Marc-André Simard

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.

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/...

80 download of my checklist of actionable items for any researcher to adopt to support an equitable and sustainable scholarly publishing landscape zenodo.org/records/1741...
Still need to do this myself, but I'd love to see printouts on office doors or hallways ;) #AcademicSky #OpenAccess #DiamondOA

Tensions in Open Science and Scientific Culture Open Science (OS) holds a powerful promise: to serve society by providing universal public access to knowledge. But, as we continue to see OS be adopted across the world, it becomes increasingly cl…

The #OpenScience movement aims to transform how scientists work with each other and with society. These shifts pull in different directions — and “scientific cultures” helps make sense of the tension.

NEW BLOG: Tensions in Open Science and Scientific Culture
www.scholcommlab.ca/2025/10/21/t...

PKP is hiring a Managing Director - Public Knowledge Project The Public Knowledge Project, a Core Research Facility of SFU, invites applications for the position of Managing Director

JOB OPPORTUNITY: @pkp.sfu.ca is looking for a Managing Director! This is a rare opportunity to lead a highly impactful #scholcomm organization. Role works closely with me (Scientific Director) to provide strategic and operational leadership. Help us spread the word!

pkp.sfu.ca/2025/09/17/h...

Probably the best role in open scholarly publishing.
pkp.sfu.ca/2025/09/17/h...

Our analysis on possible effects of APC caps, which would limit grant money spending on publication fees, just like the NIH is considering for their updated public access policy, in the @lseimpactblog.bsky.social today 👇🏼#ScholCommLab #openaccess #publishingmarket

This has to be satire

Here it is: www.scholcommlab.ca/2025/09/03/n...
Haustein, S., Schares, E., Alperin, J.P., Camargo, F., Matthias, L., Céspedes, L., Poitras, C., & Strecker, D. (2025). APCs of 2,228 journals where NIH-funded authors published in 2025 (Version v1) [dataset]. Harvard Dataverse. doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...

Open Science Initiatives Tracker This dashboard provides a dynamic and community-driven overview of Open Science initiatives around the world.

🚀 Exciting news for the #OpenScience community!

🎉 The COSMI Hub, part of the #OPENIT Project, is live! Explore a community-driven platform mapping OS initiatives worldwide. Discover, classify, and compare initiatives promoting openness.

💡 Check it out: amcm.shinyapps.io/openit/previ...

#STIENID25

PLOS Biology announces agreement to become a MetaROR partner journal - The Official PLOS Blog Note: PLOS issued the following press release on Thursday, August 14th. SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Today, PLOS Biology announced a new agreement…

Excellent news!

"PLOS Biology will formally consider meta-research articles that are peer-reviewed on the MetaROR platform, collaborating with RoRI and AIMOS to improve the transparency of peer review in the field of meta-research."

theplosblog.plos.org/2025/08/plos...

A tweet from NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) reads: "We have appended an Editors' Note to a story about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza who was diagnosed with severe malnutrition. After publication, The Times learned that he also had pre-existing health problems. Read more below." Below the tweet is an image with text on a dark blue background. The text states: “Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation. Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.” — A spokesperson for The New York Times.

Genocide from starvation apparently doesn't count if there was a preexisting condition according to the New York Times.

Wouldn’t they just move the goal posts like they always do? Ahem, ADCs.

“Paradox”

🙄

Scholarly publishing’s hidden diversity: How exclusive databases sustain the oligopoly of academic publishers Global scholarly publishing has been dominated by a small number of publishers for several decades. This paper revisits the data on corporate control of scholarly publishing by analyzing the relative ...

The dominance of English-language Western publishers is now so entrenched and restrictive it’s actively inhibiting the dissemination of research.

Hoist with our own petard, so to speak. #AcademicSky 📚

Today, the #scholcommlab published a Statement of Support for PACBI Principles. With it, I reject my university's (SFU's) complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and call them out for restricting my ability to direct the work of @pkp.sfu.ca in a principled way. www.scholcommlab.ca/pacbi/

📢 Our new study challenges the prevailing narrative that a few commercial publishers dominate global scholarly publishing! Read the preprint: Beyond the oligopoly: Scholarly journal publishing landscapes in Latin America and Europe. doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Congrats Juan!

