I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!
bluesky-map.theo.io
I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
Likely of little interest, but thought I'd share that yesterday I put up a little weather station in my garden. I now have data to prove it's mild, grey and rainy.
preview.wunderground.com/dashboard/pw...
Flyover view with "Springer Nature", "Digital Science", and "Figshare" logos. Text reads "Now available The State of Open Data 2025 A Decade of Progress and Challenges Read the new report".
The 10th anniversary edition of the State of Open Data report shows open data has become strongly embedded into research practice with FAIR awareness now widely recognised & AI is reshaping workflows: spklr.io/6332984LsH
#OpenData #OpenScience @digital-science.com @figshare.com
We've got ISSUES. Literally.
We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?
arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563
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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:
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Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Great research does not come free.
"Throughout history, laureates have given us the blue LEDs that light our phones, fiber optic cables that carry internet traffic, and neural networks that power artificial intelligence...
there's another unsung winner: federal funding."
www.aps.org/apsnews/2025...
Congratulations to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... [Free access]
This is frustrating! ORE should help reduce the reviewing burden on academics, not make it worse. They also must stand for high quality publication, review, and integrity practices. Hopefully the planned expansion will allow for investment in the editorial team to handle cases.
⏳ One week to go!
OSFair2025 starts on 15 Sept at @cern.bsky.social Science Gateway!
3 days of keynotes, debates, workshops & demos, all shaping the future of Open Science.
#OSFair2025 #OpenScience #Research #CERN #OpenAIRE @openaire.bsky.social
looking forward to Science and Technology Indicators conference in #Bristol this week! @stienid2025.bsky.social
PRX Energy is piloting transparent peer review. This will help us develop our open peer-review processes for our journals. Find out more and take part. - journals.aps.org/prxenergy/20...
Nice article on the path to Open Science.
"If it is our aim as a discipline to create a lasting impact, we need to conduct research with reliable findings, which requires exposing ourselves to open science practices." #openscience
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
I wish publishers took this seriously. It's frustrating & the same applies to submissions. APS has issues too & we're working to improve that. The volume of articles (& AI etc) means protecting quality & research integrity is hard enough without outdated systems getting in the way.
Many authors don't share data, even when encouraged or asked to. Data statement requirements are often misunderstood and revert to 'On reasonable request'. How can we improve this? Is the importance of Open Data getting to researchers and do they know how? Whose job is it to 'enforce'? #OpenScience
NIH to cap APC fees. Where will they put the line? Feels likely to push more institutions/publishers into doing read and publish agreements across America, and cause issues for high quality / high threshold journals that have higher APCs. www.nih.gov/news-events/...
OSTP have published a new memo in response to the 'Gold Standard Science' order. www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...
📢 Good news! The sponsorship application deadline for #OSFair2025 has been extended to June 15!
Support #OpenScience and boost your visibility in the global research community.
🔗 www.opensciencefair.eu/2025/call-fo...
@openaire.bsky.social @cern.bsky.social
#OpenScience in Canada - practicing or just curious ?
Join us at #osCanada2025 —
Abstracts due *June 30* for the 1st Canadian Conference on Open Science and Open Scholarship — Oct 9-10 in Montreal oscanada.github.io
Cc @kbyers.bsky.social
Researchers publishing in @apsphysics.bsky.social journals will now receive a DOI for their article immediately upon acceptance, allowing for improved discoverability and citation of their work.
Wonderful initiative to boost metadata uptake!
Europe Unveils $565 Million Plan to Attract Scientists From U.S. as Trump Defunds Basic Research
"Europe will always choose science," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
gizmodo.com/europe-unvei... Their gain, U.S. loss.
Somewhat - Preprints are part of a healthy ecosystem, proven over decades by physicists. But peer review, quality publication, remain essential. Improving Openness is vital, but it cannot come at the cost of integrity and quality of science, lest science become like the rest of the web.
A burst of glowing golden particles radiates outward from a central point, symbolizing the Higgs boson and the energy of particle collisions in high-energy physics.
The first SCOAP3 assessment of open science practices gave our journals high marks. A review of @PhysRevLetters, @PhysRevC, and @PhysRevD earned nearly double the total score of the next-highest publisher, showing our commitment to #OpenScience.
🔗 www.aps.org/about/news/2...
@cern.bsky.social
@apsphysics.bsky.social earns the top score in @cern.bsky.social / SCOAP3 Open Science metrics - measuring and promoting open science initiatives in physics. www.aps.org/about/news/2...
Hello! This sounds interesting - but just to let you know the link is not currently working (403 forbidden error)
Great to see more push for PID adoption!
The results of this are now announced: scoap3.org/journals-202...
- I work at the American Physical Society, so closely involved in this initiative and we are proud of our results.
We'll publish our results in more detail and our own announcement soon. Shoutout to improving uptake of PIDs - @orcid.org @researchorgs.bsky.social - the latter APS is the largest publisher of - and to supplying high quality metadata to @crossref.bsky.social for all research. #OpenScience
