research journal publications in OpenAlex - Scientometrics
This paper introduces a document type classifier with the purpose to optimise the distinction between research and non-research journal publications in OpenAlex. Based on open metadata, the classifier...
link.springer.com
January 23, 2026 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
minnmax.com
In solidarity with today's ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA blackout, MinnMax is donating $1 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for every share of this Bluesky post for the next hour.
January 23, 2026 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
juancommander.scholcommlab.ca
@cometadata.bsky.social has been demonstrating it's possible to do big things! Matched over ~400K preprints 1/ ~2 MILLION authors to RORs—now in an openly available dataset. Come learn what we've been up to, what's next, and how to get involved. Next community call next week. Details below.
cometadata.bsky.social COMET @cometadata.bsky.social · 17d
1.9 million author entries. 2.1 million affiliation entries. 1.75 million matched to ROR IDs.
That's what our fine-tuned open-weight model extracted from 430,000 arXiv preprints. Join us on 21 Jan to discuss the results.
📅 Register: datacite.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
January 16, 2026 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
sloanfoundation.bsky.social
Through our Economics Program, the Sloan Foundation is supporting work by @eschares.bsky.social at Iowa State University to probe the economics of academic publishing models.

Read more: lib.iastate.edu/news/sloan-f...
Sloan Foundation grant supports research on economics of academic publishing - University Library
lib.iastate.edu
January 14, 2026 at 8:43 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Interesting project to adjust and lower the fences of the Royals' Kauffman Stadium next year. Trying to be more "neutral" to home run hitters. Data was four years of hits, factored in temperature, wind, elevation. Considered L/C/R fields separately.

www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/...
Sources: Royals to move in fences at Kauffman
The Royals are moving the majority of their outfield fence in by 10 feet, drastically changing the offensive environment at Kauffman Stadium, sources told ESPN.
www.espn.com
January 13, 2026 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
hansonmark.bsky.social
We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n
January 13, 2026 at 8:27 AM
eschares.bsky.social
Happy to be quoted in this overview looking at the complex problem of who pays for scientific #publishing.

Appearing with @samuelmoore.org , @juancommander.scholcommlab.ca , @csmarcum.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy

by @peterandreysmith.com for @undark.org

undark.org/2026/01/07/a...
In Scientific Publishing, Who Should Foot the Bill?
Publishers often charge authors to publish their publicly-funded research. Will a federal crackdown make a difference?
undark.org
January 7, 2026 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
samuelmoore.org
'And according to @eschares.bsky.social, data suggest that APCs bear almost no relation to publishing expenses. “So that tells me that APCs are not set on really what it costs to produce an article there,” he said. “It’s more prestige.”'

Undark piece on who should pay for scientific publishing.
In Scientific Publishing, Who Should Foot the Bill?
Publishers often charge authors to publish their publicly-funded research. Will a federal crackdown make a difference?
undark.org
January 7, 2026 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
dacrotty.bsky.social
Trump Can’t Cap Overhead Rate on NIH Grants to Research Universities, Appeals Court Rules www.chronicle.com/blogs/the-tr...
Trump Can’t Cap Overhead Rate on NIH Grants to Research Universities, Appeals Court Rules
The ruling is a victory for higher-education associations who challenged the proposed 15-percent cap, calling it illegal and claiming it would devastate the research enterprise.
www.chronicle.com
January 6, 2026 at 2:00 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Really enjoying my new Turing Machine board game.

