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rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
@rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
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rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
Discussions around the inequitable scientific publishing is gaining momentum, but (funny enough) not at conferences, where scientists get together and can find solutions
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Nov 11
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 12, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Reposted
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
siennasational.bsky.social
I'm learning that in scientific articles, using the word "interesting" to describe other studies' results is just a polite way of saying "wtf is this" 🧪
November 5, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted
hannes-stark.bsky.social
Excited to release BoltzGen which brings SOTA folding performance to binder design! The best part of this project is collaborating with a broad network of leading wetlabs that test BoltzGen at an unprecedented scale, showing success on many novel targets and pushing the model to its limits!
October 26, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted
smcgrath.phd
🧪Superb work, a must read!

Tech companies replicate the tobacco and fossil fuel industries' efforts to distort the scientific record.

They deploy biased incentive structures and barriers, such as selective publishing and restricting data access, to impede evidence-based regulation.
#AcademicSky
carlbergstrom.com Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Oct 24
1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.
Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.
October 24, 2025 at 4:08 AM
Reposted
blongdon.bsky.social
2 job adverts on a NERC project w myself + @darrenobbard.bsky.social on “What determines the virome: ecology and the environment, evolution, or species history?” early 2026 in
@uniexecec.bsky.social
- Postdoc: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
- RA: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
Pls share!
September 25, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted
scinews.bsky.social
7. How to write consistently boring scientific literature.

“Hell – is sitting on a hot stone reading your own scientific publications”
Erik Ursin, fish biologist

Thanks @fattebertj.bsky.social

Open Access
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
December 15, 2024 at 11:22 AM
rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
I participated in writing this reflection for peeer about a workshop I attended at the evolution meetings this year about equitable and affordable publishing. Check it out here
September 10, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Reposted
scinews.bsky.social
Why would anyone want to be a scientist?

"Doing good science requires the utmost exertion of body, mind and spirit, yet is consistently filled with failure and rejection."

journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
September 7, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted
jacek-radwan.bsky.social
Agreed, but learned society journals should strive to become more open and inclusive! Is this OK for our journals to hide behind paywalls that preclude free access by researchers from low income countries? More here: trulyopenscience.blogspot.com/2025/09/why-...
#SocietyJournals #SciPub
Why learned society journals stick to paywalls?
Just returned from an excellent conference of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) in Barcelona. There was a lot of excell...
trulyopenscience.blogspot.com
September 3, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted
hesgen.com
It is a useful anti-anthropomorphism to say that environmental protection is not about 'saving the planet', but rather ourselves. This is true to a point, but if our species goes down, we will take many more with us.

A sixth major mass-extinction is a distinct possibility.

🧪
‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’: are we on our way to the sixth major mass extinction?
The long read: Churning quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate we are going could lead the planet to another Great Dying
www.theguardian.com
August 19, 2025 at 8:25 AM
Reposted
erc.europa.eu
Want to know all about ERC grants available this year?

Don't forget to watch our webinar at 15:00 CEST today Thursday 10th July, to hear from the ERC experts 👉 europa.eu/!3rGdWB

First though, to help you prepare, do read through the 2026 ERC Work Programme! 👉 europa.eu/!qhVTkt
July 10, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Reposted
serranovillar.bsky.social
Where do academics go when they leave for industry?

The top 10 destinations are all tech giants—led by Google, Amazon, Meta & Microsoft. Pharma and biotech don’t even make the list. Fascinating shift in the R&D landscape. 🧪
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Transparent research: can big tech learn from big pharma?
The results of technology research and development must find their way into the published literature. New models of regulation could help.
www.nature.com
July 4, 2025 at 7:11 AM
rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
Is this good news amidst all the bad ones?
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Jun 27
This is very stupid, but the net effect is a "probletunity."

In solidarity, let's all stop publishing in SpringerNature so US scientists (and like, everyone) can read our work.

