Yannick Tremblay

🚨Job claxon 🚨

University College Cork is looking to appoint a lecturer in Medical Microbiology into a permanent, non-clinical post

A great opportunity in a microbiology powerhouse

For details go to my.corehr.com/pls/uccrecru... and enter reference number 092153

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/...

This is a small snow plow for sidewalks

If your city plows the roads but leaves sidewalks up to property owners, your city hates pedestrians.

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫

Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization.

Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

#ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology

The Simpsons old man sitting on a stump telling a story but all the kids have been replaced with headstones

me telling my grandkids what it was like to have vaccines

Female labour force participation increasing in Quebec (relative to the rest of Canada or the US) after the introduction of subsidized daycare

Quebec introduced subsidized daycare in 1997 (initially $5 a day, now $9).

Afterwards, female labour force participation rose quite dramatically relative to the rest of Canada and the US.

MCB @ U of Guelph is hiring (again)! 🎉
Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Biochemistry
Part of our strategic cluster hire.

Apply now 👉 careers.uoguelph.ca/job/Guelph-A...

#Biochemistry #FacultyJobs #AcademicTwitter #MolBio

Evolution of the Age Profile of Canadian Professoriate, 2000 to the present. Number of profs over 65 is up from roughly 800 in 2000 to around 6000 today.

No one disputes that students deserve to learn. But there is literally decades of research on learning that shows that students aren’t able to assess if they have learned within the time span of a course. Using testing over time to show if students retain knowledge. 1/

Evaluation is important and we have good ways of evaluating instructors (observations, audits, mentoring). But the evidence is clear that asking students to Yelp review their instructors the week before exams yields no valuable information on teaching or learning--just customer satisfaction.

If you work in higher ed, you need to get your folks together and end the use of course evals or at least bar their consideration in evaluation, promotion, and hiring. This needed to happen yesterday because they don't measure learning, they measure instructor gender, but now it's a snitch pool.

In case you’re wondering, the “caterpillars are hybrid worms” paper at PNAS remains alive (and guessing won’t be retracted ever)

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Likewise the ability of water to remember solutes www.nature.com/articles/333...

Background: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_m...

Planning Your Publication: Pathways to Success Webinar details social card.

Missed the webinar? The recording is now available!

Learn how to plan your publication, select the right journal, write clear titles and abstracts, and navigate Open Access publishing.

📽️▶️ buff.ly/iYbfBsA

#ResearchSkills #OpenAccess #ECRs #AcademicWriting

Close-up of pink agar plate with bacterial colonies, promoting a call for papers on microbiology education perspectives.

What does innovation in microbiology teaching look like?

We invite papers on pedagogy, tech, curriculum, and student engagement in microbiology education.

More information ▶️ buff.ly/OMVT8xk

#SciComm #MicrobiologyEducation #AcademicSky #SciComm 🧪 #AcWri #PHDSky #ScholComms #OpenScience #SciPol

A framework for values-based assessment in promotion, tenure, and other academic evaluations

🎓 Today we publish another evaluation for an article whose authors present a novel method—developed through a series of workshops—for assessing academics.

🙏 Thanks to the authors, reviewers & editors!

👇 Read the full text, reviews & editorial assessment on MetaROR metaror.org/kotahi/artic...

Social card for the Canadian Journal of Microbiology Call for Papers: Nurturing Minds, Culturing Microbes: Perspectives on Microbiology Education

New #callforpapers! This collection will explore how #microbiology is taught, learned, and communicated both inside and outside the classroom!

Submit your research to @canjmicrobio.bsky.social ▶️ buff.ly/G9kA9rl

it seems like a real problem for colleges that some large percentage of the students don't see any value in learning the stuff they're ostensibly there to learn.

or at least, they see the assignments as pointless hoops with no relationship to learning anything. 1

This dude has flopped every single time Anderson has closed in on him, what a bitch

This is entirely on the officials for managing exactly 0% of this series well

The extraterrestrial hypothesis: an epistemological case for removing the taboo - European Journal for Philosophy of Science The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC) is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. Adva...

Springer-Nature publishing the best science

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

'the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. '

Functional genomics of chitin degradation by Vibrio parahaemolyticus reveals finely integrated metabolic contributions to support environmental fitness Author summary Vibrio species are key contributors to ocean carbon cycling by degrading and assimilating robust chitin polymers. These waterborne and seafood associated bacteria also infect humans lea...

Our Tn-seq paper is out in PLOS Genetics! @plos.org
We found a new Vibrio chitoporin and a key regulator of chitinolytic growth. Lots of other cool stuff too!
Great work by Oriana Robinson and @landongetz.bsky.social

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

If professors had actual brainwashing power, we wouldn't see gender and racial bias in student evals.

RNA xkcd.com/3056

PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses 2025 PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) & Católica Biomedical Research Centre (CBR) July 06 -19, 202...

PhD Summer School on Host-Microbe Symbioses. Awesome topic. Unbeatable location.

#symbiosky #microsky #evobio

gimm.idloom.events/phd-summer-s...

Hi everyone, I am selecting landmark papers in bacterial physiology for a course. I have a few favorites in mind, but was wondering if people would be willing to share theirs.

Excited to share my first paper on an educational activity developed in a class I co-teach with @yannickdntremblay.bsky.social

Overheard at a conference: an in-class activity to foster classroom discussion on ethics and experimental systems in microbiology research | Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education Ethics are a key component of microbiology and microbiology research and are carefully considered at all steps from project conception, design, data analysis to publication, and post-publication use o...

My first pub on an educational activity developed with @jthomassin.bsky.social. It is online in JMBE @asm.org
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...