Peer Community In

This week, PCI is attending the Researcher to Reader Conference 2026 (r2rconf.com) in London. Thomas Guillemaud joined a panel on independent peer review models, featuring Katherine Brown from The Company of Biologists, Peter Rodgers from eLife, and moderated by Jonny Coates of Rippling Ideas.

PCI Webinar Series - Peer Community In The PCI webinar series is a series of seminars on research practices, publication practices, evaluation, scientific integrity, meta-research, organised by Peer Community In

We are thrilled to announce Paolo Crosetto's presentation titled "The Drain of Scientific Publishing: Why Publishing Has Become a Challenge for Science and How It Can Be Improved" in our upcoming PCI Webinar on March 19th at 4 PM (GMT+1)!! 🤩
To learn more and sign up, please visit buff.ly/bxYWPCz

Resource landscape shapes the composition and stability of the human vaginal microbiota The vaginal microbiota is shaped by bacterial access to specific nutritional resources, influencing health outcomes. This study uses a resource-based model supported by clinical data to identify key e...

Just published in Plos Biology after being evaluated and recommended by PCI Ecology doi.org/10.1371/jour...
 The PCI recommendation and reviews are available here: doi.org/10.24072/pci...

Would you like to support #preprints 📰 but don't know how? Or maybe you don't have much time? ⏳
Below you can find several tips, some of which will only take 5 minutes! ⏲️
#OpenScience

Peer Community In - free peer review & validation of preprints of articles PCI is a non-profit open science organization of scientists to evaluate, recommend and publish research preprints in free open access

You could try peercommunityin.org ;-)

The Psychology Research Institute (INPSY) joined the ranks of PCI supporters in 2026. Many thanks to them! 🙏 inpsy.fss.muni.cz/en

CREAF supports Peer Community In, a scientific organisation for open access El CREAF dona suport a l'organització científica Peer Community In, dedicada a difondre recerca i coordinada per la pròpia comunitat científica. La vinculació del centre parteix de la proposta de…

PCI warmly thanks CREAF (@creaf.cat) for their support ☺️ !
www.creaf.cat/en/articles/...

The PCI-PCJ 2025 recap is here! ✨ Dive into the events of 2025 👀: peercommunityin.org/2026/01/07/p... Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to an amazing year! 🙏 #PCI2025 #Highlights

A first recommended read for this new year, 'Rising Publication Costs Strain Researchers' in The Scientist (featuring PCI 😎): www.the-scientist.com/rising-publi...

Video informativo sobre el servicio de revisión por pares de Peer Community in (PCI) para documentos depositados en el repositorio institucional, DIGITAL.CSIC Descarga el folleto en:… Solicitud en DIGITAL.CSIC de revisión por pares a Peer Community in (PCI)

Did you know that you can now directly submit your preprints hosted on DIGITAL.CSIC to PCI? Check out the short video from CSIC's Library and Archive Network: www.youtube.com/shorts/tWQgs.... For more information, visit: peercommunityin.org/2024/09/18/d....

Reimagining Scholarly Publishing: Outcomes From A Public Forum To Discuss The Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) Publishing Model – ASAPbio At a meeting held on the 3rd December 2025 at Kings College, Cambridge over 50 delegates, comprising researchers, publishers, librarians, research funders and

Very much enjoyed last week's meeting in Cambridge about the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) model for scholarly publishing. There were lots of highly inspiring discussions, including an important discussion about strengthening coordination between initiatives in this area.

asapbio.org/reimagining-...

Home | SFBI Société Française de Bioinformatique The SFBI is the French learned society for bioinformatics. It aims to promote interdisciplinary research at the interface of biology, computer science, mathematics, statistics and physics, and to…

The French Society for Bioinformatics (SFBI) also joined our supporters in 2025!! 🤩 www.sfbi.fr/en/

Happy to hare that the preprint I was advertising below has been published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology:

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Thanks @jevbio.bsky.social for supporting responsible publishing!

