Ashley Farley

Wait there is a journal with a $15,584,416.00 USD APC? This has to be an error. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

And by heated convos I am referring to the fact that when we launched Gates Open Research almost a decade ago researchers thought that preprinting and open peer review was wild. Now perceptions have really shifted. Authors that embraced a new model have made it much easier for others to follow

Time through peer review may be something to look into. With the F1000 model you have to find peer reviewers who agree to be named & the peer review report to be published. F1000 doesn't seem to struggle any more than other publishers to find peer reviewers as far as I know but something to consider

Now for the MDPI of it all - I think there is a couple things at play here:
1. MPDI aggressive marketing & supplements
2. Speed - while F1000 is fast in some respects if you are getting to an index article MDPI may be faster
3. Maybe easier time through peer review

Readership and discoverability are still an issue. It's something we've been slowly working on over the years. It's hard when there is so much noise. Authors of course want their papers read & trusted known venues will provide that. I do wish there was more creativity in solutions for this issue.

Great piece! I think there are a lot of interesting things to unpack here. In my general experience with Gates Open Research authors are reluctant to any change - even if positive. If they think their colleagues expect them to publish in X,Y,Z they will continue to do so.

Agreed. F1000 & Gates - we made the trek around to grantee groups that would listen. There were heated conversations. I do think it was fundamental to uptake. I'd still like to see much more use but the two limiting factors have been - lack of impact factor & indexing limitations.

⏰New account alert to follow!⏰

Follow @orfg.bsky.social for updates on the Open Research Funders Group.
bsky.app/profile/orfg...

Unfair publisher fees for deposit into repositories highlight the need for authors to exercise their rights Image: Adobe Stock Image Scientific knowledge is a public good Science and scholarship are about sharing and advancing knowledge, and many open access policies have been diligently designed in orde…

Well stated!

"The content of an article belongs to the author who should not be duped into paying a fee to exercise a right they already have."
coar-repositories.org/news-updates...

Sadly this is spot on.
It's hard to have empathy though as researcher disinterest in trying to change the system has stymied progress.

Northern universities urge publishers to reform their model - Research Professional News N8 group calls for change as universities eye subscription cuts and deals are renegotiated

“For too long, we’ve seen the consolidation of scholarly publishing into the hands of a few major commercial players whose priorities are increasingly divorced from the academic communities they were meant to serve.” www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-o...

Peer review is just internet trolls for science Solution: publish reviewer names with reviews along with journal articles and provide an iterative review solution.

mnky9800n.substack.com/p/peer-revie...

👏👏👏

Scientific Publishing: Enough is Enough Why we're no longer funding journal publications

Excited to see bold action from @asterainstitute.bsky.social in rethinking scientific publishing. The journal model isn’t working — it’s time for systems that reflect how science actually happens.💥 Enough is enough: asterainstitute.substack.com/p/scientific...
#OpenScience #ReimagineResearch

Don't miss the June OpenCon Librarian Community Call. The theme is "slow librarianship" which focuses on relationship-building, values-driven work, quality over quantity, solidarity, antiracism, and reflective practice.

June 10th at 9 AM PST. Register below
www.opencon.community/r?u=Ypk6LzG3...

Why I stopped submitting my work to for-profit publishers – Physics World Jonte Hance reveals why they stopped reviewing and submitting articles to for-profit publishers

"We may not be able to dismantle the entire for-profit publishing industry, but we can stop contributing to it"

physicsworld.com/a/why-i-stop...

I haven't seen any chatter about Sci-Net yet. Has anyone used it? Is this a SciHub replacement?

I think it's fascinating that at one point SciHub as highly used. What are people doing now? Is open access filling the gap? sci-net.xyz

This is such a great point made by David Worlock

"The cost of publishing in journals are too great to be sustained by the research community, and the benefits too little to encourage funders to meet the bill."

www.davidworlock.com/2025/04/10-r...

This quote warms my heart "he 'clearly underestimated the seriousness of preprints.'" retractionwatch.com/2025/04/24/g...

I need to share this picture of Zeek with the world. The weather improving is giving me hope! Here is to more days of hiking soon.

Publication costs can range from $1500-$5000 per article, detracting from funds that can be used for conducting research, hiring students, and participating in conferences. It is unlikely that the openaccess policies or author payment costs will change in the near future1. We therefore are incentivized to identify opportunities to offset these costs. We can start by looking at sources of revenue generation used by other online media platforms that can be applied to scientific

I've never felt so seen by a footnote before

Well done

I’m excited to see how this fits in with similar initiatives. This is the ideal time for us all to work and fund more collaboratively.

The Lorraine Model | Open Science Talk https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/OSTalk/article/view/8074

Assessment reform and publishing reform need to go hand in hand The need to reform research assessment and scientific publishing practices is widely recognized. However, Ludo Waltman argues that the assessment and publishing reform movements will be successful onl...

"Research assessment and scientific publishing are interwoven in complex ways, which means the agendas of the assessment and publishing reform movements need to be aligned as closely as possible."
@ludowaltman.bsky.social
www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/ass...

I would suggest that maybe this budget crisis is the time to finally say NO to spending precious library dollars to fill the pockets of shareholders of for-profit publishers who routinely report stupid high profits margins ..

Celebrate Green OA Day with HARVEST - University Library Green open access (OA) is a free and legal way to share your research

Happy Green OA Day!

#USask researchers: the library can help make your research open access for FREE and LEGALLY through HARVEST, our repository.

We also have a free Upload Service: let library staff do the work of copyright checking & upload for you.

See more: library.usask.ca/news/2025/ce...

I find it interesting that many of the publisher responses are "we were already investigating this paper" but clearly no reader can know this is the case. It feels irresponsible to not flag that a paper is undergoing an investigation so readers can take extra care when reading/citing.

Scientists Take on Scholarly Journals With Walkouts, Scathing Letters and Delistings Some scientists say the for-profit industry’s fast growth makes it harder to police fraud and low-quality work.

Great summary of recent examples of scientists taking back power from commercial publisher overreach. This is what can lead to lasting systematic change.
www.wsj.com/business/med...

Going into 2025, we have seen APC pricing increasing but falling back to long-term trends. Fully OA APC list prices across our sample have risen by around 6.5% compared with 9.5% this time last year. Hybrid APC list prices have risen by an average of 3% compared with 4.2% this time last year. Maximum APCs for fully OA journals remain at $8,900. Maximum APCs for hybrid journals now top out at $12,690 (up $400 from last year). Big jumps in prices happened last year, driven by high inflation. In 2020-2021 prices were driven up when high-impact journals began offering OA options for the first time. In both cases, increases subsequently fell back to averages. Underlying trends continue. There are around 2.6x more hybrid journals than fully OA ones, down from 2.9x a year ago. Hybrid journals follow (or, rather, set) a similar pattern to the market overall. On average, fully OA prices are around 64% of those of hybrids. This is a couple of percentage points higher than long term trends. Around 31% of our sample of fully OA journals charge no APCs. (We have separately analyzed the number of articles in OA journals.) Price rises vary significantly by discipline. Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences have seen particularly large average increases, especially in fully OA journal prices.

🚨New Open Access APC Data🚨
@deltathink.bsky.social releases updated Open Access APC publishing price data. It's really interesting to see the difference between fully OA and hybrid pricing. This also supports other reports that hybrid journals are on the rise.
www.deltathink.com/news-views-o...