Samuel Moore / is on Nostr

Scholarly communication specialist and researcher at Cambridge University Libraries and Homerton College. Associate of Cambridge Digital Humanities.

Book underway for University of Michigan Press on open access publishing and the commons.

Researching: academic publishing, open research, community governance, digital commons

Last Notes

2024-08-17 20:31:52

I don't think the term 'collective action' really has much explanatory force in relation to academic publishing, not least as it's not obvious what the required collective action is. Or maybe I just find the whole idea of collective insufficient to begin with.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

2024-07-22 18:34:16

I often give talks about community-led open access and some people seem to take great delight in pointing out that we'll never compete with the bigger publishers, as if we don't know that and want to compete in the first place.
The thing is, the people who continually point this out are actually trying to undermine more ethical alternatives primarily because they benefit from their place in the current order. It's conservatism dressed up as pragmatism and it's really tiring to interact with.

2024-07-20 08:00:25

Lots of academics wondering what they should do about this and the answer is as simple as not publishing your monograph with Taylor & Francis or any of their imprints. There are so many other publishers who will do a better job and won't sell your data to Microsoft.
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/academic-authors-shocked-after-taylor--francis-sells-access-to-their-research-to-microsoft-ai

2024-07-16 14:02:49

'Commercial publishers are incentivised to try to publish as many articles and journals as possible, because each additional article brings in more profit. This has led to a proliferation of junk journals that publish fake research, and has increased the pressure on rigorous journals to weaken their quality controls. It’s never been more evident that for-profit publishing simply does not align with the aims of scholarly inquiry.'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/16/academic-journal-publishers-universities-price-subscriptions

2024-07-15 09:23:59

'Your base salary will be $900,000 annually. You will be eligible to participate in the Executive Annual Incentive Plan (“Plan”), with a target incentive equal to 150% of your base salary.'
Salary of the new Wiley CEO.
(Via the Journalology newsletter.)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/107140/000010714024000150/a101mkemploymentagreement.htm

2024-06-20 19:01:28

Always a nice reminder that in 2022 the president of publishing at the (nonprofit) American Chemical Society was paid $750,000.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/530196572

2024-06-07 18:11:49

"Because my salary is not enough to do the job I do, which takes more than eight hours a day, for which I travel, often staying up until midnight at conference poster sessions, recruiting papers, talking to people. It’s not enough to work on a severely, chronically understaffed team, sometimes handling difficult issues around scientific misconduct, corrections and retractions."
Nature staff to strike on 20 June.
https://www.nuj.org.uk/resource/journalists-at-springer-nature-titles-set-to-strike-over-pay.html

2024-06-05 12:27:38

Cambridge University Libraries have launched a pilot platform supporting diamond OA journals:
https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=3973

2024-05-18 12:47:05

The epidemic of bogus science
There are so many articles about fraud in science at the moment and they all seem to discuss publish or perish culture alongside large-scale fraud and citation rings. Lumping a bunch of issues together never feels particularly satisfactory when the reality is much more complex than these narratives suggest.
https://on.ft.com/3UPlgdm

2024-05-14 14:21:50

It's weird how so much of academia is being flattered into agreeing to do free work.