Richard Sever

And by "traditional", we mean a formal process that was only defined in the 1960s and only been near universal for <15% of the history of science publishing...

😂

maybe. but if it becomes transactional that adds a financial incentive that could draw in more of the type of alleged reviewer who OK'd that paper...

I’ve said it before: peer review at good journals can be good and valuable, but at the system level, “peer reviewed” [alone] does not convey any level of validity.

Operation Bluebird wants to relaunch “Twitter,” says Musk abandoned the name and logo “Abandonment” offers rare chance to reclaim one of tech’s most recognized brands.

Operation Bluebird wants to relaunch “Twitter,” says Musk abandoned the name and logo arstechnica.com/information-...

Graffiti spotted on artwork at #cellbio2025

😆

Great to see @greally.bsky.social ‘s Epigenetics book in the wild at #cellbio2025 - all that pestering paid off

bioRxiv, medRxiv, openRxiv stickers, pens, camera covers, window clings, magnets and one remaining T-shirt at booth 1134 at #cellbio2025 - last chance today!

I guess the question is whether they removed it or just revealed that in many cases it was never there

Academics should stop fixating on the editorial power fallacy Complaints about journal editors’ decisions ignore the root cause of the research assessment problem: career structure, says Richard Sever

If we deny this we want solve things. A classic case is confusing symptoms for cause and pointing fingers elsewhere rather than admitting the root cause www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/acad...

sure - I'm not endorsing the view, just saying what I see and that if we want the good outcomes we must be honest about peoples' motivation. Everything about how (most) academics behave in the publishing system points to what Christophe says here as being correct bsky.app/profile/chri...

Increasingly it is (and will be) about teams. But there is still a huge amount of research done by small PI-led groups. And the obsession and fights about author order - who is first, who is last author, who is corresponding - is indicative that in those teams credit is very important...

possibly - but I think it would be naive to deny that force.

yep - absolutely. key is to admit this and try and align incentives so the good things happen as a matter of course. As I often say about preprints, altruism is great when there's also something in it for you.

This came up yesterday in discussions at #cellbio2025 about ‘journals as communities’. My point: hard to square that with IF obsession and headlong rush to Nature Communications, Scientific Reports, etc., which whatever their merits are not communities 2/2

Tim Hunt once said, “We do science because we want to discover things about the world and then boast about what we discovered.”

Like the sentiment below, there’s a truth to that statement one must be conscious of when rethinking any aspect of the scientific workflow. 1/2

The first paper of my PhD is now available as a preprint! 🎉

Transposable elements (TEs) don't just jump within fungal genomes, they also move extensively between species. In this study, we screened over 1,300 fungal genomes and found a conservative estimate of 5,500+ horizontal transfer events.

American Economic Association Imposes Lifetime Membership Ban on Summers Over Epstein Revelations | News | The Harvard Crimson The American Economic Association banned former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers from membership for life on Tuesday, describing his conduct as “fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of p...

American Economic Association bans Lawrence Summers for life www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

well the same as any AI use. But TBH a few dozen authors using an AI review compared with millions of Internet users using ChatGPT obsessively feels like a drop in the ocean, and flying around the word at a drop of a hat for every seminar invite probably has greater environmental impact?

This is an important distinction, because our aim is not to prescribe what happens downstream but give authors options - traditional journals, portable peer review, AI review, data verification, etc. by decoupled third parties 2/2 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

AI reviewers are here — we are not ready Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer.

"As the scientific community starts to embrace AI, it must make sure it isn’t solving a logistical problem by creating an intellectual one" 👏 @giorgio.gilest.ro

One correction: bioRxiv isn't integrating qed; it's a transfer option, like transfer to ~300 journals 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Data provenance...

Heading out to #cellbio2025. bioRxiv/medRxiv/openRxiv have booth 1134. swing by or ping me here if you want to chat preprints and all things sci comm

ASCB President Mary Munson awards Francis Collins the ASCB Public Service award, noting this is the first time it’s been awarded for defense of science #cellbio2025

Heading out to #cellbio2025. bioRxiv/medRxiv/openRxiv have booth 1134. swing by or ping me here if you want to chat preprints and all things sci comm

Chart showing that since 2016, a vast majority of U.S. adults have said healthy children should be required to get the vaccine to attend public school because of the potential risks for others when children are not vaccinated. But support for school MMR requirements dropped from 82% in 2019 to 69% in 2025. This decline is largely because of a steep slide in support among Republicans. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 79% of Republicans said healthy children should be required to get the MMR vaccine to attend school. This share sunk to 57% in 2023, then to 52% in 2025. In contrast, Democrats’ views on school MMR requirements have remained stable, with solid majority support.

Republicans increasingly oppose requiring healthy kids to get MMR vaccines to attend public schools
2016 19%
2019 20%
2023 42%
2025 47%
www.pewresearch.org/science/2025... 🧪

Hmm..

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