John Towse
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jntowse.bsky.social
John Towse
@jntowse.bsky.social
3.2K followers 500 following 700 posts
Experimental psychologist. Interested in cognitive science, research rigour, and interesting interdisciplinary spaces.
Work: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1183-5508

Enjoying the outdoors around the NW of England.

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jntowse.bsky.social
John Towse @jntowse.bsky.social · Aug 29
Behavioural research has been transformed by the digital revolution. The DECIDE framework, led by @hshawberry.bsky.social & published in AMPPS, aims to help researchers more effectively understand, reflect & navigate key research choices & their ethical consequences

doi.org/10.1177/2515...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
doi.org
Reposted by John Towse
womeninneurouk.bsky.social
🌟 Congratulations to Dr. Helen Nuttall (@lancasteruni.bsky.social) — winner of the Mentorship award at the #WiNUKAwards2025!

Dr. Nuttall conducts hearing research in underserved communities, co-hosting "Drs Confess" podcast. She fosters inclusive mentorship where early-career researchers thrive.
November 7, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by John Towse
jonesycartoons3.bsky.social
This Oldie #cartoon #redraw is available from Chris Beetles Gallery #lighthouse #bowling #dippenandink #watercolour
November 6, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Reposted by John Towse
bayesianboy.bsky.social
There is a lot of fuss today over whether chatbots can replace human participants in social sciences research when the solution is obvious: ask chatbots to simulate the views of social scientists and survey them on attitudes towards chatbots as substitutes for human subjects.
November 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by John Towse
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
Reposted by John Towse
byrobdavies.bsky.social
My DMs are open if anyone has more info on this. 100% confidential.
November 11, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by John Towse
jmiba.bsky.social
OpenAlex just got a whole lot sharper. The Walden rewrite is live: a faster, cleaner, and more complete engine behind a now 190M-work scholarly dataset. Better OA, references, metadata—plus quicker updates and snapshots. Onward. #OpenAlex #Walden #OpenScience

blog.openalex.org/openalex-rew...
OpenAlex rewrite (“Walden”) launch!
Jason: Today, OpenAlex gets a new engine.After a year of rebuilding, refactoring, and retesting, the Walden rewrite is now live — powering all of OpenAlex. It’s the same dataset shape you know, but faster, cleaner, and more complete.You’ll notice better references, better OA detection, better language and license coverage, better everything. We’ve added 190 million new works, including datasets, software, and other research objects from DataCite and thousands of repositories. And thanks to our new foundation, fixes and improvements now roll out in days, not months.Want to see exactly what changed? Check out OREO — the OpenAlex Rewrite Evaluation Overview — to compare old vs. new data in detail.And if you’d like to dig into the full list of updates, the Walden release notes have you covered.For the next few weeks, you can still access the old dataset with data-version=1, and starting tomorrow, you can download full snapshots of both the legacy and Walden datasets in the usual way.The rebuild is done. The road ahead is wide open.Onward.
blog.openalex.org
November 4, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Reposted by John Towse
hetanshah.bsky.social
The whole of the HMRC Board got me to present to them about the opportunities and risks of AI about 18 months ago and my main messages were be very careful with high stakes decision making and remember the Horizon Post Office scandal which was about governance and accountability…
benansell.bsky.social Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 12d
Somebody at HMRC needs to be canned for this idiotic ‘fraud-detection’ idea. And I fear future use of AI in welfare cases might well produce this kind of story regularly (as they have in Nevada for example).
UK woman who booked Oslo flight but did not fly loses child benefit ‘because she emigrated’
Exclusive: HMRC told Lisa Morris-Almond there was no record of her return to UK, but she did not take the trip
www.theguardian.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by John Towse
generalboles.bsky.social
BBC really burying the lede there
November 7, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by John Towse
crest-research.bsky.social
🚨 TWO spaces left for this FREE NABS+ ECR 2-Day Workshop: 'Digital Profiling and its Applications in Research and Practice', Tues 18–Wed 19 Nov, Manchester. Explore the fast-evolving world of digital profiling. First come, first served. Sign up now!
crestresearch.ac.uk/nabs/early-c...
ECR 2-Day Workshop
How are our digital traces used to build profiles of who we are, what we believe, and what we might do?
crestresearch.ac.uk
November 7, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by John Towse
markhaselgrove.bsky.social
Miserable news day.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Music and modern languages courses suspended at University of Nottingham
In a statement the institution also says it is
www.bbc.co.uk
November 6, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by John Towse
morethanadodo.bsky.social
Imagine a drop of ancient resin. Inside is an insect, trapped for 53 million years, so well preserved it looks like it might twitch back into life. These amber fossils offer us a breath-taking glimpse into long vanished ecosystems.

