David Crotty
@dacrotty.bsky.social
Executive Director, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Head Chef at The Scholarly Kitchen. Ex-Publishing Consultant, Ex-Editor-in-Chief, Ex-Scientist, Ex-etc. All opinions my own.
"The majority of papers most cited in patents are the product of publicly funded research."
Nature@nature.com · 16h agoPatent citations are one way to examine how academic research flows into commercial innovation. Which scholarly papers have patents cited the most? go.nature.com/4w45J9Z
Daaaamn. “AI is the asbestos we're shovelling into the walls of our technological society. Our descendants will spend generations digging it out again, and the longer the bubble goes on without popping, the longer it will take to repair the damage." www.thenerve.news/p/cory-docto...
Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying
It has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our t...
thenerve.news
Trying out the features in Claude for education. Join me as I see how it "helps" me write a research paper. My chosen topic: "AI and education". /1
Universities block faculty from relying on AI detection tools to evaluate student work because the tools are so unreliable and give so many false positives www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
AI Detectors Are Out, New Approaches Are In
A growing number of universities have prohibited AI detectors, arguing they are ‘unreliable’ indicators of cheating. But where does that leave faculty, who know all too well that cheating is rampant i...
insidehighered.com
The way that everyone sees fantom AI in original work now is such a fucked up secondary downstream AI nightmare consequence. People can’t critically identify real art any longer and so everything gets accused of not being original. I don’t know how we climb out of this hole.
Controversial White House plan to overhaul US science funding faces Senate opposition www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #academicSky
Controversial White House plan to overhaul US science funding faces Senate opposition
Proposal to put political appointees in charge of research grants could be temporarily halted if lawmakers’ efforts are successful.
nature.com
Vinyl as merch not music www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a...
A pressing issue: why are vinyl albums becoming so different from their digital versions?
They’re expensive, elaborate – and may not contain all the music. After Olivia Rodrigo, Charli xcx and more sent out incomplete or unfinished vinyl versions, fans are feeling shortchanged
theguardian.com
The new issue of @genomeresearch.bsky.social is now live. Follow the link to new research on ancient DNA yields in stapes and incus, genetic and epigenetic divergence in barn swallows, and more! tinyurl.com/Genome-Res-3...
🚨 NEW ISSUE ALERT!!! 🚨 New Research articles online now at Genes & Development! Also in this issue, an Outlook on isoform-paralogs in neurodisease, and a Cancer Metabolism Review, and an In Memoriam for Greg Hannon. Click here to learn more: ➡️ https://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/40/15-16.toc
A new issue of CSH Protocols is out! @cshlpress.bsky.social The cover image highlights the work by Pierce, Hostetler, & @erinsparks.bsky.social, who describe a protocol for quantifying individual root mechanics in maize using a three-point bend test 🌽 ⬇️Links below
The continuing resolution that will keep the US government funded through December 11 appears to include language delaying the OMB's implementation of new funding guidance until at least that time. www.upi.com/Top_News/US/...
Senate appropriators agree on stopgap bill to avert shutdown - UPI.com
Senators on the Appropriations Committee have agreed on a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown at the end of September.
upi.com
Super useful. I figure a lot of us here in the Sky know this stuff already, but it might be handy to hand to parents, grandparents and pals who are less technically minded. www.librarian.net/NoToAI/
How to disable or avoid intrusive AI – librarian.net
librarian.net
It's cautionary tale for LLM use though. Data aren't democratic; some are better. Reminds me of something a biologist recently said to me of an AI colleague: "His models are fantastic. It's just a shame he doesn't realize the output's garbage because half the papers fed into it are wrong.." 5/n
And here we are. AI has created a whole new level of bias against authors.
Kat Tenbarge@kattenbarge.bsky.social · 4d agoSo I woke up this morning to find out that Ozzy Osbourne’s son made a video falsely accusing me of using AI to write a Rolling Stone article about the Tate brothers.
"Your humanity is decreed by robots. Prove you are human, demands the captcha. I pronounce you AI, says Pangram, after reading your fourth-grade essay on quicksand." Sarah Kendzior sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/quicksand
Quicksand
Gen X was right after all.
sarahkendzior.substack.com
There is a certain level of obtuseness in (some) "AI" apologists when they flounce up to point out what "AI" is good for in science, etc, while eliding the fact that almost none of that use is driving the current market capitalization, environmental degradation and resource hogging of the field
Interviewed for a job here back in the day. All I remember is how incredibly slow the hydraulic elevators were.
John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 4d agoMy publisher was in this building for many years and while it was absolutely an impractical building, I loved visiting and am sad that now the only people who will get to see the view from it are a bunch of rich folks www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Pope Leo received singer and songwriter Patti Smith in private audience this morning. The Pope and Smith are both Chicago natives. She was accompanied by @antoniospadaro.bsky.social, undersecretary for the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education.
WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN. It's time to APPLY HEAVY PRESSURE. Call you Senators NOW: fight2win.standupforscience.net/campaign/omb... I know, everyone hates calling. But this is CRITICAL. Make the calls today! (Use our super easy autodialer tool linked above) www.politico.com/live-updates...
Top senators consider blocking Trump’s grant shakeup in spending stopgap
It’s now “up to leadership” whether to head off the controversial changes, Sen. Susan Collins said.
politico.com
Evidence of the great benefits of AI: it used to take a huge amount of time and effort to make yourself look this stupid; now AI allows you to humiliate yourself almost instantly.
PBS News@pbsnews.org · 6d agoThe State Department said it takes "full responsibility" for "hastily" altering and then presenting a map of Africa at a global AIDS conference that mislabeled every single country it highlighted. An analysis by Reuters found a watermark in the map image that suggests it was made with OpenAI.
Exactly, as most Diamond OA journals do. It's not a sustainable or scalable approach as currently implemented. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-afri...
Africa’s open-access journals ‘run on hidden labour’ - Research Professional News
Volunteer effort and patchwork funding undermine long-term sustainability, report warns
researchprofessionalnews.com
First the physical objects of books and records were devalued and now the content www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/b...
How A.I. Books Sneak Their Way Into Stores
Big booksellers are taking different approaches to dealing with the deluge of titles generated by artificial intelligence.
nytimes.com
Here's what happens when you decide to make scholarly information "free" by sharing your login credentials with a pirate site like SciHub or Libgen. You're "sharing" everything your login credentials give you access to. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/tens-th...
Tens of thousands of university account logins found on dark web
Rise in compromised credentials increasing risk of damaging cyberattacks, UK IT body warns
timeshighereducation.com
Mentioning no names, I can think of at least one person who proposed this back in 2016 scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/10/10/c...
Can Highly Selective Journals Survive on APCs? - The Scholarly Kitchen
Are the APC levels set for high-end OA journals too low to be sustainable? Are there other ways that might help high-end OA journals pay their way?
scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
David Crotty@dacrotty.bsky.social · last wk."Some publishers are likely experimenting with low cost submission fees, not as a revenue source but as a way of deterring crank submissions." newsletter.journalology.com/p/the-jist-j...
"Some publishers are likely experimenting with low cost submission fees, not as a revenue source but as a way of deterring crank submissions." newsletter.journalology.com/p/the-jist-j...
The Jist: July 8 to July 27
Get the gist of recent news stories, written by journalists, that cover topics related to scholarly communication.
newsletter.journalology.com
This + the OMB rule, if implemented, will be the end of American dominance in scientific discovery and will cripple academic research for a generation or more. The latter is the point, and they are willing to endure the former to accomplish it 🧪
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · last wk.In case you missed it: last week White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios issued a big new report on the future of American science. Cole Donovan says it is cover for reallocating funding to the administration's friends—the big AI firms and hyperscalers.
Surely the solution here is just *don't use AI tools* for your writing and research and continue to do your writing and research in ALL the ways you were doing it before you started using AI instead of doing the work??
