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Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

26 followers 86 following 11 posts

Computer vision scientist. Geometry, 3D, event cameras. Dabbles in Neuromorphic Computing.

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Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

Where's Asimov with his laws when you need him?

James Vincent @jjvincent.bsky.social · 20d

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

December 28, 2025 at 7:30 AM

Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

November 14, 2025 at 7:24 AM

Reposted by Hannes Ovrén

Mark A. Hanson

@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

Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

Standing still is boring! That's why we investigated how long-range 3D-reconstruction can be performed also from moving vehicles. Never heard of time-correlated single-photon counting? Don't worry, our new article in Journal of Field Robotics cover that too!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Long‐Range Time‐Correlated Single‐Photon Counting Lidar 3D‐Reconstruction From a Moving Ground Vehicle

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

September 30, 2025 at 9:46 AM

Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

Springer finally got around to publishing our #ECCV 2024 workshop paper on very energy efficient #drone detection using #neuromorphic computing:
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

A PDF can also be found via the workshop program:
sites.google.com/view/nevi202...
or: drive.google.com/file/d/1Pq1k...

Drone Detection Using a Low-Power Neuromorphic Virtual Tripwire

Small drones are an increasing threat to both military personnel and civilian infrastructure, making early and automated detection crucial. In this work we develop a system that uses spiking neural ne...

link.springer.com

June 2, 2025 at 7:17 AM

Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

After updating to Windows 11 we discovered that our old USB-printer was no longer supported. After a quick dive in my "This-might-be-useful-later"-box and the printer is now WiFi-connected using an old RPi. Feels good to let perfectly good equipment continue to run for a few more years.

May 25, 2025 at 9:14 AM

Hannes Ovrén

@hovren.bsky.social

Finally working on geometry (SfM/SLAM) again, but I feel like I am out of the loop with regards to tooling. Are there any new(ish) libraries I should be aware of, or is OpenCV still king?
The cv2 interface still does not spark joy.
@parskatt.bsky.social?

February 27, 2025 at 8:24 AM