But there’s a catch
24 pieces of amber containing insects, all slightly different sizes and shapes, but all small and pinned to a clear plastic board
November 6, 2025 at 11:34 AM
jntowse.bsky.social
Pru Leith having a schadenfreude day today

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
a man with a beard wearing a hat and a jacket says nein schadenfreude
Alt: a man with a beard wearing a hat and a jacket says nein schadenfreude
media.tenor.com
November 6, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Reposted by John Towse
cognition-zurich.bsky.social
The Cognition Lab @ University of Zurich is on Bluesky! Follow us for updates on new papers & preprints, conferences that lab members attend & other news around research on #workingmemory, #attention, and #longtermmemory.
November 5, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by John Towse
matti.vuorre.com
Wrote a little interactive webapp for creating psyarxiv coauthorship networks, try it out: vuorre.com/psyarxiv-das...

Feedback welcome: github.com/mvuorre/psya...
psyarxiv coauthorship network from https://vuorre.com/psyarxiv-dashboard/coauthorship showing Matti Vuorre's coauthors
November 5, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by John Towse
katiecorker.bsky.social
Rob Chavez gives the helpful/correct answer below, but here's another thought:

Your preprint gets to be your director's cut. Put that baby on OSF or Zenodo and add a link in your figure caption.
November 5, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by John Towse
helenlsunderland.bsky.social
Can anyone help me identify these schoolgirls who visited Parliament in July 1909? I'm writing about them in my book and would LOVE to be able to say who they are! www.npg.org.uk/collections/... #histed #histchild
'School Girls at the House of Commons' (including Michael Joseph Flavin) - National Portrait Gallery
by Benjamin Stone platinum print 22 July 1909 © National Portrait Gallery, London
www.npg.org.uk
November 3, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by John Towse
piespuddings.bsky.social
Blackburn cakes are similar to Eccles cakes but are filled with apples and spices rather than currants.

You can find the recipe at piespuddingsandpottages.com/recipe-post/...

#britishfood #foodhistory #baking #recipe #pastries #apples
Large decorated plate of Blackburn cakes, small decorated plate with a Blackburn cake cut in half with silver knife, cup of tea and three apples alll on a dark brown tablecloth.
November 3, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Reposted by John Towse
bramderidder.bsky.social
First time I see an article retracted for (likely) AI hallucinations.

N.B., the authors have PhD´s but don´t seem affiliated with a university.
November 3, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by John Towse
benhermann.eu
In my seminar last week, the students discussed "Understanding and improving artifact sharing in
software engineering research" by Timperley, @laurenherckis.bsky.social,
@clegoues.bsky.social, and @michaelhilton.bsky.social. For their presentation they chose the overhead projector ...
November 3, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by John Towse
crest-research.bsky.social
ICYMI: 'Staying Safe: Protecting You and Your Research'. A helpful guide to understanding risk, how adversaries operate, building defensive practices, and extending protection beyond yourself.

👉 crestresearch.ac.uk/resources/st...
Staying Safe: Protecting You and Your Research
Researching national security, geopolitics, extremism, or other politically sensitive issues can expose you to risks that most academics never have to consider.
crestresearch.ac.uk
November 3, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Reposted by John Towse
wimgmeijer.bsky.social
Scientists have converted the blood type of a donor kidney and transplanted the organ into a person.

The procedure — the first of its kind — could improve access to donor organs, specialists say, because the blood type of the donor would no longer matter.

🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
First human transplant of kidney modified to have ‘universal’ blood type
Recipient diagnosed with brain death received a type-O organ, which is compatible with all blood types.
www.nature.com
October 4, 2025 at 6:52 AM
jntowse.bsky.social
Morning dog walk in November: sunshine, leaf turn and long shadows
Black and white springer spaniel approaching camera on a dirt track with the sun behind streaking through trees, some with golden leaves
November 2, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by John Towse
alexh.bsky.social
Someday we'll have acknowledgment citation counts and we can better recognize those who are particularly collegial. The image shows the most frequently-acknowledged people in the journal Psychological Review up to 1999.
(Cronin, Shaw, and La Barre, 2003)
November 2, 2025 at 7:22 AM
jntowse.bsky.social
"I instantly fell out of love with all the artists, who did not seem to care whether they engaged visitors emotionally, intellectually or aesthetically. Their assumed audience is experts, collectors, cognoscenti – because these, after all, are the people giving the prizes."
Ouch, ouch, ouch
Artes Mundi 11 review – smug, stagey, up-itself nonsense for art world wazzocks
Six international artists vie for the prize – and none of them seem interested in engaging visitors. I had more fun on Llandudno pier’s ghost train
www.theguardian.com
October 31, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by John Towse
christymbyrd.bsky.social
An ed psych journal is refusing to publish our manuscript unless we "neutralize" "political" content. This is after the manuscript was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication. DM me for details!

I'm devastated. Two years of work and revisions with four junior co-authors cast aside that easily.
October 14, 2025 at 12:47 PM