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timelfen.bsky.social
Tim Elfenbein
@timelfen.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.2K following 3.9K posts
Principal of Forthcoming LLC, a publishing consultancy; Member of @limnpress.bsky.social editorial collective; Researcher & practitioner of scholarly publishing; Digital explorer–analog sailor; @timelfen@assemblag.es on Mastodon; Victim of meaning.
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timelfen.bsky.social
Tim Elfenbein @timelfen.bsky.social · Nov 11
To all the folks in scholarly communication/publishing/open science out there:
1. I appreciate the work you do.
2. I likely have significant differences w/ you or your organization over strategic direction, stakeholder orientation, ideals for the future, etc., etc.
3. I appreciate the work you do.
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
emmabooth.bsky.social
Time to talk #OpenInfrastructure and what we need beyond technical interoperability to ensure a bright future for #openaccess research and publication with @scossfunding.bsky.social @copim.bsky.social and @thoth-metadata.bsky.social 🧵
November 11, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
justinhendrix.bsky.social
The Trump administration’s systematic targeting of US knowledge infrastructure spans the entire production chain, from soup to nuts. Without reliable statistics, research funding, or accessible data, information asymmetries will surely increase, writes Amelia Acker.
Week After Week, The US is Dismantling Knowledge Infrastructure | TechPolicy.Press
Without reliable statistics, research funding, or accessible data, information asymmetries will surely increase, writes Amelia Acker.
www.techpolicy.press
November 11, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
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 Tim Elfenbein
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 Tim Elfenbein
samuelmoore.org
"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 7:48 AM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
miseryvulture.bsky.social
WHAT'S up YouTube, it's your boy Bartleby the Scrivener here, coming at you for another day of the I Would Prefer Not To challenge. Be sure to SMASH that subscribe button and hit that bell so you don't miss a single video. If you saw last week's video, you'll know I am now SLEEPING in the office.
miseryvulture.bsky.social Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin @miseryvulture.bsky.social · 21d
Bartleby the Scrivener logging on for another day of bullshit
November 7, 2025 at 10:54 AM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
notalegalrecord.net
[folding my philosophy PhD diploma into a paper hat and putting it on]

cognition is not reducible to the formal processing of disinterpreted bistreams, and far less is it reducible to the statistical extrapolation of the continuation of a given disinterpreted bistream.
November 7, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
vortexegg.com
I can’t be the only one who just straight up isn’t interested in incorporating anything we learn from synthetic “social” science experiments conducted on LLM facsimiles of human text because I simply don’t think the epistemology of it has any bearing on the world, regardless of any similarity
pettertornberg.com Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 4d
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text

But... can they? We don’t actually know.

In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.

And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...
arxiv.org
November 7, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
devezer.bsky.social
Reactions to the "debunking" of the original 1956 cognitive dissonance work baffles me. A whole area doesn't die just bec the first work is faulty. That's novelty bias & theory ownership in psych talking. Mendelian genetics did not die when Mendel's original results were found too good to be true.
November 6, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
dacrotty.bsky.social
Great post this week from @lisalibrarian.bsky.social that hopes to clear up some of the confusions around Creative Commons licenses and the use of such content for AI training. This speaks to the ongoing failure of the publishing and OA communities to make clear just what these licenses mean
Can a CC License Constrain Fair Use or Other Copyright Limitations or Exemptions? - The Scholarly Kitchen
Creative Commons (CC) licenses expand, not restrict, the permissible uses of copyrighted works.
scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
November 6, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
scholasticahq.bsky.social
Scholastica and @maverick-os.bsky.social announce the 2025 "Technology Needs of Small and Medium Journal Publishers" report! 📈

The report details the results of a global survey of independent publishers with under 1,000 employees on their current tech stacks and future priorities. buff.ly/s9i6qW5
November 5, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
shannonmattern.bsky.social
What if we could work with our public libraries to create + sustain convivial infrastructures for local news, local 🎶, digital equity, and more? I wrote abt lots of communities that are doing this work, bldg networks of solidarity + resistance, modeling alternatives to extractive commercial systems.
November 1, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
alastairdunning.bsky.social
"We need to be bolder: It is our duty to ensure library collections remain open to the public in a form that empowers 21st-century readers. If our intellectual heritage gets enclosed in proprietary tools, we will find ourselves making the same bad bargain we made with scientific publishers"
tedunderwood.com Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 7d
Wrote a short piece arguing that higher ed must help steer AI. TLDR: If we outsource this to tech, we outsource our whole business. But rejectionism is basically stalling. If we want to survive, schools themselves must proactively shape AI for education & research. [1/6, unpaywalled at 5/6] +
Opinion | AI Is the Future. Higher Ed Should Shape It.
If we want to stay at the forefront of knowledge production, we must fit technology to our needs.
www.chronicle.com
November 4, 2025 at 9:19 PM
timelfen.bsky.social
Today in customer service chats with a corporate behemoth.
Customer service rep: “Thank you so much for that,Tim! While I’m pulling up your account on my end, may I kindly ask how’s you day going so far?” Me: “Too much bullshit already: stop pandering.”
November 4, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
richardsever.bsky.social
"Sustaining openness in an age of industrial-scale extraction may require new economic and governance models...it may be useful to consider historical precedent [like] governance of biological resources [from] indigenous communities" sverhulst.medium.com/the-weaponis...
The Weaponisation of Openness? Toward a New Social Contract for Data in the AI Era
By Stefaan G. Verhulst
sverhulst.medium.com
November 3, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
timhirschelburns.bsky.social
Quick primer for people who are learning about the IMO green shipping situation bc the US Vito Corleone'd it.

