Tessera

Alain Queffelec

@alainqueffelec.bsky.social

Ingénieur de recherche CNRS, PhD in Caribbean archaeology (lithic beads and pendants). Archaeometry, spectroscopy, minerals and so on.

202 Posts1293 Follower 127 Folgt

PCI Archaeology @pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

1/3 New recommendation: Angelos Tsilogiannis, Markos Konstantakis, Spyros Vosinakis (2026). Experimental interpretation of ancient games through playtesting. V4 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI #Archaeology doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 🏺🧪🦣 #OpenScience #openaccess

Figure 1 from the preprint: The 10*9 board with the wooden bowls placed next to it. On the board are different formations and placements players would experiment with.

Figure 2 from the preprint: Diagram that shows the sequence of play sessions that constitute a Lineage

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 2mo ago

@gamingthepast.bsky.social @archaeogameco.bsky.social

PCI Archaeology@pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Such a nice first mission for this collaboration! Super nice people and super interesting material to study! 📿🔬🧪🏺

PACEA laboratory, Human evolution, Prehistory@pacea.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🇫🇷 🇯🇵 Already making headlines exploring the Paleolithic personal ornaments & lithic production of Hokkaido! @solangerigaud.bsky.social, N. Zwyns, @alainqueffelec.bsky.social (@univbordeaux.bsky.social @cnrsecologie.bsky.social), & Masami Izuho (TMU). www.hokkaido-np.co.jp/article/1305...

PACEA laboratory, Human evolution, Prehistory @pacea.bsky.social · 3mo ago

今金の旧石器ビーズ　器具で穴開けか　仏研究者が調査　研磨剤も使用か　：北海道新聞デジタル

【今金】旧石器時代のビーズ類研究の第一人者、仏ボルドー大のソランジェ・リガウド教授らが15～18日、ピリカ遺跡のピリカ旧石器文化館を訪れ、国の重要文化財の石製ビーズ7個などを詳細に観察した。これまで、...

hokkaido-np.co.jp

Richard J Hewitt @richardjhewitt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Great initiative, sounds a little like @peercomjournal.bsky.social another excellent project which I highly recommend & encourage everyone to support!

Grumpy Scientist@grumpy-scientist.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Just found out about the new science journal "Stacks". The editorial board includes the legendary @elisabethbik.bsky.social. Publication costs are what they should be. Moreover, it has an interesting peer-review where reviewers interact, agree and vote for publications. stacksjournal.org

PCI Archaeology @pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 4mo ago

4/3 Now published in the generalist diamond open-access @peercomjournal.bsky.social , for free, without more peer-reviews: doi.org/10.24072/pcj...

Replication report for Marwick (2025) “Is archaeology a science?”, including new data from OpenAlex

doi.org

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 4mo ago

It was so interesting to reproduce @benmarwick.bsky.social 's paper and to try to replicate it with openalex.org data. OpenAlex is bigger & more inclusive than commercial databases—but it still lacks many cited references, just like @opencitations.bsky.social. We need to push for more #opencitations

PCI Archaeology@pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 4mo ago

1/3 New recommendation: @alainqueffelec.bsky.social (2026). Replication report for Marwick (2025) “Is archaeology a science?”, including new data from OpenAlex. V5 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI #Archaeology doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 🏺🧪🦣 #OpenScience #openaccess

Figure 2 from the preprint: Comparison of Web of Science (Wos), OpenAlex (OA), and OpenCitations (OC) data for the articles present in the three datasets. A. Number of authors, B. Length of the title, C. Number of pages, D. Attributed year, E. Number of references. For each plot, a dashed-line represents y = x.

UCL Institute of Archaeology @uclarchaeology.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The UCL Institute of Archaeology currently has a vacancy for a Lecturer (Teaching) in Archaeology and Anthropology (Ref.: B03-02939). Further info & link to application here: 📲 bit.ly/3OKUMdw 1/2

Job Vacancy: Lecturer (Teaching) in Archaeology and Anthropology

The UCL Institute of Archaeology currently has a vacancy for a Lecturer (Teaching) in Archaeology and Anthropology (Ref.: B03-02939).

bit.ly

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New version of my reproduction and replication attempt of @benmarwick.bsky.social 's paper published few months ago in JAS, but here with #OpenAlex and #OpenCitations data. You can read it in a interactive html page here: aqueff.github.io/replication_... 🧪🏺

Figure 1 from the preprint: Comparison of Web of Science (Wos), OpenAlex (OA), and OpenCitations (OC) data for the articles present in the three datasets. A. Number of authors, B. Length of the title, C. Number of pages, D. Attributed year, E. Number of references. For each plot, a dashed-line represents y = x.

