Juan Pablo Alperin

Curate your own newspaper with RSS Escape newsletter inbox chaos and algorithmic surveillance by building your own enshittification-proof newspaper from the writers you already read

Newsletter: In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.

Here’s how to use RSS.
www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-...

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Martin Fenner (@mfenner) has been on a mission to capture and preserve science blogs at Rogue Scholar.
https://rogue-scholar.org/

I'm very happy to announce that he's now captured my old blog, Open Access News -- more than 16.3k posts, 2002-2010 […]

This will gobble up a few minutes of your time in a rewarding way.

"Three diplomats told Reuters president Emmanuel Macron had to go it alone to recognise a Palestinian state as London did not want to face the wrath of the United States, and Ottawa took a similar stance."

Canada proving once again that defying Trump is all talk and no action.

🚨 New article !

📋« Scholarly publishing’s hidden diversity: How exclusive databases sustain the oligopoly of academic publishers »

👥 Written by @lariviev.bsky.social & @simonvbellen.bsky.social & @juancommander.scholcommlab.ca

📌 shorturl.at/HBFqG

The COMET Model — COMET

Explore the COMET Model. Read our article ‘The COMET Model: Transitioning to Community-Curated PID Metadata Enrichment’ - a deep dive into the background, principles, and elements of the model in demonstration.
www.cometadata.org/the-comet-mo...

This is a really exciting metadata development. Collaborative stewardship and distributed assertion models are the right way to go and some smart people are working on it.

Scientific publishing needs urgent reform to retain trust in research process | Letters Letters: Readers respond to an article on how too many low-quality papers and journals are being churned out

📢 Broken incentives & hijacked #OpenAccess — sound familiar?

@theguardian.com article sparked responses including a powerful one at #ScholCommLab @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca @eschares.bsky.social Leigh-Ann Butler & @juancommander.scholcommlab.ca

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

#AcademicSky

Meet John Willinsky, the founder of Public Knowledge Project and Open Journal Systems.

In this episode, John reflects on how his work in education, migration, and even his band has shaped a lifelong mission to make research open and accessible to all.
buff.ly/s2nC6yn

Search for B.C.'s Best Symbol: Round 2 — Nature | CBC News For a province so synonymous with trees, and with so many people who love all they provide, it's ironic that the two species British Columbians might love the most carry with them a hint of false adve...

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YouTube video by CBC British Columbia Two titans. One winner. Meet the finalists for B.C.'s best tree

Greatly enjoyed this in depth breakdown by Darius Mahdavi about the differences between Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar for the Best Symbols bracket.

A fun example of how these silly brackets allow for neat reporting on cultural, historical and geographical stuff about our province.

Open Position: Community Engagement Lead (full time) at Open Book Collective Looking for a colleague interested in helping the Open Book Collective advocate for and deliver a more sustainable and equitable future for Open Access book publishing

🚨 OBC is hiring! We are looking to appoint a Community Engagement Lead to support our outreach work. The role would suit someone passionate about delivering a fairer, sustainable future for #OAbooks. Deadline August 17th. Please spread the word! openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/open-pos...

Exactly this

Letters to the Editor regarding academic publishing, including one by @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca @juancommander.scholcommlab.ca, Leigh-Ann Butler, and me .

Scientific publishing needs urgent reform to retain trust in research process | Letters Letters: Readers respond to an article on how too many low-quality papers and journals are being churned out

"The dysfunctions of scientific publishing that your article so aptly captured derive from two forces [...] - researchers are incentivised to publish as much as possible and publishers make more money if they publish more papers."

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

#OASPA2025 Sep 22-24 2025 | Showcase on 3 panels:

🔹Open access of what, for what, and why?
🔸The library at the heart of the open access transition
🔹Scaling inclusive models in open access

Details at mailchi.mp/oaspa/confer...

charleswatkinson.bsky.social | rospyne.bsky.social | cern.bsky.social

In April we declined an offer of $60,000 to license a song of ours to an Airbnb commercial.

Airbnb continues to make money from stolen Palestinian land and contributes to the housing crisis worldwide. We do not wish to promote or profit from this.

Free Palestine. Eat the Rich.

@dannykay68.bsky.social has been a hero.

Scholarly publishing’s hidden diversity: How exclusive databases sustain the oligopoly of academic publishers Global scholarly publishing has been dominated by a small number of publishers for several decades. This paper revisits the data on corporate control of scholarly publishing by analyzing the relative ...

📚 New Research Alert - Scholarly publishing’s hidden diversity: How exclusive databases sustain the oligopoly of academic publishers

📖 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

@juancommander.scholcommlab.ca @erudit.org

#ScholComm #OpenAccess #DiamondOA #Bibliodiversity #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicSky

📢 Don't forget to register for the @cometadata.bsky.social Community Meeting July 15th!

Agenda

🎯 What is the COMET Model?
🎯 Overview of current pilot projects
🎯 Initial project findings
🎯 Discussion time
🎯 Opportunities for involvement

#Metadata #ScholComm #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicSky

Why Metadata Enrichment Matters for the Public Knowledge Project Learn why PKP is deeply involved in the Collaborative Metadata initiative (COMET), to improve the completeness and accuracy of metadata.

I've been putting a lot of focus on #metadata and metadata quality recently, both in research and in work with @cometadata.bsky.social . Here's a blog post I wrote about why it matters, to me, and to @pkp.sfu.ca : pkp.sfu.ca/2025/07/11/m...

Canada needs to follow through on its promise to help people in Gaza Ottawa’s ‘special measures’ visa program for Gaza has so far proved to be little more than a cruel taunt

Canada says it's a refuge. It has dangled only false hopes to Palestinians seeking to study here after Israel bombed their universities, or who have applied to be reunited with family.

I co-wrote this piece with Deborah Cowen, Kyo Maclear and Madeleine Thien www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/7a8fbe1...

We Want Your Feedback! New PKP + SFU Open Publishing Courses Coming Soon - Public Knowledge Project PKP is pleased to announce collaborations with SFU and Lifelong Learning for new open publishing courses, and seeks community feedback.

We're going to offer 3 new #scholcomm courses through @pkp.sfu.ca and my program (SFU Publishing). Think you might be interested? We're looking for input. Read about courses and share your thoughts here: pkp.sfu.ca/2025/07/07/w...

Why I'm more optimistic than others about metascience (or metaresearch)

(I wanted to write up some thoughts on #metascience2025 but I just don't have the time so this thread will have to do.)

Thanks for the report on what was a troubling moment. For me the lesson was that the Metascience ‘discourse coalition’ absolutely has to question/critique the shifting power dynamics as more private organisations enter the open science space. And associated questions of trust. 1/2

I'm so glad this happened. The uncritical aspect of Metascience proponents is precisely why I've not embraced the term

One speaker referred to Metascience as ‘successful branding’ to engage policy makers; another spoke of it ‘strategically forgetting’ well-established disciplines like STS and Philosophy of Science.

Uber drivers in B.C.'s capital of Victoria vote to unionize | CBC News More than 500 Uber drivers in Victoria, B.C., have voted to unionize and have received union certification from the B.C. Labour Relations Board.

Huge win for gig workers! Over 500 Uber drivers in Victoria, B.C. have unionized with @UFCW_1518. It’s proof that when workers organize, they can win. 💪 #CanLab

If you want to stop funding everything Amazon does and stands for, you’ve come to the right place.

We’re Bookshop.org, an ethical alternative for buying books online. Every single purchase financially supports independent bookstores, allowing them to continue serving their communities.