TIL that Alexander McMillan subsidized 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 for 30 years until it began to make a profit.
https://www.asimov.press/p/nature
TIL that Alexander McMillan subsidized 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 for 30 years until it began to make a profit.
https://www.asimov.press/p/nature
More benefits of #OpenPeerReview:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001221
When they know their reports will be made public, referees make them longer, clearer, more informative, and more constructive in suggesting improvements. And btw, reports by women are better in these respects than reports by men.
Update. Here's another article that made it through peer review (at #WoltersKluwer) falsely asserting that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/SAP.0000000000004612
(#paywalled)
General thesis: Paying APCs is a hardship (true) and the prices are going up (true). Therefore, to help medical students publish OA, medical schools should fund their APCs.
The article never mentions no-fee OA journals (#DiamondOA) or no-fee OA repositories (#GreenOA).
Update. Here's another journal editor saying (without peer review) that all #OpenAccess journals charge APCs.
https://aarontay.substack.com/p/my-reflection-on-my-journey-in-open
Update. Here's another article that made it through peer review (at #WoltersKluwer) falsely asserting that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/SAP.0000000000004612
(#paywalled)
General thesis: Paying APCs is a hardship (true) and the prices are going up (true). Therefore, to help medical students publish OA, medical schools should fund their APCs.
The article never mentions no-fee OA journals (#DiamondOA) or no-fee OA repositories (#GreenOA).
Update. It's rare to see a journal editorial call for #MultilingualResearch. Here's one from _Applied and Environmental Microbiology_, published by the American Society of Microbiology.
https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.02229-25
Language barriers "do more than prevent access to opportunities. They cement unfair assumptions about scientific competence and preferentially amplify voices that are proficient, or perceived to be proficient, in the dominant language, shaping scientific discourse in narrow and exclusive ways. This editorial explores how linguistic bias sustains professional hierarchies and restricts scientific progress. It also highlights our journal’s initiatives to overcome language-based barriers in publishing and foster equitable participation in scientific exchange."
Linguistic bias and the hidden costs of science lost in translation
Update. "We conduct a comprehensive comparison between peer-review scores and citation-based metrics across various scientific fields [in Italy]…While both evaluation methods exhibit sex bias, peer review systematically penalizes women more severely than citation-based metrics."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001245
Update. It's rare to see a journal editorial call for #MultilingualResearch. Here's one from _Applied and Environmental Microbiology_, published by the American Society of Microbiology.
https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.02229-25
Language barriers "do more than prevent access to opportunities. They cement unfair assumptions about scientific competence and preferentially amplify voices that are proficient, or perceived to be proficient, in the dominant language, shaping scientific discourse in narrow and exclusive ways. This editorial explores how linguistic bias sustains professional hierarchies and restricts scientific progress. It also highlights our journal’s initiatives to overcome language-based barriers in publishing and foster equitable participation in scientific exchange."
Linguistic bias and the hidden costs of science lost in translation
Update. "In male-dominated fields, women have significantly broader research interests than men, while this gap diminishes and reverses in more gender-balanced fields. Although broader publication trajectories help women increase publication output, this strategy carries steeper citation penalties for women than for men. The results suggest that academic fields act as sites of inequality production, channeling women toward research patterns that boost immediate productivity while undermining long-term scholarly influence."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23780231251396273
Update. In the field of oil pollution research, "female authors accounted for about 32% of the total authors…were significantly underrepresented in most of the African countries [and in] the UK and Norway…Gender variation in oil pollution publications was discovered to be influenced by religion in Africa; Islam had the mean highest rank when compared with Christianity."
https://doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v29i11.22
The Variation in Authorship between Male and Female Researchers in Oil Pollution Publications in Ten (10) Countries
More benefits of #OpenPeerReview:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001221
When they know their reports will be made public, referees make them longer, clearer, more informative, and more constructive in suggesting improvements. And btw, reports by women are better in these respects than reports by men.
