Superspennende å høre på Universitetsbiblioteket UiB snakke om critical librarianship og avkolonisering

This is... so relatable 😅 Nice to see it being discussed at the Library network for PhD support! [Bibliotekenes nettverk for ph.d.-støtte]) #bibliosky

Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet.
This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.

Platform capture of scientific knowledge production: publishers’ dominance, generative AI and Subsumption of academic labor Academic publishing is dominated by a small group of publishers whose platformization practices are threatening academic institutions and their values. These publishers deploy digital research and ...

"I must study politics and the impact of AI, so that our children and grandchildren can study whatever they want without being ripped off by these idiots" - John Adams, more or less

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Vågn op, Norge: Tiden er inne for digital uavhengighet Mens norske rektorer orienterer seg mot Europa, fortsetter vi å bygge vår digitale infrastruktur på amerikansk grunn. Det henger ikke sammen.

www.khrono.no/vagn-op-norg...

This is fun to see laid out like this! (I guess many of my followers might find themselves in the "Norwegian Progressive Intellectuals" cluster, which I enjoyed seeing on this map)

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

These eager beavers saved the Czech government $1.2 million After plans stalled for a new dam in the Czech Republic, eight beavers saved the day seemingly overnight. “At this point, nothing that beavers do surprises me.”

2025 was mostly garbage, but there were some good moments.

One of my favorites was when a family of beavers built a dam in just a few days, saving the Czech Republic 30 million Czech koruna (US$1.2 million) for a wetland restoration project the government had been planning for 7 years. 🦫 🌿

Bronze plaque saying "A Letter to the Future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. August 2019. 415ppm CO2"

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

a close up of a man wearing a pair of glasses with a computer screen reflected in them . Alt: a close up of a man wearing a pair of glasses with a computer screen reflected in them and data running quickly.

The posters and presentations from the Workshop on Bibliometrics and Research Policy #NWB2025 are now available on Figshare! @nwb2025.bsky.social
Presentations: doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...
Posters: doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...

It seemed so incredible that I visited the link. It's REAL. What was this story about almost 28% margin profit necessary to maintain high editorial standards?

A really great set of 3 papers for anyone wanting to get to grips with systemic issues in scientific publishing in a concise and data-supported way!

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…

Bug in Springer Nature metadata may be causing ‘significant, systemic’ citation inflation retractionwatch.com/2025/11/11/b...

You know what doesn't wear an "I read banned books" shirt to work?

A censorious computer program labeled "librarian".

And that denial of agency is why fascists are so eager to displace librarians with a machine that does not do the same job and thereby poses no threat to power.

This is so nice. I love libraries.

"We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Very nice photo! Congratulations on your decade in Norway!

Although I see Scopus is listed as an alternative, which undercuts the symbolism a little? This is not to be negative, it is a big symbolic step. But practically, I know a number of institutions have been in the situation of cutting one already due to budgetary reasons and overlap.

Interesting! "Closed commercial databases, such as Web of Science, are not in line with our desire to work with open research information as much as possible. The UU signed the Barcelona Declaration in 2024 to this effect."

If I'm honest, it's taken me longer than it should have to get to grips with what it does, ticking along behind things - but yes!

Sounds like something my colleagues at the law library could probably help with :) www.uib.no/ub/76645/ret...

Program for #nwb2025 is now out - only a few places left! www.nifu.no/nwb2025/prog... @nwb2025.bsky.social

Journal hijacking – the story of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems - University of Oslo Library In early 2023, the editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS) became aware that a fake clone of the journal had started to operate, tricking authors into paying article processin...

På torsdag er det gratis online seminar (Open Science Lunch) hvor jeg skal snakke om da tidskriftet "vårt" ble kapret og det ble produsert falske artikler i mitt navn. Kom og hør en ekte røverhistorie fra akademia! www.ub.uio.no/english/cour...

Nice to add @ubuit.bsky.social - the first UH-library account I've come across so far! :)

Excited to share my SK post on this platform!

– Vi har forsket ferdig. Nå trenger vi handling, sier marinbiologer.
Artikkelen er produsert av Universitetet i Oslo. www.forskning.no/biologisk-ma...

Would you like to analyze your data in a smarter way, but need some help to get started? Join our next Software Carpentry @carpentries.carpentries.org course at @unibergen.bsky.social! Sign-up deadline is this Friday, Aug 22nd: www.uib.no/en/ub/178263...

"Rogue Scholar science blog archive improves science blogs in important ways, including full-text search, long-term archiving, DOIs and metadata, and communities" - Well this seems cool! Posting for anyone with a blog to check out: rogue-scholar.org

And it seems it will be better integrated with OpenAlex soon blog.ourresearch.org/were-rebuild...

I use the Unpaywall browser extension. It still requires you having a search tool to find the article of course, but then it will notify you if it has a link to a repository copy somewhere unpaywall.org/products/ext...