Guess we all will just have to publish with OA not-for-profits instead #SciPub #OpenAccess

www.axios.com/2025/06/25/t...
Scoop: Trump admin cuts contracts with scientific publishing giant
The administration has questioned editorial practices and whether journals are partisans in scientific debates
www.axios.com
June 27, 2025 at 8:04 AM
rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
My talk at the @evolmtg.bsky.social is out (15:00 - 28:00). My slide and picture are on the cover 😂!
I present the results of our study where we found signatures of positive and diversifying selection on CFH (an innate immunity gene) on the codons interacting with Borrelia
youtu.be/Q64-FaaebBg?...
May 30, 2025 - Potpourri 2
YouTube video by Evolution Meetings
youtu.be
June 27, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Reposted
erc.europa.eu
📣 Researchers in 🇵🇱Poland; ever considered applying for an ERC grant?

In a webinar on 15 July you can

✅ Learn how to apply successfully
✅ Discover NCP support
✅ Get exclusive tips from an evaluator
✅ Hear testimonials from grant recipients

Register 👉 bit.ly/ERC2025PL
June 16, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Reposted
britishecologicalsociety.org
Are you an ecologist looking for funding for your next project? 

Round 2 of our BES Grants is now open for applications!

🧪🌍
British Ecological Society graphic promoting BES Grants. Text on a green background reads: 'BES Grants. We invest half a million every year in projects across the world. Applications are open.' On the right, a silhouette of a field researcher stands in an open grassy landscape, holding a backpack, with a square sampling frame in view.
June 13, 2025 at 9:02 AM
rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
One of the reasons why I decided to attend evolution 2025 only virtually
Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears
Some meetings have been put on hold in response to foreign researchers’ travel concerns.
www.nature.com
May 22, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted
rafalmostowy.bsky.social
I'm looking for a postdoc in computational evolutionary phage genomics, with the goal to better understand how protein innovation arises in viruses, at @jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social in Krakow (Poland).

Drop me a line if it sounds cool!

Deadline: 20.06.

Link here:
mcb.uj.edu.pl/documents/15...
May 20, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Reposted
magdalenaskipper.bsky.social
“the next very big milestone that I’m thinking about is AI making actual measurable economic impact, and, in particular, being able to create novel research”

@lizziegibney.bsky.social from our Nature News team talked to Jakub Pachowski, OpenAI’s chief scientist
🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
‘AI models are capable of novel research’: OpenAI’s chief scientist on what to expect
Jakub Pachocki, who leads the firm’s development of advanced models, is excited to release an open version to researchers.
www.nature.com
May 14, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted
handle.invalid
🧵5 Top Free Alternatives to BioRender for Scientific Illustrations!

These five websites offer free scientific illustrations for biologists. Great for presentations, research papers and other research communication needs.

Save and share the post!
May 13, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted
schwessinger.bsky.social
Will talking about death caps and other mushrooms in Canberra in about 10 mins here www.abc.net.au/listen/live/.... Join us for Fun(gi) facts.
ABC Canberra Live Audio - ABC listen
Listen live, whenever you want, wherever you are with ABC Canberra.
www.abc.net.au
April 28, 2025 at 7:33 AM
rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
Jaw dropping
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Apr 24
Wiley with a tiny 1%

I wondervwhat that's about. Fallout from buying and shuttering Hindawi still ongoing? Anyone know Wiley from other years?

#SciPub
hakwan.bsky.social hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · Apr 24
who says that science doesn't generate profit?
April 24, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted
jessedjenkins.com
Now there's a memorable stat!

"Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined."

wapo.st/3EvzMCI
Opinion | Trump is killing one of our strongest exports
The president wants to balance U.S. trade deficits? He can’t do it without this industry he hates.
wapo.st
April 15, 2025 at 8:35 PM
rocconotarnicola.bsky.social
Early morning fieldwork. Hoping to see some voles
April 9, 2025 at 5:53 AM