Diethard Tautz and Paul Rainey propose criteria for journal quality entirely apart from citation impact and reputation. While you think over their proposal, don't overlook their case for some of the ways we'd benefit from having good criteria (no matter who first proposed them):
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s44319-025-00649-5
1. They could help us assess the justification for "public payments for journal services, such as #OpenAccess fees" or #APCs.
2. They could help "immunize against the predatory and fraudulent practices that are currently threatening the scientific publication system."
3. They could help funders "finance journals according to the Diamond open-access [#DiamondOA] standards as a basic infrastructure for science."
“The field of scientific communication is in some ways tremendously conservative. When you introduce any innovation, you need to immediately show that it has advantages, that you will gain in prestige, visibility and impact.”
In Katina Magazine , SciELO co-founder Abel Packer discusses the past, present and future of the pioneering platform, which holds the world’s largest collection of Latin American scholarly articles.
"Research Groups Oppose Capping #NIH Funding of Publisher Fees."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/12/16/research-groups-oppose-capping-nih-funding
PS: These universities seem to be saying: "We accept the growth of the APC model. We just need help paying APCs." They don't take any responsibility for steering authors toward high-prestige, high-JIF, high-APC journals, and don't acknowledge their ability to change those incentives while upholding their historic standards of quality. They could say instead, "We will revise our research assessment (promotion and tenure) procedures to focus on the quality of research more than where it is published." Insofar as universities succeed at shifting those incentives -- admittedly a long game -- authors could submit work to no-fee or diamond OA journals, bypass APC-based journals, and face no blowback from their P&T committees. All researchers and research institutions would win, including those institutions that now want govt help in paying APCs.
#Academia #AcademicMastodon #APCs #Assessment #DiamondOA #OAintheUSA #OpenAccess #ScholComm #Universities
"Research Groups Oppose Capping #NIH Funding of Publisher Fees."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/12/16/research-groups-oppose-capping-nih-funding
PS: These universities seem to be saying: "We accept the growth of the APC model. We just need help paying APCs." They don't take any responsibility for steering authors toward high-prestige, high-JIF, high-APC journals, and don't acknowledge their ability to change those incentives while upholding their historic standards of quality. They could say instead, "We will revise our research assessment (promotion and tenure) procedures to focus on the quality of research more than where it is published." Insofar as universities succeed at shifting those incentives -- admittedly a long game -- authors could submit work to no-fee or diamond OA journals, bypass APC-based journals, and face no blowback from their P&T committees. All researchers and research institutions would win, including those institutions that now want govt help in paying APCs.
#Academia #AcademicMastodon #APCs #Assessment #DiamondOA #OAintheUSA #OpenAccess #ScholComm #Universities
Update. "In male-dominated fields, women have significantly broader research interests than men, while this gap diminishes and reverses in more gender-balanced fields. Although broader publication trajectories help women increase publication output, this strategy carries steeper citation penalties for women than for men. The results suggest that academic fields act as sites of inequality production, channeling women toward research patterns that boost immediate productivity while undermining long-term scholarly influence."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23780231251396273
Update. "Authors with very feminine and masculine first names respectively get a lower and higher share of citations for every article published, irrespective of their contribution role."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08219
Update. "Authors with very feminine and masculine first names respectively get a lower and higher share of citations for every article published, irrespective of their contribution role."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08219
Update. "In male-dominated fields, women have significantly broader research interests than men, while this gap diminishes and reverses in more gender-balanced fields. Although broader publication trajectories help women increase publication output, this strategy carries steeper citation penalties for women than for men. The results suggest that academic fields act as sites of inequality production, channeling women toward research patterns that boost immediate productivity while undermining long-term scholarly influence."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23780231251396273
Update. "Authors with very feminine and masculine first names respectively get a lower and higher share of citations for every article published, irrespective of their contribution role."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08219