Game #A51U6HM
✅✅🔲❌🔲
🔲🔲❌✅✅

I beat the machine!
#TuringMachineGame

www.turingmachine.info
Turing Machine Game
Turing Machine Problem generator
www.turingmachine.info
January 6, 2026 at 12:57 AM
Reposted by Eric Schares
jabyrnesci.bsky.social
To bring in the New Year, here's a proposal for external regulation of academic publishing, through a voluntary system of journal certification to the ISO 9001 quality management standard. 🧪 #ResearchIntegrity (1/2) www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com
December 30, 2025 at 11:28 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Home Depot logo photoshopped by me to say The Home Despot
January 5, 2026 at 6:25 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Thoughtful essay about time, parenthood, and memory. I was talking about this part last week. I made a butter braid for breakfast and a lasagna for dinner one year for our small family Christmas, and now it’s immutable “tradition”.
Moreover, children generate tradition. They turn your choices into traditions by accident. You do it once, they demand to do it again, and then it’s a tradition. You discover that you are the one creating tradition, that it all rests on you. It feels like an inappropriate amount of power. If I’m too tired to follow through on something, it just disappears forever. But by the same measure, I can now sieve all the traditions I was given to those that I love the most, make sure they continue, and add to them whatever I want to add to the world.
December 31, 2025 at 2:24 AM
eschares.bsky.social
The best books I read in 2025 are:

Fiction: The Last Murder at the End of the World. Basically, what if L O S T was good?

Nonfiction: Free Speech Handbook. Graphic novel relating pivotal court cases in US history to current events. Dense, but the pictures help.
Book cover of The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton Book cover of the Free Speech Handbook by Ian Rosenberg and Mike Cavallaro
December 18, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
najko.bsky.social
There seems to be a decrease in the coverage of affiliation metadata in #OpenAlex, particularly with regard to journal articles published by Elsevier since 2024. Only around 6% of Elsevier articles published in 2025 have affiliation metadata.

subugoe.github.io/scholcomm_an...
Decreasing affiliation metadata coverage in OpenAlex – Scholarly Communication Analytics
This blog post examines the decrease in affiliation metadata coverage in OpenAlex. An analysis of over 13 million articles published by major commercial publishers between 2018 and 2025 suggests that ...
subugoe.github.io
December 16, 2025 at 8:39 AM
eschares.bsky.social
Very excited to announce that I have been awarded a 3-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the economics of the academic publishing market!

Analysis will include hybrid journal subscription prices and daily APC price changes.

More to come in 2026.

@sloanfoundation.bsky.social
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation logo
December 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
rmcelreath.bsky.social
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.

I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.
December 9, 2025 at 1:58 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Your most common dataframe names were:

- df
- mydf
- test
- eric
- merged
economeager.bsky.social Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · Dec 3
Rstudio wrapped

bsky.app/profile/sal....
sal.gay Eddie van helsing @sal.gay · Dec 3
They should do MyChart Wrapped
December 4, 2025 at 3:59 AM
eschares.bsky.social
Update on the Trump flag I see on my commute: all writing is now completely gone.
Older white house with wood frame on the face and tatters of a flag
December 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
eschares.bsky.social
How does a #DAG work on a calculated quantity? Presumably, any of these nodes could have a causal effect on the others.

Say we have a mixture of red and white balls. How do total number, num red, num white, and % red interact?

#stats
Dag showing total number of balls -> % red <- num red DAG showing total number of balls -> % red <- num white DAG showing total number of balls -> % red -> num white DAG showing total number of balls <- % red <- num red
November 20, 2025 at 10:18 PM
eschares.bsky.social
"...revealed the hidden economics of how science gets published and accessed. Most Americans don’t realize they are paying not once, not twice, but at least three times for the same body of research."

The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research by @jsmoliga.bsky.social on @undark.org #metasci
The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research
Opinion | The hidden economics behind federal research funding causes Americans to pay three times for the same body of research.
undark.org
November 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM
eschares.bsky.social
I love a good metaphor.

Someone who was so engaged to hang this flag on a busy road in town, but now can’t be bothered to fix its frayed and tattered condition.
House with giant Trump flag displayed flag against the siding, but all torn, half gone, barely readable now
November 19, 2025 at 12:47 PM
eschares.bsky.social
MANAGER SPECIAL
Bananas with a sign that says Manager Special. Was 54c, now 53c
November 18, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Reposted by Eric Schares
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing.

Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
hansonmark.bsky.social
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.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM