Nature asks, can you fit a PhD into a 40 hour week, and of course only asks full-time students for views www.nature.com/articles/d41... Without a part-time option that fits around my career, I would not have been able to start at all.
I always say you have to separate the goal and norm of OA - which almost everyone now agrees with - from the business model. Former has to be rescued from being tied to APC. Latter needs a variety of approaches to address equity and affordability which we are still a very long way from resolving.
I happened to mention the resurgence of analogue and libraries in a meeting just now. It's true. We see it on campus everyday. It's great.
Sharing a brief writeup of my visit to Beijing to attend the ZGC international open science forum last week: www.ifla.org/news/open-sc...
LOL same.
the attempts to rewrite open research as all about reproducibility and integrity are great for those with new products to sell but not so good for everyone else
At the Rangoon Tea House reflecting on things. For starters, I’m at the Bangkok branch, not back at their original home in Yangon. How much has changed.
hey! I tell you the thing I didn't see much of - eReaders. Only the occasional BOOX on the subway. I was a bit disappointed tbh. I guess most people are just reading on phone. To be fair I can only get apps like QQ Reader on phone, not Kobo.
I also really want one of those smart watches all the kids have with camera built in. Penny’s watch from Inspector Gadget brought to life!
I just got back from another trip and another obvious change is the rise of Chinese fashion brands.
Yes, that's right! Open is vital for so many reasons that have a global context.
The author seems to be projecting something that isn't there. There are a handful of 'revolutionaries' in European science, but as for open access? We've all been too polite.
We’ve all heard this one. Before. We need to find new language for commercial publishing fees. The term open access has been captured and rendered meaningless. I’m midway through reading your book btw - fantastic work!
I used this as a framing example in a recent talk I gave about the "librarian's dividend" which is my probably-far-too-positive spin on this absolute garbage fire -- that at least maybe we're forced into more appreciation and value for the people and institutions who help us evaluate information.
“Before the Taliban we were so happy”. On “The Weekend Intelligence”, Neggeen Sadid talks to three young women from Afghanistan who used to dream of building a life in their own country. Now they only dream of leaving
Authors Deserve to Keep Their Rights!
Too many researchers unknowingly sign away their rights.
KR21 calls for stronger Author #RightsRetention.
📄 KR21 Position: www.knowledgerights21.org/wp-content/u...
🗃️ More resources to #RetainYourRights: www.knowledgerights21.org/retainyourri...
#Science4EU
I was at a meeting in a coffee shop last week that played the whole soundtrack start to finish. So good.
Come on now, Economist. You can't post this and then not give the names of the 7 cha chaan teng places in Burwood! Kowloon Cafe is good and conveniently located in Burwood Chinatown. What are the others?!
This is fascinating: www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/I...
Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…
The second, on June 25th, will be a talk about the sequel, of sorts, to my book Calling Bullshit.
"Modern Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?" is the new, free online course that Jevin West and I developed about how to think, learn, and thrive in a ChatGPT world.
UNSW School of BABS Special Seminar Peer review meltdown Carl T. Bergstrom, University of Washington Host/Chair Prof Mark Tanaka Monday 23 June 2025 1pm-2pm Mathews Theatre C You’ve seen it yourself. Peer review is coming apart at the seams. Editors face a mighty struggle to recruit reviewers. Researchers are overwhelmed with review requests. Authors wait months or longer for low-quality reviews of their work. In this talk, I present a series of simple mathematical models to illustrate what is happening and why. (1) An elite journal relies on peer review to identify the top papers; knowing the quality of the peer review process, authors self-screen and send only their best work to this journal. But when the reward from publishing in the elite journal increases, submission volume increases. (2) When submission volume increases, review quality drops as the most qualified reviews are no longer available — but we prove that when review quality drops, submission volume necessarily increases as more authors try to sneak in undeservedly. This feedback process swamps the journals with submissions and erodes the quality of review. (3) We next consider what happens as elite journals proliferate and show that, paradoxically, as the number of elite journals increases, researchers self-screen more assiduously, but the review load continues to increase. To illustrate the consequences, we consider welfare measures for authors, reviewers, and readers. (4) Finally, we explore the way in which aggressive desk rejection policies can partially check this peer review meltdown.
Australian friends!
I'm going to be visiting Sydney in just over a week. I'll be at UNSW on June 23-25th and Macquarie on June 26-27th.
I'd love to catch up with people in person, and also will be giving (at least) two talks at UNSW.
The first is science-of-science modeling talk, on June 23:
Awesome - will confer with colleagues and get in touch with you in good time before you are here.
Just saw an event pop up at my campus - (in Sydney) - my Library has just launched an event space with one of the earlier Tactical Tech 'Misinformation Room' installations and we are expanding into events and readings - your Bullshit Machines course is of course a superb go to, looking forward.
The drama, the memes, the characters were beyond parody, yet somehow real. This dissertation analyzes the early afternoon of 5 June 2025.
Ts&Cs of these sites are traditionally exceedingly complicated and one-sided (in favour of the platform). Traditional publishers also don't tend to look kindly on the inclusion of VoRs on these sites (which don't have CC BY licences). Please read what you sign! #academicsky #skybrarians #oa
And if you don't have an institutional repository to share your work, try the Knowledge Commons hcommons.org
We don't talk often enough about the problems of academic 'social networking' sites like Academia and ResearchGate for researchers and knowledge dissemination. Put your work in an institutional or disciplinary repository instead. They won't AI your work.