Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

(Also, icyi, here are the 42 papers citing our non-existent paper which includes a "meta-analysis" - often called the evidence "gold standard" - of "LLM effects" in education 🤮 scholar.google.com.vn/scholar?star...)

OpenAlex intégré au Web of Science, ou la capture du travail des “commoners” | carnetist.hypotheses.org/2572

"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". doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Elsevier at its best: they only embrace #openscience when it makes money and does not endanger their assets. Now that Crossref data is CC0 and used by 3rd parties (OpenAlex, Matilda,...), they just keep data in their systems @keanbirch.bsky.social #openresearchinformation @barcelonadori.bsky.social

Intense discussion with The Drain authors today about where to submit Part II.. And somehow @lariviev.bsky.social launched the idea of hockey jerseys?! Thanks for your service, ChatGPT. @danbrockington.bsky.social @hansonmark.bsky.social @stephenpinfield.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social

Excited to join @braccolaetitia.social.sciences.re.ap.brid.gy & team at Open Science Monitoring Inititative (OSMI) as steering board member. Looking forward to work w/ Cécile Coulibaly, Moumita Koley, @susannanykyri.bsky.social & @jeroenson.bsky.social open-science-monitoring.org/meet-the-fiv...

Nice way to finish the year with such a quote in @science.org news: "Stefanie Haustein, an information scientist at the University of Ottawa, doesn’t buy publishers’ arguments." Thank you @phiejacobs.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

On the 7th day before break, the OA community gave to us: Landmark research into the state of academic publishing. @hansonmark.bsky.social & team produced two papers: 'The Strain/Drain on Scientific Publishing' demonstrating the challenges we face doi.org/10.1162/qss_... doi.org/10.48550/arX...

We Need to Talk About the Billion-Dollar Industry Holding Science Hostage https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/we-need-to-talk-about-the-billion-dollar-industry-holding-science-hostage/

La ciencia bajo el control de las grandes editoriales Un estudio del ICTA-UAB liderado por @danbrockington.bsky.social revela cómo el sistema de publicación científica prioriza ganancias frente al avance del conocimiento y la integridad académica. digitum-um.blogspot.com/2025/12/la-c...

A great first day of conference in Mendoza, discussing many aspects relevant to the drain of scientific publishing

Panel en el workshop CECIC en la UNCuyo sobre the drain of scholarly publishing con @juancommander.scholcommlab.ca @lariviev.bsky.social @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca y la anfitriona Fernanda Beigel. Un lujazo 🌟

Excited to discuss dilemmas of #openscience and research assessment reforms in Argentina the next couple of days. Thank you to hostess extraordinaire Fernanda Beigel for bringing us together in Mendoza 🇦🇷

Girls ages 16 years or younger who received HPV vaccines were 80% less likely than their unvaccinated counterparts to develop cervical cancer. Evidence from 23 studies showed that HPV vaccination lowered the incidence of high-grade cervical precancers. 🧪 www.cochrane.org/about-us/new...

Scientific Reports has a ⬆️ Impact Inflation: a very high IF given their citation network (self-citing, citation cartels, etc). They'll even typeset & publish AI slop for a fee! Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS Strain explorer β: pagoba.shinyapps.io/strain_explo... #SciPub #ResearchIntegrity #AcademicSky

Publikations- und Kostenmonitoring: Handlungsfeld für institutionelle Open-Access-Repositorien. Pro OAR DE Handreichung. https://zenodo.org/records/17357984

Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?

Yay, our first podcast citation @danbrockington.bsky.social @paolocrosetto.bsky.social et al. They discuss The Drain starting at minute 33:20 in the context of a protein science journal published by Wiley and also mention @elife.bsky.social. It's introduced as "almost an economics paper" :D

Listening to @samuelmoore.org while prepping my son’s advent calendar #lego #openaccess

🗓️ On Dec 3, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy will host the latest in its series of action dialogues addressing grand challenges at the science, society and policy interface. Don't miss the State of Science, Technology, and Innovation in Canada 2025 12 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. EST

The tiny academic thrill of being asked a question by a student and being able to say: "Hang on, my colleagues actually wrote a paper about this…” doi.org/10.1002/asi.... @lucyces.bsky.social @diegokoz.bsky.social @lariviev.bsky.social et al. #ScholCommLab

Thanks to the LSE blog for the highlight! The one constant of all publishing reform efforts has been ludicrous publisher profit margins. We specifically highlight a need for funders to act. Find out more Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS Oligopoly: bit.ly/OligSciPub