PCI Statistics and Machine Learning Peer Community in Statistics and Machine Learning

PCI Statistics and Machine Learning (@pcistatml.bsky.social) is now open for submissions!!
statml.peercommunityin.org
For an updated list of all the thematic PCIs, visit peercommunityin.org/current-pcis/

PCI Webinar series #13 - Simine Vazire - Recognizing and responding to a replication crisis

In case you have missed Simine Vazire's excellent webinar yesterday, here is the link to watch it online: youtu.be/_vb1CNwC3CM Thanks again @simine.com for staying up so late and thanks to the audience for the great questions!

The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics'

From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science, along with the Core Collection and Journal Citation Reports.

An obviously AI-generated figure with AI slop and fake text all over it, recently published in Scientific Reports.

Since AI slop is again all over Scientific Reports, a thread on the economics of grey-zone publishing.

Why does slop keep getting published? What does it mean for science? How can we stop this?

Background readings:
Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r
Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy

The first article recommended by @psych.peercommunityin.org is now published in PCJ!!

For people in Asia and Australia/NZ and for those who cannot attend: the talk will be recorded ;-)

Save the date on December 1st!

cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030

1/ cOAlition S announces its 2026–2030 strategy, guided by a refreshed, shared vision: a scholarly communication system that enables rapid, open, transparent & equitable sharing of trustworthy scientific knowledge.
www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-...
#OpenScience #ScholarlyComm #Plan_S #OpenAccess

DGPs - About DGPs Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie e.V. (DGPs) ist eine Vereinigung der in Forschung und Lehre tätigen Psychologen und Psychologinnen. Die DGPs erstrebt die Förderung und Verbreitung der…

Did you know that PCI is now endorsed by 35 societies and networks? Recently, the German Psychological Society has joined as one of our newest supporters! 🙏
www.dgps.de/en/about-dgps/

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/...

PCI Webinar Series - Peer Community In The PCI webinar series is a series of seminars on research practices, publication practices, evaluation, scientific integrity, meta-research, organised by Peer Community In

📣 Save the date for the 13th PCI webinar on December 1st, 2025, at 4 PM CET!! Simine Vazire (University of Melbourne, Australia) will present "Recognizing and responding to a replication crisis: Lessons from Psychology". For more details and registration, visit: buff.ly/wZNoD2v

We sincerely thank Erasmus University Rotterdam for their support in 2025 via the Erasmus Diamond Open Access Fund 🙏
www.eur.nl/en/library/r...

A person holding a publication titled "A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations" by DORA, in front of a bookshelf.

The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) has released “A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations”, designed to help research performing organizations.
ℹ️ Learn more at https://bit.ly/4gSzFA6

@dorassessment.bsky.social

We posted a short #OAWeek blog post yesterday, highlighting ways in which @uoylibrary.bsky.social supports external, community-led open research initiatives, including @openbookcollective.bsky.social, @peercommunityin.bsky.social , @oapenbooks.bsky.social and @proghist.bsky.social 👇

Open Access Week 2025 From November 4 to 12, 2025, the Institut Polytechnique de Paris will host its second Open Access Week. This international event promotes open science practices and raises awareness among the…

On November 4th, PCI will participate in the Open Access Week hosted by the Institut Polytechnique de Paris! For more information, visit www.ip-paris.fr/en/news/open...

Great news for #replication #research. We have our own journal now! www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/in... #openscience @flavioazevedo.bsky.social

The project "Peer Community in (PCI)" (https://peercommunityin.org/) has been launched in January 2017 and now counts 11 communities: PCI Evolutionary Biology (https://evolbiol.peercommunityin.org/),… Why be a recommender for a PCI?

Curious about becoming a PCI Psych recommender, but not sure if you should? Here's a short video with some reasons why it might be time to sign up! www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BDr... #PsychSciSky #SciPub