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danbrockington.bsky.social
Dan Brockington
@danbrockington.bsky.social
1.5K followers 300 following 93 posts
ICREA Research Professor at ICTA-UAB. Posts on Open Science; Political Ecology; Data Justice; Conservation; Children's Fiction. More at www.danbrockington.com and www.samtiand.com
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danbrockington.bsky.social
Dan Brockington @danbrockington.bsky.social · 13d
Profits from scientific publishing are eye-watering, costing us billions. In ‘The Drain of Scientific Publishing’ (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820), (building on ‘The Strain of Scientific Publishing’ doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327) we show how it is harmful – and unnecessary.
The Drain of Scientific Publishing
The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and ...
arxiv.org
danbrockington.bsky.social
One of the great things about Barcelona - working with the @pollenetwork.bsky.social secretariat: Laila, Ele, Rebecca and Blanket (the cat). Here planning POLLEN comms up the coast in Masnou. We will be recruiting one more person to this team.
November 23, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
tedmeissner.bsky.social
"The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science..."

arxiv.org/pdf/2511.04820

#science #peerreview #scientificmethod #scientificpublishing
arxiv.org
November 20, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
lseblogs.bsky.social
Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science

@danbrockington.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca for @lseimpactblog.bsky.social
Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science - Impact of Social Sciences
Have the interests of commercial publishers now become antithetical to the pursuit of knowledge?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
November 21, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
leighbutler.bsky.social
The collective profits are staggering, actually overwhelming. So, let's resist: "The good news is that if the drain has a particular history and geography, it means that it is not inevitable. It can be resisted." @danbrockington.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
November 19, 2025 at 10:05 PM
danbrockington.bsky.social
Am in Leeds for a viva and am so lucky to catch the Peninnes in a cold snap. Glorious orange and pink clouds and views from the train this morning.
walkhighlands.co.uk walkhighlands @walkhighlands.co.uk · 6d
First proper snowy woodland walk of the winter. Magic.
November 20, 2025 at 7:59 AM
danbrockington.bsky.social
Where do they all go? Surely the building has to fill up with spoons at some point.
November 20, 2025 at 7:55 AM
danbrockington.bsky.social
This blog summarises the crippling intellectual and scholarly consequences of the financial drain of commercial scientific publishing.

Builds on earlier work on strain and oligopoly of publishing:

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS
Oligopoly: bit.ly/OligSciPub
November 20, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
icta-uab.bsky.social
✍️💸Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science

This article by our researcher @danbrockington.bsky.social, together with Aileen Fyfe and Stefanie Haustein, tackles this question in the blog of @lseusablog.bsky.social

blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science - Impact of Social Sciences
Have the interests of commercial publishers now become antithetical to the pursuit of knowledge?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
November 19, 2025 at 2:04 PM
danbrockington.bsky.social
We were very fortunate to have Dorothea Kleine from IGSD and @sheffielduni.bsky.social at @icta-uab.bsky.social yesterday talking about codesign and her work on digital reset (shorturl.at/WiYGL). Dorothea (and @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social) gave me my first Dolly Parton figurine, pictured between us.
November 19, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
icta-uab.bsky.social
Las publicaciones científicas priorizan las ganancias “a la integridad académica”, según un estudio del ICTA-UAB liderado por el investigador @danbrockington.bsky.social @icreacommunity.bsky.social

www.lavanguardia.com/sociedad/202...
Las publicaciones científicas priorizan las ganancias “a la integridad académica”, según un estudio
Advierte de un “drenaje de fondos” del sistema científico BARCELONA, 19 (EUROPA PRESS) Un estudio con participación del Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Ambiental de la...
www.lavanguardia.com
November 19, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
icta-uab.bsky.social
Science under the control of major publishers: profit over knowledge

A new analysis led by ICTA-UAB researcher @danbrockington.bsky.social, shows that in scientific publishing, commercial interests put profit ahead of advancing knowledge and academic integrity.

