Brad McFadyen (he/him)

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.

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.

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/...

Enjoyed writing this. Would great to hear other points of advice from established reaserchers and opinions of those getting, or about to get, ready to embark on a new research career.
Thank you again ISPGR.

Brings back fond memories of spending a wonderful week on Isle of Mull in 2019. AirBnb was the converted dairy house of a working farm.

Good point. Wait for, "some of my newer colleagues were born during my beginning years as a prof"😬

what he said

I could not agree with this more.

#ISPGR2025

Joris Boulo talking about the affects of an inactive lifestyle on one's daily locomotor ability such as navigating crowds. If you are interested in the VR platform used that included collaboration with @anneheleneolivier.bsky.social, come see us.

Great discussions during and after thanks to all attending

Thank you Melvyn. I am very honored, especially to receive this from a society so near and dear to my heart.

Thank you Kim.

Looking forward to seeing you all in a few days time and hearing all about the exciting new work in the areas of posture and gait (and everything between!) #ISPGR2025

Jury Theorems for Peer Review Marcus Arvan, Liam Kofi Bright, and Remco Heesen Abstract: Peer review is often taken to be the main form of quality control on academic research. Usually journals carry this out. However, parts of maths and physics appear to have a parallel, crowd-sourced model of peer review, where articles are posted on the arXiv to be publicly discussed. In this article we argue that crowd-sourced peer review is likely to do better than journal-solicited peer review at sorting articles by quality. Our argument rests on two key claims. First, crowd-sourced peer review will lead on average to more reviewers per article than journal-solicited peer review. Second, due to the wisdom of the crowds, more reviewers will tend to make better judgements than fewer reviewers will. We make the second claim precise by looking at the Condorcet jury theorem as well as two related jury theorems developed specifically to apply to peer review.

Paper is finally up and open access (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...), it's a sequel to an earlier paper where we'd argued that there's not good evidence that pre-publication peer review is a net benefit (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1093/...). So in this one we suggest an alternative.

Don’t miss the deadline for this fantastic event in Montreal next Fall !

Deadline extended for early bird registration - May 28

Thank you for having me 😊🙏

iwaiworkshop.github.io
@activeinference.bsky.social

Humans project tactile sensations from a tool into space, as if part of the body. How? We show tactile feedback is projected into gaze-centered coordinates, offering a framework for tool-based sensory projection.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@lukemillerneuro.bsky.social @pmedendorp.bsky.social

😃 A new article published in J Biomech by Bailey et al shows that motor fluctuations in treadmill gait of young adults were characterised by four gait fluctuation phenotypes, interpreted as repeaters, replacers, moderate fluctuators, and mixed fluctuators

👀 buff.ly/BnlohXD
#BiomechSky

YouTube video by Average Joes We are Canadian.

Jeff Douglas reprises his iconic 2000 ad "I am Canadian." with "We are Canadian."
youtu.be/1LzhCLzfJFg?...

Come to Amsterdam this fall (Oct 8-10) for the International Motor Impairment Conference!

GOP Proposed Budget that GUTS Social Programs, but Gives the Rich WHAT?! YouTube video by #ResistanceLive

Coming up at 12n ET, we're talking about the GOP budget proposal horror show, RFK Jr's confirmation (!!!), how far impeachment of judges (per Musk) could go, the SAVE Act and how it could deny women the right to vote, the ACLU's case re: Guantanamo, and way more.

youtube.com/live/9gOGuaE...

Psychonomic Society One World Seminar “How big is that bagel? Differences in size constancy for perception and action" by Mel Goodale Time: 11:15am Eastern Time on February 26. There's also a head shot of Mel Goodale, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Really looking forward to discussing the operation of size constancy in visual perception and visually guided action as part of the Psychonomic Society's One World Seminar Series on Feb 26 at 11:15am to 1pm Eastern Time. 🧪🧠 Abstract and registration here. us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

I loved using oscilloscopes.

Old school cool

😃New article published in J Biomech!

"Adapting lateral stepping control to walk on winding paths", by Render et al.

👀 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#journalofbiomechanics
#BiomechSky

Awareness of Health and Social Workers on Inclusion Health Groups in the UK

My colleague Jon Warne and two of our excellent MSc Physiotherapy students are conducting a survey on inclusion health

They’re specifically interested in awareness and knowledge of inclusion health groups among health and social workers

Completing/sharing the survey would be highly appreciated!

Effects of lifestyle activity level on anticipatory locomotor adjustments for pedestrian circumvention: an exploratory study - PubMed Navigating public environments requires adjustments to one's walking patterns to avoid stationary and moving obstacles. It is known that physical inactivity induces alterations in motor capacities, bu...

Happy to share Joris Boulo's newest pub showing that an inactive lifestyle influences how we plan and execute the circumvention of another pedestrian.
Stay tuned for the added influence of ageing as well as crowded environments. 👇
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39825960/

After his executive order on sex, is Trump legally the first female president? The confusing and vague executive order underscores how complex sex is and why it’s hard to reduce it into a neat binary

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Don't let Elon Musk interfere in our elections.
Here is my letter to Elections Canada to protect our electoral process from interference by the X algorithm.
www.charlieangus.ca/_files/ugd/5...
If you are worried about Musk's extremism
please send an email to:
Stephane.Perrault@elections.ca

Trump hits NIH with ‘devastating’ freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring Researchers facing

“The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating.” scim.ag/40ureTO

Stay safe James, you and your family

Sorry "academic" bsky for this politically-based message, but despite the great respect I have for my US colleagues, I am moved after the incoming US president's constant threats directed our way to point out wherever I can that Canada is the TRUE NORTH STRONG AND FREE! 🇨🇦