Ven Popov
@venpopov.bsky.social
I build mathematical models to understand cognition and behavior. Care about history and philosophy of science.
Tenured Senior Scientist, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich.
https://venpopov.com
Tenured Senior Scientist, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich.
https://venpopov.com
But I don't have direct students to think about at the moment. Two years ago when I made the decision I had two papers under revision that were likely to be published. Those were hard to let go. I do run into the same issue when collaborating with colleagues on student-lead projects, though
November 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM
But I don't have direct students to think about at the moment. Two years ago when I made the decision I had two papers under revision that were likely to be published. Those were hard to let go. I do run into the same issue when collaborating with colleagues on student-lead projects, though
That's a tough one. It's prisoner's dilema. If we all decided to stop publishing in for-profit and glam journals all at once, that would be the end of it. In the meantime, those of us who can afford it should do it. I do not impose my rules on collaborators, but I don't submit first-authored papers
November 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM
That's a tough one. It's prisoner's dilema. If we all decided to stop publishing in for-profit and glam journals all at once, that would be the end of it. In the meantime, those of us who can afford it should do it. I do not impose my rules on collaborators, but I don't submit first-authored papers
that article is a treat. I also found this real photo of Elsevier execs
November 12, 2025 at 12:30 PM
that article is a treat. I also found this real photo of Elsevier execs
Progress is happening, for sure. And I'm not as naive as to think that we can do this wholesale in a day. The fixed point of this ugly attractor system driven by prestige is too strong. My hope is for an eventual phase change. But while actual change is likely step-wise, we need a clear rallying cry
November 12, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Progress is happening, for sure. And I'm not as naive as to think that we can do this wholesale in a day. The fixed point of this ugly attractor system driven by prestige is too strong. My hope is for an eventual phase change. But while actual change is likely step-wise, we need a clear rallying cry
Last year a bunch of us wrote about the issue of incentives and possible alternatives. I’m not in love with any of the options we reviewed but I *am* happy we were able to highlight major aspects of the problem in a highly visible space www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform | PNAS
For most researchers, academic publishing serves two goals that are often misaligned—knowledge
dissemination and establishing scientific credential...
www.pnas.org
November 12, 2025 at 9:32 AM
Last year a bunch of us wrote about the issue of incentives and possible alternatives. I’m not in love with any of the options we reviewed but I *am* happy we were able to highlight major aspects of the problem in a highly visible space www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
The academic publishing system is so rotten, it must be completely dismantled. Not partially, and not improved. Dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
When I tell non-academic friends how it all works they stare at me in disbelief. Not only that it exist, but that we still allow it to.
When I tell non-academic friends how it all works they stare at me in disbelief. Not only that it exist, but that we still allow it to.
November 12, 2025 at 9:21 AM
The academic publishing system is so rotten, it must be completely dismantled. Not partially, and not improved. Dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
When I tell non-academic friends how it all works they stare at me in disbelief. Not only that it exist, but that we still allow it to.
When I tell non-academic friends how it all works they stare at me in disbelief. Not only that it exist, but that we still allow it to.
hah, now it's all of them, single author or no. Even if you are 17th on a 30 author preprint, its quarantined. For a moment I wondered if it also flagged as spam any co-author's account as well, but thankfully the madness stopped short of it. It would have taken everything down due to network effect
November 12, 2025 at 9:06 AM
hah, now it's all of them, single author or no. Even if you are 17th on a 30 author preprint, its quarantined. For a moment I wondered if it also flagged as spam any co-author's account as well, but thankfully the madness stopped short of it. It would have taken everything down due to network effect
Last semester it was hard to find unified resources aimed at scientists rather than software devs, so ended up using bunch of individual resources for each lecture. I even toyed with the idea of writing a very similar textbook from lecture notes. Eager to see if yours will match the course intents!
November 11, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Last semester it was hard to find unified resources aimed at scientists rather than software devs, so ended up using bunch of individual resources for each lecture. I even toyed with the idea of writing a very similar textbook from lecture notes. Eager to see if yours will match the course intents!
I’m teaching “introduction to scientific computing“ in the spring and looks like the existing chapters already cover a lot of what I do in the class (this will be the 2nd iteration). The entire course philosophy is based around workflows and modern practices, so this might be a great resource!
