Debora Weber-Wulff
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Debora Weber-Wulff
@wisewoman.bsky.social
170 followers 28 following 8 posts
I am @WiseWoman@fediscience.org on Mastodon, will see if this thing federates properly.
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Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
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 Debora Weber-Wulff
dalmeet.bsky.social
ChatGPT ignores retractions of scientific papers — my latest for @cenmag.bsky.social:

cen.acs.org/policy/publi...

@mikethelwall.bsky.social, @wisewoman.bsky.social
August 15, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
reeserichardson.bsky.social
First off, a sincere thank you for actually reading the PNAS article.

For those interested:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
August 6, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
elisabethbik.bsky.social
Maintaining research integrity in the age of GenAI: an analysis of ethical challenges and recommendations to researchers

@sonjabjelobaba.bsky.social, @wisewoman.bsky.social et al.

edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
Maintaining research integrity in the age of GenAI: an analysis of ethical challenges and recommendations to researchers - International Journal for Educational Integrity
Background This paper is a practice‑informed rapid review that maps the complex ethical challenges arising from the growing use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools across the research ...
edintegrity.biomedcentral.com
July 3, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
jamesheathers.bsky.social
Putting the Hindawi Nonsense into perspective: it broke the vertical scale of yearly retractions.
June 21, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
elisabethbik.bsky.social
How should scientists – including Nobel Prize winners – respond to allegations about their work? Practices to avoid or embrace, by @retractionwatch.com ‘s cofounders.

Retraction Reactions | American Scientist

www.americanscientist.org/article/retr...
Retraction Reactions
Scientists’ responses to published errors provide case studies of practices to avoid or embrace when engaging with the research community.
www.americanscientist.org
June 21, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
abalkina.bsky.social
A new open-access Springer journal brand Discover, has absolute resemblance to MDPI and its strategy. A shocking new analysis by @paolocrosetto.bsky.social and other members of the Strain Team the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...
HT: @deevybee.bsky.social
Spinger Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing
Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro
the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io
June 10, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
hansonmark.bsky.social
New from The Strain Team:
🎊 Springer Nature Discovers MDPI 🎊

Springer Nature has spawned a copycat journal series called "Discover" mimicking #MDPI journal titles and citation behaviours. We even made a browser game to prove it (see 🔗).

Gross! 😀 1/n

#ResearchIntegrity #SciPub #AcademicSky
Spinger Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing
Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro
the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io
June 10, 2025 at 5:49 AM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
molly.wiki
welcome to the future, now your error-prone software can call the cops

(this is an Anthropic employee talking about Claude Opus 4)
Tweet by Sam Bowman @sleepinyourhat If it thinks you're doing something egregiously immoral, for example, like faking data in a pharmaceutical trial, it will use command-line tools to contact the press, contact regulators, try to lock you out of the relevant systems, or all of the above.
May 22, 2025 at 8:55 PM
If you are an EU citizen, please sign this petition about a ban on (homosexual) conversion practices in the European Union! Yes, it is 2025 and this is still a thing some folks want to bring back.
eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#...

Another 500.000 signatures needed by Saturday! Please boost!
European Citizens' Initiative
Give your support !
eci.ec.europa.eu
May 14, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
buddyboy.bsky.social
Travel poster that says: VISIT CANADA WE WON'T THROW YOU INTO AN EL SALVADORIAN GULAG WITHOUT DUE PROCESS!
May 8, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
obarcala.bsky.social
To be clear, AP said it would accede to Trump changing the name of Denali back to Mt. McKinley because it was within the US, whereas the Gulf of Mexico is an international body of water not subject to the US's exclusive control.

This is what you get for meeting an authoritarian halfway.
phillewis.bsky.social Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · Feb 14
The White House says it will bar the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely due to the news outlet's use of Gulf of Mexico
February 14, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Okay, it looks like the federation is partially working. Still, I tend to be on Mastodon and not here.
November 20, 2024 at 11:50 AM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
courtneymilan.com
I want to highlight this stupid fucking bullshit because literally EVERY TIME an AI writing company has a website, they always have a screenshot that looks good until you read the words that are on the screenshot.
Screenshot from ProWritingAid’s website: Generate writing ideas, improve readability and save time writing with AI SParks. The screenshot shows that AI has suggested that the paragraph “It was a bright sunny day, the kind of day that made everything feel possible. Sarah woke up early <not visible> because she <not visible> the day’s <not visible> needs to have sensory detail added, and has changed it to “The morning sun cast a warm golden glow, illuminating the world with endless possibilities. Sarah, filled with anticipation, rose prematurely from her slumber, unable to contain her excitement for the day’s thrilling escapade.”
September 2, 2024 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
what-eats-owls.bsky.social
It's amazing to me that "criticizing the use of AI" is supposedly classism, but "building a product on the stolen work of people with a median annual income of $25k and refusing to compensate them because you know they can't afford lawyers" isn't.
September 2, 2024 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Debora Weber-Wulff
brynphd.com
Another day, another AI-generated, Cronenberg nightmare published in (then retracted from) a scientific journal. 🧪🐡

Alternative title: Gout gives you flippers? (Don’t tell JD this.)

There are artists! Amongst us! Who know phalanges from flippers! Call them!

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles...
An AI-generated image for a journal article, in which the legs plagued with gout have more than tibia and fibia but phalanges!
August 1, 2024 at 9:21 AM