I said maybe…

Online toxic speech as positioning acts: Hate as discursive mechanisms for othering and belonging - Esteban Morales, Jaigris Hodson, Victoria O’Meara, Anatoliy Gruzd, Philip Mai, 2025 While digital platforms foster a sense of community and identity, they also facilitate harmful exclusionary practices. In this context, toxic and hateful speech...

I am happy to share my latest article, now published in New Media & Society: “Online toxic speech as positioning acts: Hate as discursive mechanisms for othering and belonging.” journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

With @jhodson.bsky.social, Victoria O'Meara, @gruzd.ca and @philipmai.com

And lo it came to pass, as was foretold many moons ago.
IEEE adds charge for depositing AAM with CC-BY.

6.7% of IEEE content ha[d] US federal funding 2017-2021. Of that, 62% was published Closed, for 4% of overall portfolio.

Comparison graph about 80% down the page at ostp.lib.iastate.edu

IEEE legal status: 501(c)(3) public charity

Standing on the shoulders of ACS, another NFP organization.

WOW - how do these people lie straight in bed at night? IEEE is charging a 'Repository License Fee' (or should that be 'FEEE'?)

"The RLF price is $1,275 for periodical articles and $400 for conference articles and is applicable only to AMs and not to VORs."
bibliotheek.ehb.be:2580/repository-l...

GREAT OPPORTUNITY: Please do some individual outreach for this position, and please apply even if you do not meet all the requirements. Postdoc studying #peerreview #preprints #scholcomm. www.scholcommlab.ca/join-us/hiri...

Let's get the word out! Send on your mailing lists and social media!

📆 Missed this news the first time around? You still have a week to apply to this fully-funded PhD position at our institute!

So the tired "preprints shouldn't be cited because they're not peer reviewed" meme is back. Reminder these frequently cited items aren't peer reviewed either:

Editorials
Books
Reviews [some not all]
News reports
Data
Code
Websites
Social media posts

Citations are just links...intent varies 1/2

Towards an inclusive Open Science: examining EDI and public participation in policy documents across Europe and the Americas | Royal Society Open Science National, international and organizational Open Science (OS) policies are being formulated to improve and accelerate research through increased transparency, collaboration and better access to scienti...

1/5🧵After a long trip through peer review limbo, our paper on inclusion and public participation in Open Science policy is finally out!
📖 doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

📣 Aidez-nous à imaginer le futur d’Érudit !

Votre avis nous aidera à mieux comprendre vos besoins, vos priorités et les enjeux qui vous tiennent à cœur, afin d’orienter nos priorités pour les années à venir.

📝 Date limite: 16 mai

👉 Participez ici : apropos.erudit.org/consultation...

JOIN US! Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity on Preprints and Open Peer Review. Multi-year project. Come with work @nataschachtena.bsky.social, @mariomalicki.bsky.social, me, and the rest of #ScholCommLab. Apply by May 23rd!

bit.ly/SCLpostdoc2025

Please share widely!

Colloque no32 - De la découvrabilité des contenus savants en français Le 5 mai 2025, à l'École de technologie supérieure de Montréal (ÉTS). Consultez la pogrammation complète.

La Chaire de recherche du Québec sur la découvrabilité des contenus scientifiques en français tiendra son tout premier colloque dans le cadre du congrès de l’@acfas.ca !

📅 Rendez-vous le 5 mai, dès 8h30.

La programmation complète est maintenant en ligne 👇 dcsf.cirst.ca/colloque-acf...

📢 #Postdoc – Étude des revues en transition vers ou depuis des modèles d’OA

Objet : Analyse des facteurs influençant les décisions des revues à adopter ou abandonner l’OA

Pour plus d’informations, merci de consulter la fiche de poste : lnkd.in/eP_P9mey

@gemass-socio.bsky.social @c-bz.bsky.social