Shipping accounts for about 3% of emissions. By definition int'l shipping takes place outside any one country's control, making it EXACTLY the kind of thing int'l cooperation is needed for
anjalikdayal.bsky.social Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 8d
US officials were—what else—exercising these threats to delay the adoption of a first-ever industry tax on greenhouse gas emissions that had already gotten broad support from both government and companies www.politico.eu/article/us-a...
November 3, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social
Mao, by Andy Warhol, 1972
October 26, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
kwissoker.bsky.social
We are losing a true publishing genius, someone who could stay focused on the thinking and writing that is our purpose, while innovating in forms and the university press break-even form of business.
publisherswkly.bsky.social Publishers Weekly @publisherswkly.bsky.social · 14d
Doug Armato, who has helmed the 100-year-old press for 27 years, is retiring at the end of December. His tenure saw the expansion of the press’s list and the development of strong Indigenous studies, trade, and regional publishing programs.
University of Minnesota Press Director Retires
Doug Armato, who has helmed the 100-year-old press for 27 years, is retiring at the end of December. His tenure saw the expansion of the press’s list and the development of strong Indigenous studies,…
buff.ly
October 29, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
publisherswkly.bsky.social
Doug Armato, who has helmed the 100-year-old press for 27 years, is retiring at the end of December. His tenure saw the expansion of the press’s list and the development of strong Indigenous studies, trade, and regional publishing programs.
University of Minnesota Press Director Retires
Doug Armato, who has helmed the 100-year-old press for 27 years, is retiring at the end of December. His tenure saw the expansion of the press’s list and the development of strong Indigenous studies,…
buff.ly
October 28, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
eve.gd
Highlights a challenging exclusionary data modelling question for ROR and other systems like OpenAlex. Affiliation MUST be an optional field.
timelfen.bsky.social Tim Elfenbein @timelfen.bsky.social · 18d
So @researchorgs.bsky.social, what am I to do in as an unaffiliated scholar? Does a registry of research orgs have a means of recognizing me? If not, what’s your advice for systems implementing RORs?
timelfen.bsky.social Tim Elfenbein @timelfen.bsky.social · 18d
At the end of another Open Access Week, where the virtues of open infrastructure & standards have been rightly praised, I'm grappling with whether OpenAlex is incapable of creating an accurate author profile for me because it relies on RORs while I'm a scholar without institutional affiliation.
October 28, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
jcultecon.bsky.social
👀 Our Review symposium - Marion Fourcade & @kjhealy.co 'Tales of light and darkness: a response to comments on The Ordinal Society' www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com
October 23, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
davidgura.bsky.social
“Nobody has heard of” Lesotho, President Trump joked, to the laughter of lawmakers. He’d just cut aid to the country.

Weeks later, he announced a 50% tariff on exports from “the denim capital of Africa.”

Today, Lesotho is under a state of disaster.

I recently traveled there for @bloomberg.com:
How Trump’s Tariffs Upended a Hub of Denim Manufacturing
YouTube video by Bloomberg Television
youtu.be
October 25, 2025 at 11:48 AM
timelfen.bsky.social
Six weeks after filling it up in Wisconsin, the container is opened in Saint Martin.
Breaking the seal on a 20-foot container. The container doors opened.
October 25, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Tim Elfenbein
geofffhughes.bsky.social
Keep thinking about this new article about "racket sociality"... A concept I think we might be using a lot in the coming years...
Picture of a journal article: Racket sociality: Investigating intimidation in North India Lucia Michelutti, UCL This article is an ethnographic investigation into acts of intimidation and threats. Theoretically, it dialogues with ‘racket’ – a key analytical term in the sociology of domination, state‐making, and mafias. The anthropology of power, violence, and crime has paid scant attention to the morphology of threats and the ways interpersonal intimidation intertwines with economic and political forms of coercion. Drawing on ethnographic insights from North India, the article examines the way (criminal) intimidation is normalized, consented to, and socially embedded in everyday life. It shows how racketeering is routinized beyond clandestine organized crime. Ultimately, ‘racket sociality’ is proposed as a new method of ethnographic inquiry into theorizing authority and legitimacy in an age of populist strongmen politics and predatory forms of capitalism.
October 25, 2025 at 10:37 AM
timelfen.bsky.social
So @researchorgs.bsky.social, what am I to do in as an unaffiliated scholar? Does a registry of research orgs have a means of recognizing me? If not, what’s your advice for systems implementing RORs?
timelfen.bsky.social Tim Elfenbein @timelfen.bsky.social · 18d
At the end of another Open Access Week, where the virtues of open infrastructure & standards have been rightly praised, I'm grappling with whether OpenAlex is incapable of creating an accurate author profile for me because it relies on RORs while I'm a scholar without institutional affiliation.
October 24, 2025 at 8:52 PM