Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes are found in hundreds of copies in the human genome.
Do sequence variations in these paralogs change the ribosome function? Yes!
I am excited to share our new preprint @mbarnalab @jkpritch in collaboration with Calico:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/8
19.11.2025 23:00 — 👍 5 🔁 6 💬 2 📌 1
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/...
11.11.2025 11:52 — 👍 641 🔁 453 💬 8 📌 66
Delighted to announce that our consortium-wide paper demonstrating identification of cancer somatic genome alterations & epigenetic aberrations across traditionally intractable genomic regions (i.e., centromeres & telomeres) by leveraging personalized diploid genome assemblies is now up on bioRxiv.
14.10.2025 01:52 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A telomere-to-telomere map of somatic mutation burden and functional impact in cancer https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.10.681725v1
13.10.2025 23:33 — 👍 8 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 1
My "Math, Revealed" series is freely available to anyone -- no paywall! -- in the thread below.
04.07.2025 00:07 — 👍 137 🔁 53 💬 6 📌 5
This upcoming #WorldEnvironmentDay, we’re highlighting how SMaHT is advancing science in ways that support both human health and sustainability.
By deepening our understanding of somatic mosaicism, SMaHT is helping to drive more precise diagnoses and support a more efficient healthcare system. 🌱🌍
03.06.2025 16:02 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Now published in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
23.05.2025 18:39 — 👍 97 🔁 40 💬 1 📌 0
Apologies for getting a bit political on main tonight.
I think this cartoon sums it up.
20.01.2025 22:10 — 👍 14891 🔁 2291 💬 113 📌 116
I freakin love what Liz has been doing.
18.01.2025 01:58 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I am so sorry for what you are going through Nancy. My prayers are with you and your family.
23.12.2024 23:57 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Awesome! I feel like there are so many amazing rust-based command-line tools that make life so much easier. I've started replacing tools I used to use with rust-based alternatives (e.g, grep -> rg).
20.12.2024 19:05 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
While I appreciate bat for its code viewing capabilities, I find it frustrating when I use it to view binary file which bat doesn’t support. Not to mention the syntax highlighting is lost when piping (gzip -cd foo.bed.gz | bat). But overall bat is so badass I don’t use less anymore
20.12.2024 18:11 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
To Democracy
Here’s to democracy and to resilience.
14.12.2024 08:30 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
The president of South Korea has just been impeached.
14.12.2024 08:10 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Why misogyny is at the heart of South Korea's presidential elections
Disgruntled young men who resent feminism are the focus of candidates vying to be president.
Just a little reminder that the South Korean president who just declared martial law was elected two years ago on a wave of anti-feminist backlash. Misogyny is routinely part of the authoritarian package.
www.bbc.com/news/world-a...
03.12.2024 18:11 — 👍 7035 🔁 2572 💬 109 📌 138
