Without support and engagement from the broader communities of institutions (e.g. HEIs, libraries, etc.) venture capital is looking to sweep in and centralise control of all of it. Some of it purely commercial, some of it for the data (which are, of course, not unrelated.)
Now is really a crucial and also vital time for supporting open infrastructures. Many have been built in many contexts. I'm reflecting upon @rupertgatti.bsky.social's end notes to last week's @copim.bsky.social conference on the work undertaken there to infrastructure the OA books space.
So the fact that we bombed a girls elementary school, while likely using AI for targeting, is going to be a major headline story dominating American news coverage when exactly?
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”
James Baldwin
Irony alert: Springer Nature's Journal of the Knowledge Economy retracts 113 (!) articles from a special issue, for "compromised editorial handling," etc. Underscores one truth: special issue grift helps drive the journal-knowledge economy link.springer.com/journal/131...
Cutting, lovely sentence-level writing in this Andrew O'Hagan essay on the Murdochs www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
Goldsmiths drops three out of five deals with big publishers.
University cites “financial and values-based” reasons for not renewing with Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-o...
"Quick, let's screw everyone over while they're too busy getting screwed over to notice" is a hell of a business strategy
Had a great day in Paris at the École pratique des hautes études mapping out the future alignment between @ojcollective.bsky.social & @openbookcollective.bsky.social. Here’s me with @rupertgatti.bsky.social & @joedeville.bsky.social (Fernand Braudel looks on). #diamond #openaccess
Our first report is out! Read on to find out why open research practices in AHSS are diverse and extend beyond the suite of practices emphasised within dominant accounts of open science.
Sad news but honestly a good innings for an APC-free, community-led open access journal.
An interesting post from Jeff here: with my technical hat on, I've long said that collectivised systems infrastructure is the way to go for HEIs and other overstretched bodies involved in open publishing. We need to pool resources and work together rather than waste money on individualism.
fundamentally, an open and interoperable infrastructure layer, especially if hosting/membership isn’t an option (or if it excludes in an important way) is going to need OBC-style collective funding. The @openbookcollective.bsky.social isn’t the right space for that, nor is @ojcollective.bsky.social
there are lots of ways to fund infrastructure, beyond grants— a free service subsidized by a paid layer, like @thoth-metadata.bsky.social (with, though and crucially, the @openbookcollective.bsky.social help). The other option is paid hosting, like @pkp.sfu.ca or Manifold or @janewayolh.bsky.social
the point about interoperability is well taken and utterly important. But one of the facts on the ground for infrastructure makers—nonprofit and open source—is that many of them can’t even pay the bills to stay afloat, interoperability or otherwise. Some of these are not in the OA book universe
Yes, so true about @openbookcollective.bsky.social already having an infrastructure package, something that I thought about mentioning. But it is, as @alittleroad.bsky.social you say, a broader issue, the lack of an OBC-like platform for infrastructure as such—book-related or otherwise
Waiting for an open infrastructure collective @oatp.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy @investinopen.bsky.social www.jeffpooley.com/2026/01/wa...
Until Miller’s gone these are just gestural purges to sanitize and consolidate his reign of terror.
Really hard to look at this and all the other examples of bravery and kindness from ordinary people in this moment not think also of the tremendous cowardice exhibited over the past year by some of the richest, most well-protected people in business, media and politics
The fact that every right winger with influence screams "who is paying for all of this" tells you exactly how awash in cash they all are, and how much they rely on that to keep their movement afloat.
Trump administration: “Alex Pretti was a demotic terrorist who planned to massacre as many immigration officers as he could.”
Alex Pretti’s last words: “Are you okay?”
Just staggered by the complete moral void of not even *pretending* to wait for more information before pivoting to “the opponent of the state deserved it.” It is so insanely depraved. Soulless.
In hindsight, given the fetish for prediction that quant social science has always had, this seems like where the turn to data was inevitably going to go: specious and dubious prediction to feed the content mill; diluted social science to anticipate the narrative flow
Output in fully-OA journals continues to shrink while hybrid OA grows In 2024, 72% of the Open Access articles covered by this dataset were published in fully OA journals, down from 75% the year before, and 84% the year before that. The chart below compares publications in fully OA journals with those in hybrid ones.
OUTCOME: This is where Read and Publish deals have landed us folks. www.oaspa.org/news/latest-...
I’ve finally been able to start reading @samuelmoore.org’s book, which is excellent. Living up to the promise of good humanistic analysis, it’s making sharp conceptual distinctions & providing me w/ better language to describe & understand what I observe in OA publishing.
doi.org/10.3998/mpub...
Wiley, as ever, serving its most important stakeholders, the shareholders.
I’m not implacably against these licenses, but in the current dispensation the scholarly communities that created, vetted, & curated the knowledge aren’t even at the table in these deals.
Of course the scammy and shameless for-profit higher ed industry is pivoting to AI
www.jeffpooley.com/2026/01/sa...
Editor's picks from 2025: Emily Tucker argues that the AI regulation debate largely misses the point: the real threat to democracy is unchecked data extraction and accumulation that is fueling corporate power.
Stop using us Jews as an excuse for doing cruel/stupid/illegal shit challenge 2026