November 11, 2025 at 4:10 PM
I’m teaching “introduction to scientific computing“ in the spring and looks like the existing chapters already cover a lot of what I do in the class (this will be the 2nd iteration). The entire course philosophy is based around workflows and modern practices, so this might be a great resource!
yeah I had assumed at least part of the sluggishness of OSF is server related, but it’s astonishing how much faster just removing all the frontend bloat makes it…
November 10, 2025 at 1:03 PM
yeah I had assumed at least part of the sluggishness of OSF is server related, but it’s astonishing how much faster just removing all the frontend bloat makes it…
You are telling me you can load text on the web in less than a second in 2025? What is this sci-fi magic 🙄
November 10, 2025 at 12:58 PM
You are telling me you can load text on the web in less than a second in 2025? What is this sci-fi magic 🙄
it didn’t end up in the paper. It has non-trivial problems, though not unsolvable. Many things were cut and reorganized during revisions so maybe that discussion fell out (can’t quite remember - writing a paper either so many people is hard and messy!)
November 8, 2025 at 12:00 PM
it didn’t end up in the paper. It has non-trivial problems, though not unsolvable. Many things were cut and reorganized during revisions so maybe that discussion fell out (can’t quite remember - writing a paper either so many people is hard and messy!)
I’m one of the authors and agree with this. I think most of the others would too. While I can’t speak for everyone, the dichotomy you mention is not something we endorsed, but you are right it’s implicit. I remember we had some internal discussions of post-publication commentary, not sure why…
November 8, 2025 at 12:00 PM
I’m one of the authors and agree with this. I think most of the others would too. While I can’t speak for everyone, the dichotomy you mention is not something we endorsed, but you are right it’s implicit. I remember we had some internal discussions of post-publication commentary, not sure why…
Aside from the critical failures, I always found it baffling everything was so slow and frustrating. The recent redesign ironically made everything worse. They are leaning into the worst tendencies of mdoern web dev. Sometimes simple is best. Arxiv and bioarxiv are so fast, snappy and reliable.
November 8, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Aside from the critical failures, I always found it baffling everything was so slow and frustrating. The recent redesign ironically made everything worse. They are leaning into the worst tendencies of mdoern web dev. Sometimes simple is best. Arxiv and bioarxiv are so fast, snappy and reliable.
Do you know if preprints on Zenodo get picked up by Google Scholar now (I saw it didn’t use to)? This used to be a major strength of OSF and related preprint services, but I’ve found it takes increasingly longer time for it to happen and for all my recent preprints I had to manually add them
November 8, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Do you know if preprints on Zenodo get picked up by Google Scholar now (I saw it didn’t use to)? This used to be a major strength of OSF and related preprint services, but I’ve found it takes increasingly longer time for it to happen and for all my recent preprints I had to manually add them
ok, this is even more concerning. You are the second person to report this happened prior to the redesign. I’m am happy I decided to escalate this bring attention to how bad it is, since clearly it hasn’t been a cause for concern previously (or at least nothing was done about it)
November 8, 2025 at 10:58 AM
ok, this is even more concerning. You are the second person to report this happened prior to the redesign. I’m am happy I decided to escalate this bring attention to how bad it is, since clearly it hasn’t been a cause for concern previously (or at least nothing was done about it)
I was wondering if there had been others affected and if it was related to the redisgn. This settles both questions. And honestly makes this even worse. Was it the same experience, with retroactively deleting published projects?
November 6, 2025 at 10:40 PM
I was wondering if there had been others affected and if it was related to the redisgn. This settles both questions. And honestly makes this even worse. Was it the same experience, with retroactively deleting published projects?
Reposted by Ven Popov
To not get this wrong: I am a huge supporter of OSF / COS and think they did an incredible job to make science more open and transparent to everyone. Stuff like this can happen, it’s good that they are identified and reported. Let’s just hope that incidents like this make the platform even stronger.
November 6, 2025 at 8:32 PM
To not get this wrong: I am a huge supporter of OSF / COS and think they did an incredible job to make science more open and transparent to everyone. Stuff like this can happen, it’s good that they are identified and reported. Let’s just hope that incidents like this make the platform even stronger.
wow. The entire publication system is so utterly broken. One day people will look back and wonder how we ever tolerated any of it.
November 6, 2025 at 8:17 PM
wow. The entire publication system is so utterly broken. One day people will look back and wonder how we ever tolerated any of it.
ah, that explains it. Don’t you know preprints are supposed to be ugly? It’s even in the name!
November 6, 2025 at 8:13 PM
ah, that explains it. Don’t you know preprints are supposed to be ugly? It’s even in the name!
Good to know! That would also fit well with my workflow since GitHub is so much less clunky to use than OSF anyway (which was my main reason to put stuff on github before unless they were massive simulation outputs, for which I still struggle with finding reliable solution)
November 6, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Good to know! That would also fit well with my workflow since GitHub is so much less clunky to use than OSF anyway (which was my main reason to put stuff on github before unless they were massive simulation outputs, for which I still struggle with finding reliable solution)