José Luis Ortega
LightNews LightNews
joseluisortega.bsky.social
José Luis Ortega
@joseluisortega.bsky.social
760 followers 24 following 59 posts
Scientist in the Institute for Advanced Social Sciences (IESA) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Bibliometrics, Scholarly publishing system and Research integrity
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
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 José Luis Ortega
albertomartin.bsky.social
Scopus has discontinued over a dozen additional journals included in our "Invasion of the journal snatchers" analysis. A fast reaction time by bibliographic databases is crucial for defusing the business model of stealth journal transfers.
zenodo.org/records/1476... and zenodo.org/records/1521...
November 13, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
paolocrosetto.bsky.social
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 12, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
dsquintana.bsky.social
I wish ORCIDs were more widely used. You can add a secondary email address to your ORCID account, so even if you lose your institutional email, which is the norm rather than then exception, you can still use the same ORCID.
everythinghertz.com Everything Hertz podcast @everythinghertz.com · 3d
194: Author verification everythinghertz.com/194

We discuss whether preprint servers and journals should introduce author identity verification for submitting manuscripts. This would probably speed up the submission process, is this worth the potential downsides?
November 10, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
albertomartin.bsky.social
Programa completo: www.une.es/las-editoria...
Las editoriales UNE celebran su asamblea general en la Universidad San Jorge de Zaragoza, en defensa de una edición de calidad, ética y socialmente responsable
Los días 13 y 14 de noviembre
www.une.es
November 10, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
albertomartin.bsky.social
In today’s pay-to-publish model where every paper lands somewhere, rejection just means another publisher profits. That's why publishers are building multi-tier journal ecosystems.
samuelmoore.org Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 3d
"Acquiring the Karger journals will provide OUP with many more downstream transfer destinations, helping OUP to publish more of the articles that get rejected by their higher impact journals."

Depressing assessment of the commercial strategy guiding academic publishing.
OUP acquires Karger's long tail
Hello fellow journalologists,
newsletter.journalology.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
silicecsic.bsky.social
silice.csic.es añade ahora una entidad nueva: Disciplinas. Tomando los fields de ASJC, incluimos los artículos con más impacto, los autores más relevantes, las organizaciones que más contribuyen y la revistas más centrales por disciplina. Otra forma de acceder a la literatura científica española.
November 3, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
solalpirelli.bsky.social
36 cites to the same author? Retracted.
59 of them? Not retracted!

4 self-cites? Retracted.
21 self-cites? Not retracted!

70 unused cites to the same author? Retracted.
77 of them? Not retracted!

Plagiarism? Cites authors didn't add? 113 cites to the TPC chair in a 0.5-page paper? Not retracted!
solalpirelli.bsky.social Solal Pirelli @solalpirelli.bsky.social · 22d
Good news: ACM retracted some problematic papers.

Bad news: Only some, without apparent logic, as you can tell by following the links of my old blog post.

Doesn't look like they understand the concept of trust in an organizing/reviewing committee.

solalpirelli.github.io/2023/01/25/t...
Troubling ACM Venues | Solal Pirelli
solalpirelli.github.io
October 22, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
barcelonadori.bsky.social
1/2 📊 @cwtsnl.bsky.social published the 2025 release of its Leiden Ranking Open Edition: a real step toward open research information.
Built on OpenAlex, it:
• Uses transparent, reusable data
• Includes national & regional publishing (not only “core” journals)...
October 30, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
silicecsic.bsky.social
Seguimos incorporando mejoras. Hemos incrementado un 50% el número de perfiles de autor. Gracias a la ayuda de nuestro colega @isidroaguillo.bsky.social hemos identificado a 50K nuevos perfiles en @orcid.org de autores en España y con publicaciones en OpenAlex. Entra y reclama tu perfil!
October 28, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
pablosastron.bsky.social
Os dejamos el trabajo y los datos. Interesadas en colaborar/mejorar los datos escribidnos sin fallo! (9/9):