Figure 5 of the preprint: Biplot of the first and second principal components of a PCA computed on the means of the five bibliometric variables for each journal in the sample. The arrows represent the correlation between each original variable and the principal components. The direction and length of the arrows indicate how strongly each variable contributes to each component.

Figure 6 of the preprint: Variation in bibliometric indicators of hardness for 25 archaeological journals based on OpenAlex data. The journals are ordered for each indicator so that within each plot, the harder journals are at the top of the plot and the softer journals are at the base. Panel F shows a bar plot that is the single consensus ranking computed from all five variables, using the Borda Count ranking algorithm.

Peer Community In @peercommunityin.bsky.social · 7mo ago

The PCI-PCJ 2025 recap is here! ✨ Dive into the events of 2025 👀: peercommunityin.org/2026/01/07/p... Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to an amazing year! 🙏 #PCI2025 #Highlights

Université de Bordeaux @univbordeaux.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🦴 Des fossiles humains mis au jour près de Casablanca apportent un éclairage inédit sur une période clé de l’évolution humaine - des travaux incluant des chercheurs du laboratoire de la Préhistoire à l’actuel : culture, environnement et anthropologie @pacea.bsky.social www.pacea.u-bordeaux...

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Happy to have participated for years in the sedimentological study of Thomas Quarry I which is featured today in @nature.com for having yielded hominin fossils with traits reminiscent of Homo sapiens. rdcu.be/eX1Pm @cnrsecologie.bsky.social @univbordeaux.bsky.social @nouvelleaquitaine.bsky.social

Early hominins from Morocco basal to the Homo sapiens lineage

Nature - New hominin fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I (ThI-GH) in Casablanca, Morocco, dated to around 773 thousand years ago are similar in age to Homo antecessor,...

rdcu.be

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 7mo ago

@coarassessment.bsky.social and @dorassessment.bsky.social joint statement to advance global research reform towards qualitative instead of quantitative evaluations sfdora.org/2025/12/04/d...

Shared Principles, Shared Progress: DORA & CoARA in Collaboration | DORA

DORA and CoARA release a joint statement to advance global reform in research assessment. Learn how aligned principles and collaborative efforts are driving transparency, equity, and systemic change f...

sfdora.org

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Happy to have been part of this super interesting paper!

Nicolas Galtier@nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Happy to hare that the preprint I was advertising below has been published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology: academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-... Thanks @jevbio.bsky.social for supporting responsible publishing!

Nicolas Galtier @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology

Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

academic.oup.com

Nicolas Galtier@nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint: we advertise DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly eco-evo-archaeo journals. 1/6 #AcademicPublishing #ecoevo #archaeology #EthicalPublishing #SocietyJournals #DiamondOpenAccess doi.org/10.32942/X24...

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The @cnrs.fr is quitting Web of Science (after Scopus last year) to promote Open Alex instead! Great news! www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cn...

Le CNRS s’émancipe du Web of Science

À partir du 1er janvier 2026, le CNRS coupera l’accès à l’une des plus importantes bases bibliométriques commerciales : le

cnrs.fr

Eleni Seferidou @eleniseferidou.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Our paper "Rethinking Caribbean Archaeology: Towards an ethical position for a truly decolonial practice" was published today at @pciarchaeology.bsky.social Many thanks to all the authors for this amazing collaboration! 🎊 📎 peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....

Rethinking Caribbean Archaeology: Towards an ethical position for a truly decolonial practice

peercommunityjournal.org

PCI Archaeology @pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 9mo ago

To stop the drain, do not hesitate to engage with #free #openscience, #preprints, @peercommunityin.bsky.social, #diamondOA journals, academia-friendly journals (dafnee.isem-evolution.fr) etc. THERE ARE SOLUTIONS !

DAFNEE, a Database of Academia Friendly jourNals in Ecology and Evolution

dafnee.isem-evolution.fr

Mark A. Hanson@hansonmark.bsky.social · 9mo ago

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/...

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.

infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Media Coverage: Retraction Watch "Bug in Springer Nature #Metadata May Be Causing ‘Significant, Systemic’ Citation Inflation" retractionwatch.com/2025/11/11/b... @retractionwatch.com

Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation

Millions of researchers could be affected by a “dramatic distortion of citation counts” likely caused by flaws in how the academic publishing giant Springer Nature handles article metadata, accordi…

retractionwatch.com

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 9mo ago

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.

