Vitória Piai
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vipiai.bsky.social
Vitória Piai
@vipiai.bsky.social
230 followers 260 following 17 posts
assoc prof, neuropsych of language, passion for electrophysiology & language after brain damage: 'what is left to be right'. PI of Language Function and Dysfunction lab vitoriapiai.science
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vipiai.bsky.social
Vitória Piai @vipiai.bsky.social · Dec 20
What a better way to kick off here than the release of a new, critical chapter for "Speaking: The free book (chapter)" bookdown.org/v_piai_resea... "Form to Articulation" by the amazing @juliachauvet.bsky.social 💥 bringing together the psycholinguistics and motor control literatures, no small feat!!
Speaking: The free book (chapter)
Speaking, the free book chapter, was conceived by V. Piai
bookdown.org
Reposted by Vitória Piai
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
vipiai.bsky.social
New chapter on sentence production in "Speaking: The Free Book" bookdown.org/v_piai_resea... beautifully written by @drlearnasaurus.bsky.social Go check, very useful resource for free (!) for teaching & initiating folks on topic of language production (usually missing from textbooks on "language"!)
bookdown.org
September 24, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Reposted by Vitória Piai
dezubg.bsky.social
Very happy to see Angelique's paper on semantic processing and the ATL with @vipiai.bsky.social, @profkatie.bsky.social out now in Cortex : www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Are the ventral anterior temporal lobes involved in accessing conceptual knowledge during spoken word production? fMRI evidence from auditory naming
There is ongoing debate about the role of ventral anterior temporal lobe (vATL) regions in the initial stages of production, particularly in accessing…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 16, 2025 at 9:30 PM
vipiai.bsky.social
Really happy to see this finally published. Hard work together with colleagues @engra.me and @jolienfrancken.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com
August 5, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Vitória Piai
sergedumoulin.net
It’s ironic that amid huge cuts to science and education funding and enforcement of Dutch-only programs, extra money is spent attracting US scientists. I support international collaboration, but without investing in our own students and education, science can’t thrive.

www.nwo.nl/en/news/upda...
Update on the fund for leading international scientists: advance announcement of the Tulip Fund | NWO
NWO has made 25 million euros available to facilitate the transition of top international researchers to the Netherlands. Later this summer, the call for proposals for the Tulip Fund, as the new fund will be called, will open. The fund will enable renowned international scientists from outside the EU to continue their research at a Dutch research institution. Knowledge institutions can nominate top researchers or talents who wish to continue their work here in the Netherlands due to the growing threats to academic freedom to be considered for funding.
www.nwo.nl
July 10, 2025 at 4:20 PM
vipiai.bsky.social
And we can't wait to have you visit! Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉
simonegastaldon.bsky.social Simone Gastaldon @simonegastaldon.bsky.social · Feb 11
Extremely positive news about my #MSCA application. Can't wait to start my project FlexyRhythm at @bcbl.bsky.social with @nicolaml.bsky.social (and secondment at @dondersinst.bsky.social with @vipiai.bsky.social). So happy to have the chance to work with such wonderful people!
February 11, 2025 at 8:25 AM
vipiai.bsky.social
December 31, 2024 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Vitória Piai
juliachauvet.bsky.social
The section is a resource for teaching about current views on how speakers go from a phonological representation to its articulatory control. 🧠 🗣️
December 20, 2024 at 12:56 PM
vipiai.bsky.social
What a better way to kick off here than the release of a new, critical chapter for "Speaking: The free book (chapter)" bookdown.org/v_piai_resea... "Form to Articulation" by the amazing @juliachauvet.bsky.social 💥 bringing together the psycholinguistics and motor control literatures, no small feat!!
Speaking: The free book (chapter)
Speaking, the free book chapter, was conceived by V. Piai
bookdown.org
December 20, 2024 at 9:16 AM