🚨Update: Our analysis of global APC expenditure has now been expanded to cover more publishers (7 -> 14) and more years (2019-2025). We estimate $15B in APCs paid over seven years, $3.7B in 2025 alone. Elsevier crosses the $1B threshold by itself in 2025. arxiv.org/abs/2608.16322 #ScholComm

Eric Schares@eschares.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 years. A. $8.349 billion ($8.968 B in 2023 USD) $2.5B in 2023 alone. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #metasci

"...AI and Tumblr cannot give you what schooling and education gives you, which is a container for the possibility of a greatness we have not yet imagined but that we have nevertheless built the foundation to exist" I don't have the words, I just keep playing this one over and over

Xanatos1@xanatos1.bsky.social · 2w ago

Society helps create a Dolly Parton, a Prince Rogers Nelson

Xanatos1@xanatos1.bsky.social · 2w ago

youtu.be/JXukJyzTA7A?...

Dolly Parton - The River Unbroken

YouTube video by DollyPartonVEVO

youtu.be

There are too many songs that I love, but Bargain Store really hits: Why, you take, for instance, this old broken heart If you will just replace the missing parts You would be surprised to find how good it really is Take it and you never will be sorry that you did Love you, Dolly

Bargain Store - Dolly Parton - Live from Opryland 1975

YouTube video by raredolly

youtube.com

I feel like the kids who did poorly in science and history class are trying to get revenge on the kids who did well at science and history class and now we’re all going to die

Quick PSA. Looking at you, local orgs and small businesses.

"The journal roughly doubled its publication volume from nearly 5,000 articles in 2023 to over 9,600 in 2024, and published over 10,300 articles in 2025." Good illustration of why commercial publishers are not passive victims of fraudulent behaviour but have actively created the conditions for it.

Retraction Watch@retractionwatch.com · 4w ago

Since June @elsevierconnect.bsky.social has retracted 120 papers from the journal. According to the retraction notices, the journal identified “[s]ystematic, coordinated, and widespread manipulation of the peer-review process.”

slow day in the office so we're starting beef with archaeologists

It requires expertise to be able to say, “I do not know the answer to that question, and that is becauae thus far scholarly consensus is that we do not have the knowledge needed at this time to answer that question.” Sometimes “I don’t know” is a far more rigorous answer than people might think.

Thanks @danrdmnn.bsky.social 🙌 We encourage people to check out your "Seven Theses for a Diverse and Inclusive Research Data Ecosystem" doi.org/10.53962/jw8...

1/ In 2024, I filed a false claims act lawsuit against Elsevier, Springer, Wiley & Informa alleging they systematically overcharged US federal grants for article processing. The gov declined to intervene and now it's public. Some thoughts on what this is, and what it isn't:

The "sequel"(?) to "You Are Reviewer 2" is now available to download for free. "So You've Been Told to Publish Your Data" is a solo d6-based "game" to "learn" about Research Data Management and Data Publishing. midnitelibrary.itch.io/publish-your... 📚

And this is why I am against AI, as well as the environmental concerns and the intellectual property theft and the dumbing-down of society. THERE ARE ENOUGH HUMAN-GENERATED CONFECTED SOURCES OUT THERE ALREADY. WE DON'T NEED ANY MORE.

How we took our eyes off the ball and allowed the wrong entities to remake the playing field of Open Access:

Martin Paul Eve@eve.gd · 2mo ago

Rereading Suber (2012) this AM for a research article. doi.org/10.7551/mitp... Have we abandoned his definitions -- thought fairly canonical -- with terms like diamond? A short thread. Suber: all “OA delivered by journals is called gold OA, and OA delivered by repositories is called green OA” (6)

Setting universities up to fail is a longstanding tactic known as 'starving the beast' - a university's resources are undermined so it cannot live up to its obligations and is then punished for that by further resource cuts. See Steve Mims' 2016 documentary film: youtu.be/4IlFhJ78QdU?...

STARVING THE BEAST Trailer

YouTube video by Starving the Beast

youtu.be

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Academics fear they are being “set up to fail” after several institutions finished the academic year by announcing fresh job cuts, casting doubt over who will return after the summer break, and what courses they will be teaching.' 1/3

The most broken part of academic publishing is the failure to imagine a way of fixing it beyond the posts on Substack complaining about how broken it is.

This is a key node in the battle for democracy and the survival of our planet - fostering education and research on HOW humans assign meaning to facts, how we create and contextualise information, how we infuse knowledge into everyday decisions and interventions.

My small take about Subway Takes as a lesson for how to be together again: bruderrudmann.org/2026/06/15/a...

Everyone who is scared of cities and multiculturalism is a loser.

Rav@rvbdrm.com · 3mo ago

New Yorkers singing Empire State of Mind

We were having the same conversation 10 years ago. Lady Gaga spoke at #SXSW and said we couldn't have shows in Austin anymore unless Doritos was sponsoring them. www.kut.org/life-arts/20...

Austin music leaders rethink the idea of 'selling out' as business support becomes a necessity

Once considered evil, panelists agreed corporate support might be one of the best ways to protect the artists and venues that make Austin unique.

kut.org

this isn't correct lots of eliminated Humanities departments were overfilling classes and effectively subsidizing STEM programs that cost universities money it was never about majors it is about what they could effectively fundraise for which includes this AI bullshit

Paul Matzko@paulmatzko.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This isn't correct. The decline of the humanities is a product of falling demand -- particularly the collapse in enrollment & majors -- and not technological substitution for labor. That said, it's true that AI, although it will help historians do better work, will not solve that crisis.

universities have the brainpower, resources,+ community obligation to develop on-site secure NON PROFIT learning management systems + ed tech overseen by actual educators, not data-extraction censorious surveillance profiteers! VOID THE CONTRACTS theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/mamdani-wi...

Mamdani Win Could Be The First Step Towards Seizing The Means of Knowledge Production

Let CUNY socialize EdTech for all of us.

theamericanvandal.substack.com

My previous research centre was among the highest performing in terms of REF at the university. It didn't stop senior management from gutting it. You can play their game perfectly, obey all their rules, and buy into their metrics... and still lose.

Plashing Vole@plashingvole.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Final thought - if this is how they treat the best-performing REF unit of assessment at the university, nobody is safe.

A heart-filled optimistic piece about the commodification of knowledge, our birthright, and the unending effort toward truth and freedom by Anton Bruder: bruderrudmann.org/2026/04/26/l...

The Institute for Human Sciences now has a education program called Library School, a journal entitled Utopian Scholastic, and a progressing imprint under the name Language Arts. There's more in the works...

Institute for Human Sciences@humansciences.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We are pleased to present volume 8 of Utopian Scholastic, the journal of the Institute for Human Sciences, here on the issue of Echoes. Listening to the past, feeling time, doesn't mean going back in time: it means experiencing a moment of past time in the present. www.zotero.org/groups/64299...

Still and always unrivaled. www.npr.org/sections/the...

Listen To My Body Tonight: How Prince's Transgressive Spirit Broke Boundaries

In the nearly four decades of music Prince made, propriety and prejudice were regularly vanquished by good humor and elegant lust.

npr.org

We are pleased to present volume 8 of Utopian Scholastic, the journal of the Institute for Human Sciences, here on the issue of Echoes. Listening to the past, feeling time, doesn't mean going back in time: it means experiencing a moment of past time in the present. www.zotero.org/groups/64299...

The #OxFOS recordings are now available, so you can go and watch @danrdmnn.bsky.social and @kirahopkins.bsky.social talk around open access :) ox.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Page...