PACEA laboratory, Human evolution, Prehistory @pacea.bsky.social · 9mo ago

The IRN Bipedal Equilibrium team is running an international survey on hominin bipedalism. They aim to better understand how scholars think about bipedalism. Perspectives from all fields are welcome! 👉 Here is the survey link: questions.huma-num.fr/v4/s/dv57r1 (10 min) Please share it widely! 🏺🧪🦣

questions.huma-num.fr

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · last yr.

As grant money starts drying up, it's more important than ever not to waste it on paying publishers' open access "article processing fees" when we can host PDFs for free. Tom Morgan and I wrote a paper on this, forthcoming at Science and Public Policy. Accepted draft here: osf.io/preprints/os...

Author-Paid PublicationFees Corrupt Science and Should Be Abandoned
Thomas J. H Morgan & Paul E. Smaldino

Peer Community In @peercommunityin.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Many thanks to Karlstad University for becoming a supporter of PCI this year (www.kau.se/en)%F0%9F%98...!

PCI Archaeology @pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 12mo ago

⬇️⬇️⬇️ Also worth reading for other domains than health sciences! 👏

Matthieu Boisgontier@matthieuboisgontier.com · 12mo ago

Rethinking where and how we publish in health sciences doi.org/10.51224/SRX...

PCI Archaeology @pciarchaeology.bsky.social · 12mo ago

1/3 New recommendation: Zachary Batist‬ (2025) Locating Creative Agency in Archaeological Data Work. ver.2 recommended by @pciarchaeology.bsky.social doi.org/10.17613/8eq... @zackbatist.archaeo.social.ap.brid.gy 🏺🧪🦣

Figure 5 from the manuscript: Two photographs of fieldwork with arrows pointing at details and text in boxes explaining the details of how spatial information is recorded in the field. First photograph depicts a system that measures distance in relation to trench entities. Second photograph depicts a geospatial specialist and a fieldworker determining an object’s position using a digital theodolite.

Alain Queffelec @alainqueffelec.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Come join us with this new post-doctoral position in the Quanta project: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U... (2 years in Bordeaux) If you love artifacts (especially bones), notches, microscopes, and exploring the big question of the origin of quantification systems in human lineage, this is for you!

Portail Emploi CNRS - Offre d'emploi - Postdoctoral contract on the origin of quantification systems M/F

emploi.cnrs.fr

PAASTA Community @paastacommunity.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Delighted to be bringing you the following PAASTA community-led paper outlining our recommendations for best practices and open science in palaeoproteomics! Congratulations to the authors and for anyone keen to read the paper, it can be found #OpenAccess here: doi.org/10.24072/pcj...

The IsoArcH initiative @isoarch.bsky.social · last yr.

New look, same mission 🔬🌍 The IsoArcH initiative just launched its brand-new website: isoarch.org Check it out and dive into the world’s largest isotope database!

PCI Archaeology @pciarchaeology.bsky.social · last yr.

1/3 New recommendation: Cardillo, Marcelo & Carranza, Eugenia ‬ (2025) Applying statistical and causal modeling to interpret thermal alteration in observational lithic data. doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 🧪🏺

$Figure 2 from the manuscript. Top panel: effects of fire on the landscape observed in 2021 and 2022. Bottom panel: burned surface lithic scatters showing effects such as fractures and color changes.$ Figure 3 from the manuscript: Causal model for mechanical alterations of pebbles under the effect of fire. Red, direct and mediation effects (Fire -unmeasured-, Fissures, Rock_Type and Shape). Gray, latent unobserved variables (Biomass, Knapping and Trampling). Green, outcome variable (Mech_Alt).

Figure 3 from the manuscript: Causal model for mechanical alterations of pebbles under the effect of fire. Red, direct and mediation effects (Fire -unmeasured-, Fissures, Rock_Type and Shape). Gray, latent unobserved variables (Biomass, Knapping and Trampling). Green, outcome variable (Mech_Alt).

Nicolas Galtier @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · last yr.

Needless to say, the Peer Community In outperforms all of the major publishers on this criterion, despite a budget many orders of magnitude smaller - again illustrating that the big money we pay for publishing is not used for the good of science. (5/5) @peercommunityin.bsky.social