Diana Spieler (@diannaspielt) — Bluesky Profile

3 months ago

Join the discussion about good modelling practices in #hydrology and submit your work by Jan 15th: www.egu26.eu/session/55930

Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna!
Diana Spieler @diannaspielt.bsky.social, Zhenyu Wang, Wouter Knoben & Anneli Guthke

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4 months ago

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/...

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5 months ago

„it is the “system” and not luck that should provide the necessary support [to academic parents]“

Very happy to have been part of the enlightening blog series. Thank you to all our interviewees for giving their honest insights.

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5 months ago

GRDC-Caravan: extending Caravan with data from the Global Runoff Data Centre Abstract. Large-sample datasets are essential in hydrological science to support modelling studies and advance process understanding. Here, we present the GRDC-Caravan dataset, an extension to the lar...

After about one year in review, the dataset paper for the Caravan-GRDC extension was finally published.

See: essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

I am so happy that GRDC was open for this effort and made some of their data freely available through Caravan.

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5 months ago

So happy we found the time to add this conteibution with ideas for change to our blog post series on navigating parenthood as an ECR

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7 months ago

LLMs as a machine for repeating every error of history.

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8 months ago

The biggest publishers pulled profit margins in 2023 that rival Big Tech.

And they still charge you to publish and your library to read.

When are we going to start seriously thinking of alternatives to reform #PeerReview?

🧪 #SciPub #AcademicPublishing

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8 months ago

Streams have become drier in a warming climate.

7/17, #WARR talks on
intermittent streams + collaborative science teams,
Dr. Margaret Zimmer @margaretzimmer.bsky.social
Dr. Amy Burgin @burginam.bsky.social

Register: psu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

@waterbarnes.bsky.social @devonkerins.bsky.social

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8 months ago

Wooop! Go Caroline!

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9 months ago

Kinda sad to see but mirrors my own experience here recently. Initially, I thought that academic twitter would move here but now it feels like some stayed with Twitter, some became active on LinkedIn, some are here and some stopped interacting on social media all together.

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10 months ago

It's time for #EGU25! So here is a quick reminder of our Good Modelling Practice session happening on Tuesday, 2 pm. Lots of amazing posters can also be seen from 10 to 12:30!

Hope to see you there!
meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/sessio...

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10 months ago

It's time for #EGU25! So here is a quick reminder of our Good Modelling Practice session happening on Tuesday, 2 pm. Lots of amazing posters can also be seen from 10 to 12:30!

Hope to see you there!
meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/sessio...

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10 months ago

EGU General Assembly 2025. Neurodiversity at EGU, Networking Event. Wednesday 30 April: 10:45-12:30 (CEST), next to EGU Booth (Hall X2 - purple level). Interested in an EGU neurodiversity network? Please complete the survey, link in post.

Join our networking event at #EGU25 aimed at neurodivergent folk.

We are gauging interest in an EGU neurodiversity network. Want to be a part of it? Full out the survey: forms.office.com/e/BwKJDjZvXL

@kelpiesi.bsky.social

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10 months ago

Wasserverschwendung in Europa: Italien und Deutschland kämpfen gegen Verluste Was der Wasserverlust für Menschen, Landwirtschaft und Klima bedeutet – eine Recherche aus Italien und Deutschland.

Endlich beschäftigt sich wer mit diesem Riesenproblem.

👉 Toller Artikel von @aagro.bsky.social & @elenamatera.bsky.social über die fatalen Auswirkungen von Drainagesystemen 💧🚜 auf den Landschaftswasserhaushalt in Zeiten von #Dürre & #Klimakrise!
Lesen & teilen!

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10 months ago

HydroTalks: Dr. Ilja Van Meerveld and Sara Blanco on Landscape-Vegetation Interactions, Citizen Science, and CrowdWater Welcome to HydroTalks, the EGU HS division’s podcast series where we discuss advancements, challenges, and opportunities in hydrology. In this episode, we interviewed Dr. Ilja van Meerveld, a Group L...