📃 Preprint: zenodo.org/records/1745...
📉 Datos: zenodo.org/records/1555...
DATASET: Proyectos de investigación Generación de Conocimiento del Plan Nacional I+D+i de España
Este repositorio contiene un dataset de proyectos de investigación presentados en el marco del Plan Nacional de I+D desde 2004 hasta 2023. El dataset aglutina y harmoniza la información presente en la...
zenodo.org
October 27, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
aarontay.bsky.social
Does ChatGPT Ignore Article Retractions and Other Reliability Concerns? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... GPT4o-mini assessed research quality of 217 high profile retracted (based on altmetric scores) papers but none of 30*217=6510 reports mentioned that the articles were retracted (1)
Does ChatGPT Ignore Article Retractions and Other Reliability Concerns?
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT seem to be increasingly used for information seeking and analysis, including to support academic literature reviews. To test whether the results might someti...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 26, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
jo-dudek.bsky.social
📰 Quantitative research on science communication requires suitable data. When it comes to academic press releases, that data is scarce. In a new paper, we introduce a dataset of more than 500,000 press releases published on @eurekalert.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
An open dataset of EurekAlert! press releases for science communication research - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - An open dataset of EurekAlert! press releases for science communication research
doi.org
October 27, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
isidroaguillo.bsky.social
José Luis Ortega presenta las bases de datos SILICE y RetractBASE en el CSIC durante la celebración del 25 aniversario de Crossref
October 22, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
silicecsic.bsky.social
Ya está disponible en el canal del @icac-cat.bsky.social la charla presentación sobre el funcionamiento de silice.csic.es www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA5G...
Sílice | Inicio
Sílice - Una plataforma abierta y flexible para el análisis de la producción científica en España.
silice.csic.es
October 23, 2025 at 11:04 AM
joseluisortega.bsky.social
El próximo día 27 de octubre comienza el curso "Técnicas básicas para la extracción de información en la Web: Web Scraper" en @asociacionsedic.bsky.social todavía estás a tiempo de apuntarte! www.sedic.es/tecnicas-bas...
Técnicas básicas para la extracción de información en la Web: Web Scraper - SEDIC | Sociedad Española de Documentación e Información Científica
Curso Técnicas básicas para la extracción de información en la Web: Web Scraper impartido por José Luis Ortega Priego, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados, CSIC ¡Infórmate!
www.sedic.es
October 21, 2025 at 3:38 PM
joseluisortega.bsky.social
En la Semana Internacional del Acceso Abierto #OAWeek quiero recordar que también las bases de datos académicas deben caminar hacía el libre acceso. retractbase.csic.es y silice.csic.es son nuestros granitos de arena
Retract Base | Search Retracted Publications & Notices
Find retracted and withdrawn research publications with detailed retraction notices. Search our open database of over 60,000 records from 2000 onwards
retractbase.csic.es
October 20, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
ludowaltman.bsky.social
There is considerable discussion about the (lack of) openness of metadata of journal articles, but how do preprint servers perform in terms of openly available metadata?

@neesjanvaneck.bsky.social and I report our findings in a new @leidenmadtrics.bsky.social blog post doi.org/10.59350/te7....
Crossref as a source of open bibliographic metadata for preprints
Crossref is a crucial source of open bibliographic metadata for articles published in scientific journals. Importantly, however, Crossref can also serve as a source of bibliographic metadata for prepr...
doi.org
October 17, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
torressalinas.bsky.social
Ready in Zenodo
The OpenAlex database in review
zenodo.org/records/1735...
October 15, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
albertomartin.bsky.social
Hoy una periodista científica ha escrito para preguntarnos si se podía fiar de un artículo publicado en una de las revistas vendidas a Oxbridge/OAText. Al mirarlo, comprobamos que se había publicado antes de la venta. El daño reputacional puede afectar retroactivamente.
October 14, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
aarontay.bsky.social
[blogged] The Petrol Tank for AI Discovery Might be Running Dry as Publishers close access to scholarly content such as abstracts due to AI incentives aarontay.substack.com/p/the-petrol... - an analysis of OpenAlex abstract coverage changes for Elsevier & Springernature
The Petrol Tank for AI Discovery Might be Running Dry as Publishers close access to scholarly content such as abstracts due to AI incentives
Elicit.com, Consensus, and Undermind.ai are among the new leading comprehensive cross-disciplinary “AI-powered academic search engines” today.
aarontay.substack.com
October 1, 2025 at 6:11 PM
joseluisortega.bsky.social
Mañana al as 13:00 hablaré en el @icac-cat.bsky.social sobre el reciente lanzamiento de @silicecsic.bsky.social (silice.csic.es), cómo funciona, cuáles son sus fuentes, cómo reclamar un perfil de autor, los nuevos desarrollos y todo lo que queráis saber. Podrás seguirlo en bit.ly/3KNTBI8
Sílice | Inicio
Sílice - Una plataforma abierta y flexible para el análisis de la producción científica en España.
silice.csic.es
October 14, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
mvaro.bsky.social
OpenAlex ya supera en cobertura bibliográfica a Google Scholar
isidroaguillo.bsky.social Isidro F. Aguillo @isidroaguillo.bsky.social · Oct 13
Our periodic review of the coverage of the major bibliographic databases (October 2025)
GS no longer the largest due to the huge increase of OpenAlex. New data for Xueshu
October 13, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by José Luis Ortega
ointegridadesp.bsky.social
¿Y si España tuviera una MEGAREVISTA?

Gracias a @marcosdogo.bsky.social por hacerse eco de la propuesta de @isidroaguillo.bsky.social y de @ointegridadesp.bsky.social en este análisis con más opiniones y desarrollo.

Si quieres acceso visita nuestra web.

www.elespanol.com/ciencia/2025...
October 13, 2025 at 1:32 PM