Nicolas Galtier
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nicolasgaltier.bsky.social
Nicolas Galtier
@nicolasgaltier.bsky.social
700 followers 550 following 110 posts
Molecular evolution and publication ethics at ISEM (CNRS Montpellier)
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Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
diegoharta.bsky.social
If you are a scientist, working on biology, wondering where to submit your manuscript given the current issues with the academic publishing system, check out wheretopublish.github.io!
We did this thinking change is possible. Let’s make it happen!
February 11, 2026 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
yomoseco.bsky.social
Great opportunity to interact with the French Community of Ecological Theory: "Biodiversity in Equations" Conference in Montpellier, France on April 9 and 10, 2026, organized by GDR TheoMoDive and SFE2.
Registration is free! Find more info here: biodiveq.sciencesconf.org?forward-acti...
Biodiversity in equations - Sciencesconf.org
Welcome
biodiveq.sciencesconf.org
February 11, 2026 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
katelaskowski.bsky.social
How do we know our research results are REAL? We replicate them! Most folks agree but lament on how hard it is to publish these replications.

My dearest gentle reader, lament no more! Delighted to unveil: Replication Studies, a new section of Behavioral Ecology 1/

academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
Replication studies: a win-win for early-career training and behavioral ecology
Replicating previous research builds confidence that results are real and meaningful. But close replications are rare due to limitations in resources and d
academic.oup.com
February 10, 2026 at 7:42 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
nclairis.bsky.social
Dear all, I'm happy to present you a side project done with @diegoharta.bsky.social @phylogenetrips.bsky.social & Lucas Baudouin regarding the publication landscape in Biology: wheretopublish.github.io 1/4
Where to Publish?
wheretopublish.github.io
February 10, 2026 at 9:42 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
evobiolmu.bsky.social
@jochenwolflab.bsky.social
Where do potentially harmful mutations accumulate? We have an answer in birds. Congratulations Fidel for wonderful paper!

doi.org/10.1093/gene...
Determinants of mutation load in birds
Abstract. Many mutations have detrimental effects. The mutation load in a population depends on the efficacy of purifying selection in removing deleterious
doi.org
February 9, 2026 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
filipruzicka.bsky.social
A new preprint with Beatriz Vicoso, where we highlight that a common observation in molecular evolution—X chromosomes adapting faster than autosomes—doesn't quite add up. So we tested a new theory (www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...) in fruit flies, mice and humans...
biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 8d
Is faster-X adaptation due to large-effect mutations? An empirical test of a new theory https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.06.704462v1
February 8, 2026 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
evojlinnsoc.bsky.social
Why not publish your research with a Society Journal? 🧪🌍

The Linnean Society is committed to publishing high-quality and ground-breaking scientific research across the four themes of botany, zoology, biology and evolution, striving to make these accessible & engaging to a global audience. 🧵(1/4)
February 7, 2026 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
genomics.peercommunityin.org
📑 New @genomics.peercommunityin.org recommendation, by @gecko1990.bsky.social
genomics.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec...

On the work of Pierre Brézellec (2025) The identification of the replicative helicase loader gene dciA within the Helicobacter pylori genome...

#OpenAccess #Bioinformatics
Recovered helicase loader *dciA* reshapes replication-initiation...
At the onset of bacterial chromosome replication initiation, replicative helicases are loaded onto DNA, a process requiring helicase loaders. While organisms documented as lacking a helicase loader…
genomics.peercommunityin.org
February 3, 2026 at 8:14 AM
nicolasgaltier.bsky.social
Just starting to realize that double-blind reviewing (which is good) kind of conflicts with preprint publishing (which also is good). Has this been discussed?
#ScientificPublishing
January 29, 2026 at 11:18 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
eivimeycook.bsky.social
Also now featuring @seantattan.bsky.social!
January 28, 2026 at 8:20 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
danlwarren.bsky.social
Back from holiday and it's finally time to post about this. I am taking on a section editor role for the new diamond open access journal Biogeography, put together by @biogeographyjfab.bsky.social. That means that it's free to publish and free to read. (thread)

biog.journals.sup.org/index.php/bi...
Biogeography
Biogeography is an academic-owned, diamond Open Access journal, published by the academic, non-profit, Stanford University Press (SUP), using the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems platfo...
biog.journals.sup.org
January 20, 2026 at 2:48 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
peercommunityin.bsky.social
The PCI-PCJ 2025 recap is here! ✨ Dive into the events of 2025 👀: peercommunityin.org/2026/01/07/p... Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to an amazing year! 🙏 #PCI2025 #Highlights
January 15, 2026 at 12:52 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
naturalselection.bsky.social
Plus ... Predatory publishing fees.
January 15, 2026 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
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
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
pciarchaeology.bsky.social
1/3 New recommendation: M. thor Straten, S. Strohm, J. Hilpert, @bserbe.bsky.social, T. Kerig, M. Renz (2025). A Network View on the Big Exchange Project: Integrating and Analysing Heterogeneous Datasets. v2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Figure 6 from the manuscript: PathSim distributions for each LBK material compared with all other LBK materials across distance classes.
December 9, 2025 at 10:08 AM
nicolasgaltier.bsky.social
Happy to hare that the preprint I was advertising below has been published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology:

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Thanks @jevbio.bsky.social for supporting responsible publishing!
December 9, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
benoitevol.bsky.social
The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science

www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cn...
The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science
From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics'
www.cnrs.fr
December 4, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
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
nicolasgaltier.bsky.social
So Nature-Springer, which absorbs several billion dollars in research funding each year, provides us with an API that attributes all citations to the first article in the volume.

Well done Springer Nature, at least I know where not to submit my next paper.
steamtraen.eu Nick Brown @steamtraen.eu · Nov 7
Oops. Ooooooooooooops.

I do hope that nobody has been given or denied a job/promotion based on their SpringerNature citation counts in the past 15 years.

arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01675

h/t @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
abalkina.bsky.social
I’m looking at a specific paper mill in India. So far, I have detected 339 papers, 105 of which were published in 2025. Only the biggest publishers are being targeted. Only two papers have been retracted.
This is the dashboard of a paper mill.
lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/36...
#papermills
September 25, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
samuelmoore.org
Archive link: archive.ph/xUITn
archive.ph
August 29, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
samuelmoore.org
It's refreshing to hear about researchers putting in the effort to not pay APCs. You can still publish where you want by retaining your rights to do so -- lots of US universities already have rights retention policies enabling this. oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Univ...
University rights-retention OA policies - Open Access Directory
oad.simmons.edu
August 29, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
samuelmoore.org
"Things don’t have to be this way, open-science experts say: These fees are imposed entirely by publishers. The most prominent examples are Springer Nature and Elsevier, for-profit enterprises that generate billions in revenue."

www.chronicle.com/article/maki...
Making Your Research Free May Cost You
Under a new requirement that NIH-funded research be freely, immediately available, some journals are forcing researchers to pay to publish.
www.chronicle.com
August 29, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
semifossorial.bsky.social
It’s finally out!

Our work addressing the origins of reptiles is published in PCJ! peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....

We use novel info gleaned from the scan data of dozens of stem reptiles to substantially revise our understanding of early reptile evolution #paleontology #herpetology
August 28, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Nicolas Galtier
marcrr.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy
Hear even more about genome duplication in fishes, and how gene expression allows us to study gene evolvability, come to my talk at 14:15 in room S51-07 #eseb2025
August 19, 2025 at 6:48 AM