🎧 New Podcast Alert!
In this, we speak with Dr. Ilja van Meerveld (Univ. of Zurich) & PhD researcher Sara Blanco about:

🌿 Landscape–vegetation–hydrology interactions
🤝 The power of citizen science in hydrological research
📲 Insights from the innovative #CrowdWater project

🔗 shorturl.at/jpb5v

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1 year ago

How has it only been ONE month

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1 year ago

🌟Join us in Freiburg🌟

Passionate about hydrological research?

We offer a PhD position on the impacts of floods and droughts on water quality, using high-frequency data across Germany.

More details and how to apply👉 uni-freiburg.de/stellenangeb...

@hydrofreiburg.bsky.social @uni-freiburg.de

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1 year ago

Abstract submission is open 🤩 Join us in Bologna in June to discuss unexpected #floods and #droughts 🌊☀️ only 100 spots available! Don’t wait too long with the registration ⏰

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1 year ago

CAMELS-IND: hydrometeorological time series and catchment attributes for 228 catchments in Peninsular India Abstract. We introduce CAMELS-IND (Catchment Attributes and MEteorology for Large-sample Studies – India), a dataset containing hydrometeorological time series and catchment attributes for 472 catchme...

Exciting news! Our paper on CAMELS-IND data is finally published!

Key features of the data:
✅ Standard CAMELS format
🌊 472 catchments covered
☁️ 19 hydrometeorological variables
📊 211 catchment attributes
📆 40+ years (1980-2020)
📥 3,000+ downloads

essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

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1 year ago

Oh I love that idea! How did you make these and are there more?

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1 year ago

#EGU25 goers - I am very happy to announce that @lese66.bsky.social agreed to be our invited speaker this year and I really hope you had some time to investigate and/or implement some good modelling practices along your hydrological modelling workflows. If so, we would love to hear about them!

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1 year ago

These are the key facts everyone needs to know about climate change, according to @yaleclimatecomm.bsky.social.

I shared this post across 7 different social media platforms, including FB, LI, Mastodon, Threads, X and Twitter both pre-and post-Musk.

Here's how their engagement stacked up. 🧵

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1 year ago

a monkey holding a smiley face a butterfly and an @ symbol Alt: a monkey holding a smiley face a butterfly and an @ symbol

I compared 22 identical climate-related posts on Threads vs Bluesky over the last 3 months, and the difference is shocking.

Normalized engagement on Threads dropped nearly 2/3 + my following dropped, while Bluesky engagement held steady + following quadrupled.

What’s driving this?

Read on! 🧵

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1 year ago

Amazing news! Super happy for you Olda! Congratulations and good luck with the new position! :)

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1 year ago

Happy new year!

Thrilled to announce Women Advancing River Research (WARR) 2025, featuring inspiring women on water research from around the world.

11 am, US eastern, 3rd Thursday every month.

Register: psu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Recordings 2021- 2024: www.cee.psu.edu/events/women...

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1 year ago

Jahresrückblick: Wetterextreme im Jahr 2024 YouTube video by tagesschau

2024 geht zuende - das heißeste Jahr weltweit & in Deutschland. Die Folge: krasse, teure Wetterextreme.
Schaut den Jahresrückblick.
Wir dürfen die #Klimakrise nicht weiter als Nebensache behandeln!
Dafür würden wir & unsere Kinder & Enkel bitter bezahlen.
youtu.be/XEH3NZkTdNI?...

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1 year ago

Come and WORK with us - a super seldom opportunity: ONE tenure track scientist/groupleader position & TWO postdocs all on ecohydrological modelling in different landscapes (incl. peatlands) in Berlin, Germany email me if any questions. Check out the different positions here www.igb-berlin.de/en/jobs

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1 year ago

R u a female ECR (MSc, PhD, postdoc)? We offer Visiting Fellowships in Hydrology/Ecohydrology in my research group in Berlin, Germany on hydrological/ ecohydrological topics: www.igb-berlin.de/tetzlaff
Fellowships 2000€ for 2-4 wks. Send letter of motivation & CV to abteilungsleitung1@igb-berlin.de

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1 year ago

Sounds like this session will be a great addition to the #EGU25 programm!

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1 year ago

#AGU24 is almost over so it's getting time to think about that deadline in January! 😉 We are looking for modellers that have opinions or examples for good modelling practices in hydrological modelling! Please consider our #EGU25 session for abstract submission! We'd be very excited to have you.

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