www.uab.cat/web/sala-de-...
Science under the control of major publishers: profit over knowledge
The current publishing system is harmful to science. A new analysis involving ICTA-UAB, Spain, shows that in scientific publishing, commercial...
www.uab.cat
November 19, 2025 at 9:07 AM
danbrockington.bsky.social
Working with real metascientists on this project has been an incredible learning experience. This is quite important for scientific publishing.
November 19, 2025 at 12:12 PM
danbrockington.bsky.social
I'm a little late to this but this is a thoughtful thread about a new side of conservation which I had not considered before. Congrats on the article and thanks for sharing.
November 18, 2025 at 6:26 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
scotsfriction.bsky.social
Would LOVE to see @lewisgoodall.com and the @newsagents.bsky.social take this one day. A business model which has no parallel. Unpaid work that relies on the “goodness” of academics. And we all have bought into it wholesale.
paolocrosetto.bsky.social Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · 13d
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 15, 2025 at 4:24 PM
danbrockington.bsky.social
Here was dawn over the Med this morning. Enjoy!
November 17, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
reddmonitor.bsky.social
The EU’s new climate target will allow millions of offsets to be used supposedly to meet the EU’s emissions reductions.

reddmonitor.substack.com/p/eu-weakens...
EU weakens its 2040 climate goal with an international carbon credits loophole
“EU’s new Climate Law has opened the door to a dangerous expansion of the offsets industry.”
reddmonitor.substack.com
November 17, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
icreacommunity.bsky.social
🎉Aquesta setmana comença la #BiennalCiutatiCiència de l' @ajuntamentbcn.bsky.social.

Enguany, dedicada a la revolució quàntica, amb la participació dels ICREA Antonio Acín, @gemmadlc.bsky.social, Anna Sanpera, @ricardsole.bsky.social i Oriol Romero-Isart.

📘 Consulta el programa: short.do/E9xYVN
Bienal Ciudad y Ciencia 2025
La cuarta edición de la Bienal Ciudad y Ciencia tendrá lugar simultáneamente en Barcelona y en Madrid entre el 18 y el 23 de noviembre de 2025.
www.biennalciutaticiencia.barcelona
November 17, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
paolocrosetto.bsky.social
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 12, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
paolocrosetto.bsky.social
Gentle request that @altmetric.com and @linkedin.com resume contact to be able to track academic LinkedIn activity on AltMetric.

More and more scientific discourse is happening on BlueSky (tracked) and LinkedIn (not tracked).

@linkedin.com let AltMetric use your API and include you! NOW!
November 14, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
maebhnif.bsky.social
"Rather than democratizing scientific publishing, Open Access has helped commercial publishers generate more profits (publishers found ways to shift paywalls from readers to authors). More stringent reforms are required to tackle misaligned drivers of scientific publishing."
Fernanda Beigel et al.
madhupai.bsky.social Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · 11d
The Drain of Scientific Publishing

arxiv.org/pdf/2511.04820
November 14, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
peaseroland.bsky.social
The numbers in here are huge, ~$2.5bn in profits (~35% profit margin) to 4 major academic publishing houses.
How much lost research expenditure does that equate to??
Windfall tax, anyone?
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14d
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 14, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
lethejerome.bsky.social
On the academic means of production - which is all the worse for free and open means of production existing and simply not being used because this is, in the end, also a status economy.

Great thread and great-looking articles!
danbrockington.bsky.social Dan Brockington @danbrockington.bsky.social · 13d
We identify a four-fold drain. We lose Money that could be far better spent. We lose Time, and our priorities are distorted, diverting attention from good science. We lose Trust, from the poor science resulting. And Control, over quality and our publishing data.
a statue of a man in a blue and white outfit is falling into a hole in the ice
ALT: a statue of a man in a blue and white outfit is falling into a hole in the ice
media.tenor.com
November 14, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
aileenfyfe.bsky.social
Think about the way that the current scientific publishing system is draining resources out of the research ecosystem... That drain is most obvious in terms of money (and this is so despite #openaccess), but there's also an erosion of time, trust and control [1/n]
November 14, 2025 at 11:19 AM
danbrockington.bsky.social
This is a thought-provoking and exciting blog cum news item about vital change in scientific publishing.
November 14, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Reposted by Dan Brockington
danbrockington.bsky.social
Profits from scientific publishing are eye-watering, costing us billions. In ‘The Drain of Scientific Publishing’ (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820), (building on ‘The Strain of Scientific Publishing’ doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327) we show how it is harmful – and unnecessary.
The Drain of Scientific Publishing
The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and ...
arxiv.org
November 12, 2025 at 11:41 AM