🎈 Time flies! Exactly one year ago today @rorinstitute.bsky.social and @aimosinc.bsky.social launched MetaROR, a platform to publish metaresearch through the publish-review-curate approach. Over the course of the year, we published 28 articles reviewed by 59 different reviewers. [1/3]

Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science @danbrockington.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca for @lseimpactblog.bsky.social

We summarized the Drain paper in an LSE Impact blog post this week. Please share in your networks, ideally with those we are calling to action: research funders and university leadership blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci... #AcademicSky #AcademicPublishing #OpenAccess #ScholComm

CARL's Fall Member Meeting is off to a strong start!💡 Members met in Montebello for strategic committee meetings & discussions on Intellectual Freedom & Open Science. Thanks to keynote Randy Boyagoda & panelists @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca @lariviev.bsky.social David Tweddell & Kathleen Shearer.

La Réunion d'automne de l’ABRC démarre en force avec des présentations et riches discussions sur la liberté intellectuelle et la science ouverte.💡 Merci à notre conférencier principal Randy Boyagoda, ainsi que @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca, @lariviev.bsky.social, David Tweddell et Kathleen Shearer.

The collective profits are staggering, actually overwhelming. So, let's resist: "The good news is that if the drain has a particular history and geography, it means that it is not inevitable. It can be resisted." @danbrockington.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca

It's been a fun week, but 3 presentations plus 3h of teaching in 5 days is definitely my limit. Thank you for those who came and engaged at the panels at the The Royal Society of Canada on Saturday and at @carl-abrc.bsky.social in Montebello today. (1/n)

💥New: Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science ✍️ @danbrockington.bsky.social @aileenfyfe.bsky.social @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca #AcademicSky #ScholComm #AcademicPublishing

A paper critiquing post-publication peer review has numerous made-up references, including a @nature.com article falsely attributed to our Ivan Oransky. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The solutions of the past 3 decades have failed to change the incentives of #PublishOrPerish. As a result, researcher funding, time, control, and trust has been lost. The ONE CONSTANT in the wake of the serial crisis, #PlanS and #OpenAccess reform has been publish profit margins. 2/n

The numbers in here are huge, ~$2.5bn in profits (~35% profit margin) to 4 major academic publishing houses. How much lost research expenditure does that equate to?? Windfall tax, anyone?

This is now canon.

"Rather than democratizing scientific publishing, Open Access has helped commercial publishers generate more profits (publishers found ways to shift paywalls from readers to authors). More stringent reforms are required to tackle misaligned drivers of scientific publishing." Fernanda Beigel et al.

Ganske sykt å se på profittmarginen til selskapene. Kanskje Norge bør fase ut oljen og heller kjøpe Elsevier 😂 Bakgrunn: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk 🎤 If you’ve read this far and still need convincing, please check out our preprint arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 and this infographic: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 10/10

Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing. Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n

Talking about our recent work on The Drain of Scientific Publishing at the Royal Society of Canada #CoEE2025 on a panel with @chadgaffield.bsky.social and @abizadeh.bsky.social. 10am in Viger, 8th floor @erudit.org #AcademicSky #RoyalSociety

A timely thread… as I recover from this shocker. What level of insanity is this? This is the publication fee for one paper in a journal that publishes a few hundred papers each year. 10,400 USD, but *only* 8,360 USD after the discounts…

The Drain of Scientific Publishing arxiv.org/pdf/2511.04820

~$2.5bn in profits, ~35% profit margin

EXCELLENT graphic on the drain of scientific publishing! zenodo.org/records/1759...

Love this, I'm going to think about how we could promote it.

Interesse an Bibliometrie? Kennt ihr schon die "Loseblattsammlung" aka. bibliometrische Quick Notes von unserm Kollegen @optykali.bsky.social? Ein Blick lohnt sich. Ihr findet das CC BY 4.0 lizenzierte Material hier: bibliometrics-quick-notes.github.io #bibliometrie #bibliometry #quicknotes #LIS

Regretfully (for the sake of the authors and journal staff), I have this morning declined an invitation to review for a @royalsociety.org journal because of the Society’s continued refusal to stand up for its values in dealing with Elon Musk FRS.

Must-read thread 🧵on the insane power given to for-profit publishers in the academia As a member of the editorial board of an open access non-profit journal @scriptanova.bsky.social I couldn't agree more.

THIS from a good thread on the need to reform academic publishing #AcademicSky

This brilliant graphic from @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca captures really clearly the challenge of the drain, and the hope of alternatives that can free us from it.