🏆 The Unjournal's 2024-25 Evaluator Prizes Recognizing 8 of 80+ expert peer reviewers for outstanding public evaluation work. $6,500 in prizes. → info.unjournal.org/evaluator-prizes-2024-25 🧵

My manuscript "The Economics of Noncompete Clauses" is now out in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Few topics have garnered more debate and policy attention over the last few years. This article brings us up to speed on the debate and the current answers. pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

@markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy on the drain and strain of publishging: "After plan S and gold open access, journals changed their business model... Now your marketing to the authors not the readers, incentivizing volume rather than quality" #horizondiamond2026 www.horizondiamond.nl

Just updated my website to include all my teaching. paolocrosetto.github.io It also contains one of the few resources online for problem sets solutions for the (in)famously hard Mas-Colell, Winston and Greene economics boot camp manual. Enjoy!

The conference on reform in scholarly publishing happening this Thursday and Friday in Nijmegen! For those on Bluesky lets use this tag: #horizondiamond2026 www.horizondiamond.nl Were approaching a full house, but last-minute sign ups are welcomed. #publishing #science #research

All set for New Horizons 💎 #OpenAccess in Nijmegen! Thank you to the organisers for the opportunity to speak on the Strain, Stain, & Drain of scientific publishing. Looking forward to great conversations on moving #ScientificPublishing forward! bit.ly/StrainQSS www.horizondiamond.nl#schedule

💥New | We need to move beyond the accept/reject binary in peer review ✍️ @georgealfredcurrie.bsky.social & Damian Pattinson #PeerReview #AcademicSky #AcademicPublishing

Dans un numéro spécial, le rédacteur en chef est un scientifique invité garant de la ligne éditoriale. Sur 110 000 numéros spéciaux analysés, une étude révèle que chaque année, plus de 1000 sont composés pour un tiers d'études rédigées par l'invité lui-même... english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Fifa world prize for economics

Anybody out there? @infobeautjful’s wonderful visualization of two methods—the Drake and the Seager equations— to estimate the chances we are not alone, and there is other intelligent life in the universe (set your own parameters!): buff.ly/oFpVdb7

New post: What is the impact of AI on productivity? I review all of the studies and data that I can find and try to provide a synthesis. A disagreement emerges: micro studies find positive benefits but these benefits are yet to show up in the macro data. aleximas.substack.com/p/what-is-th... 🧵

We've officially launched! With our new #DiamondOpenAccess investment campaign to help libraries build a sustainable, community‑led future for scholarly publishing & support journals flipping away from costly subscription models. Read the Press release here drive.google.com/file/d/10Hgf...

Zotero 8 is out (www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-8/). If you're not already using, highly recommended!

Our 4th Winter Workshop on the Experimental & Behavioural Economics of Food Consumption is in full swing. Good talks, plenty of discussion, & we got lucky with the weather. It snowed all day yesterday, but today the ☀️ came out to shine on the white slopes. Info: sites.google.com/view/winterw...

Economists and Psychology are really worlds apart in the way they run their research. In my experience even in behavioral economics -- that is closer to psych in themes and sometimes in methods -- the gap is very wide. #EconSky

Highlighting important data in complex plots can be challenging, but gghighlight makes it simple. Further details: statisticsglobe.com/online-cours... #visualanalytics #package #rstudio #tidyverse #statistics #datavisualization #ggplot2 #datasciencecourse

Taps the sign: this was true well before AI took over. It has wildly accelerated since. Only a change in the overall incentives in scientific publishing can fix this. Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy

This is simultaneously so cool, as it cuts down tedious repetitive stuff to let you focus on the content, and absolutely terrifying, given the current incentives in scientific publications. It *can* be used to make science better. It *will* be used to produce tons of crap. What a time to be alive

Occupational hazards - Chemistry: chemical damage through exposure to chemicals - Biology: biological damage through exposure to bacteria - Psychology: psychic damage through exposure to the horrors of the literature

Original paper: The Issue with Special Issues: when Guest Editors Publish in Support of Self: arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 ... The figure legends and section headers in this preprint are superb.

The Iowa Gambling Task is an extreme example of Jingle Fallacy and schmeasurement. In 100 articles we found 244 different ways of scoring it, 177 were never reused. Correlations between them range -.99 to .99. At the same time, we show meta-analyses combine these results as if they’re equivalent.

Plus, MDPI/Frontiers spend big money to convince governments they're not just legit, but leaders. Frontiers just sponsored WEF Davos, MDPI signed a deal with German national science agency. 🇩🇪+MDPI: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/germany... Davos: sciencehouse.frontiersin.org/event/945d08... 2/3

La plateforme arXiv croule sous les soumissions d'articles frauduleux produits via l'#IA. Depuis le 21 janvier, « elle exige désormais que les auteurs qui publient pour la première fois soient approuvés par un auteur arXiv reconnu dans leur domaine. »

Want to know more? Thread by the authors: bsky.app/profile/hans... Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 Data explorer: paolocrosetto.shinyapps.io/Editors_as_a...

For anyone interested, thread here 🙂: bsky.app/profile/hans...

Many discussions about 🇪🇺 tech sovereignty. 👇🏻 A fascinating aspect, sometimes overlooked, is the public's behavioral reaction to MAGA: e.g., how many people and institutions will drop PayPal and use Wero? (A coordination problem where every user attracts others.) werotracker.eu

Comparing registrations to published papers is essential to research integrity - and almost no one does it routinely because it's slow, messy, and time-demanding. RegCheck was built to help make this process easier. Today, we launch RegCheck V2. 🧵 regcheck.app

Hi, I've updated this database a decent amount now: paulgp.com/econlit-pipe... You can now do by-journal comparisons:

El Pais covers our paper on guest editors publishing papers in their own special issue, something we denote as Publishing in Support of Self, PISS. Have a read! arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 Want to know if your favourite journal is full of PISS? Data here: paolocrosetto.shinyapps.io/Editors_as_a...

An analysis of 100,000 special issues of academic journals reveals that one in eight is filled with articles written by the guest editor, particularly at the publisher MDPI. Thousands of scientists inflate their CVs this way: english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Miles de científicos hinchan su currículum con estudios autopublicados que cuestan millones de euros de dinero público. Un análisis de 100.000 números especiales de revistas revela que 1 de cada 8 está lleno de artículos del propio editor invitado, sobre todo en MDPI: elpais.com/ciencia/2026...

Some news: I’ve started a Substack, largely focused on AI, tech, and economics more broadly. I've always loved the essay format. It helps me explore ideas more formally w/o the 5 year publishing gauntlet. Consider subscribing: open.substack.com/pub/aleximas... Links to all posts below:

Uno de cada ocho números especiales de revistas científicas está lleno de artículos de autobombo del propio editor. El 87% de esos monográficos "sospechosos" pertenece a la editorial MDPI. Artículo de @manuelansede.bsky.social para @elpais.com elpais.com/ciencia/2026...

Here ya go!

Este es el estudio original, depositado en #arxiv en el que los investigadores responsables del mismo analizan estos comportamientos inadecuados en la publicación de estos números especiales, a los que se refieren como PISS: Published in Support of Self. arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

👉Thousands of scientists inflate their CVs with self-published studies that cost millions of euros of public money 👇by @manuelansede.bsky.social in @elpais.com coverage of "The Issue with Special Issues: when Guest Editors Publish in Support of Self" doi.org/10.48550/arX... #ResearchIntegrity

Silicon Valley’s alliance with Donald Trump was a mask off moment and showed the world we can’t depend on US tech companies. For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get off US tech and I put together a guide so you find alternatives too. I hope you find it helpful!

And It gets worse the more you look into how Special Issues were handled and how much of a blind eye publishers turned to -- in this specific case -- guest editors using special issues to promote themselves bsky.app/profile/hans...

Another banger by Paolo Crosetto, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, and Mark Austin Hanson! While special issues with guest editors are not a problem in themselves, journals that build a business model around then invites people to start gaming the system...

During the Christmas holidays I worked on a new academic website. It was quite the CSS-quarto-html-R nightmare, don't really recommend. In there you'll find info on all ongoing projects -- including PISS bit.ly/4sIY5Br and drain -- and on my fantastic coauthors. Enjoy: paolocrosetto.github.io

Excited that @aileenfyfe.bsky.social is speaking at Cambridge in March on 'Peer review, past, present… and future'. More info and booking details here: www.cambridgephilosophicalsociety.org/events/event...

We live in the Golden Age of Special Issues: thousands of guest editors & the largest delegation of editorial power, ever. 🧪 How is this power being used? Sometimes, to Publish In Support of Self in complacent journals. Paper: bit.ly/4sIY5Br Explore the data! bit.ly/4sNPLjV%3C Article in Science👇

You can specify relative position in ggplot with I(x) I(y). E.g. annotate("text", x = I(.5), y = I(.5), label = "hello!") will place the text in the middle of the plot. This, combined with alignment arguments is like 87% of the magic for me.

This shiny app is pretty cool. Just cruising around, I found one special issue where it appears one editor jammed his name onto all five papers. LOL. It looks like this was the price of admission into this issue. www.mdpi.com/journal/gene... paolocrosetto.shinyapps.io/Editors_as_a...

Thanks to Jeffrey and the @science.org news team for this highlight! Find the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

#SpecialIssues have fueled the growth of some of the largest #OpenAccess publishers. Does a journal that allows a #GuestEditor to both plan a special issue and write many articles in it have a conflict of interest? #scicomm #peerreview @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

This one should work: www.kielinstitut.de/publications...

We 🇮🇹 told you so. This is Berlusconi's playbook to the letter. You were making fun of us. Silvio was teaching you a lesson: we are all vulnerable to egomaniac narcissistic cult leaders. You didn't learn. You thought it would never apply to you. Wake up. Silvio was harmless. Trump is not.

"While moderate levels of endogeny are common in special issues, excessive endogeny is a blatant case of scientific misconduct. We define special issues containing more than 33% endogeny as Published in Support of Self (PISS)... The large majority of guest editors engage in endogeny responsibly..."