Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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High APCs are a feature, not a bug
Björn Brembs December 9, 2020
doi:10.59350/vcc4c-qsp77
There has been some outrage at the announcement that Nature is following through with their 2004 declaration of charging ~10k ($/€) in article processing charges (APCs). However, not only have these charges been 16 years in the making but the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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What sinister time machine?
Björn Brembs July 19, 2021
doi:10.59350/725sz-vkq65
A recent OASPA guest post reminded me of something I have been wondering about for several years now. What sinister time travel device is keeping some sections of the scholarly ecosystem from leaving the past and coming back to the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Why do academic institutions seem stuck in 1995?
Björn Brembs September 25, 2020
doi:10.59350/pp6xs-dzz58
Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, academic institutions such as universities and research institutes were at the forefront of developing and implementing digital technology. After email they developed Gopher, TCP/IP, http, the NCSA Mosaic browser and experimented with Mbone. […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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How academic institutions neglect their duty
Björn Brembs October 5, 2020
doi:10.59350/y12sz-4rc13
Think, check, submit: who hasn’t heard of this mantra to help researchers navigate the jungle of commercial publishers? Who isn’t under obligation to publish in certain venues, be it because employers ask for a particular set of journals for hiring, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Replacing the prestige signal
Björn Brembs February 4, 2022
doi:10.59350/zvmeg-hpk77
tl;dr: Evidence suggests that the prestige signal in our current journals is noisy, expensive and flags unreliable science. There is a lack of evidence that the supposed filter function of prestigious journals is not just a biased random selection of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Scholarly publishing in three cartoons
Björn Brembs March 10, 2021
doi:10.59350/h7qjh-9yg95
The academic journal publishing system sure feels all too often a bit like a sinking boat: we have a reproducibility leak an affordability leak a functionality leak a data leak a code leak an interoperability leak a discoverability leak a […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Is the SNSI the new PRISM?
Björn Brembs October 26, 2020
doi:10.59350/wd8jd-gs019
Just before Christmas 2019, the Washington Post reported, based on “people familiar with the matter”, that the US Justice Department were investigating the Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan for potentially “working with Russian intelligence to steal U.S. military secrets from defense […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Can funders mandate institutions?
Björn Brembs January 6, 2021
doi:10.59350/nxnxq-p1f08
For a few years now I have been arguing that in order to accomplish change in scholarly infrastructure, it likely is an inefficient plan by funding agencies to mandate the least powerful players in the game, authors (i.e., their grant […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Minimizing the collective action problem
Björn Brembs May 12, 2021
doi:10.59350/kx875-1q332
Most academics would agree that the way scholarship is done today, in the broadest, most general terms, is in dire need of modernization. Problems abound from counter-productive incentives, inefficiencies, lack of reproducibility, to an overemphasis on competition at the expense […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Come and do research with us!
Björn Brembs October 13, 2020
doi:10.59350/5wfan-qh549
Trial and error is a successful problem-solving strategy not only in humans but throughout evolution. How do nervous systems generate novel, creative trials and how are errors incorporated into already existing experiences in order to improve future trials? We use […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Who’s responsible for the lack of action?
Björn Brembs September 3, 2020
doi:10.59350/sv44n-prn98
There are regular discussions among academics as to who should be the prime mover in infrastructure reform. Some point to the publishers to finally change their business model. Others claim that researchers need to vote with their feet and change […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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The trinity of failures
Björn Brembs October 8, 2021
doi:10.59350/nenc2-h6h19
More and more experts are calling for the broken and destructive academic journal system to be replaced with modern solutions. This post summarizes why and how this task can now be accomplished. It was first published in German on the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Academic publishing – market or collectivization?
Björn Brembs December 13, 2021
doi:10.59350/xwbvr-0sb24
Last week’s podium on the commodification of open science entitled “If you are not paying for the product, you are the product?” was surprisingly unanimous on the need to radically modernize academic publishing and abolish the current publishing system relying […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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The ultimate Open Access timeline
Björn Brembs March 3, 2020
doi:10.59350/eew7n-8pg95
NIH, 1961: Journals are slow and cumbersome, why don’t we experiment with circulating preprints among peers to improve on the way we do science (Information Exchange Groups)? Publishers, 1967: You have got to be kidding. Nobody cares about improving science, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Small changes, big effects
Björn Brembs January 11, 2022
doi:10.59350/pbks8-38226
Sometimes, only small changes are required for potentially huge downstream effects. Last September, ten international experts have identified two key decisions that may help academia to break out of the decades-long lock-in with academic publishers: Regulators no longer granting academic […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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Björn Brembs
@brembs  ·  activity timestamp 10 months ago
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Algorithmic employment decisions in academia?
Björn Brembs September 23, 2021
doi:10.59350/2gfb6-78483
According to a recent study, employee surveillance is rampant in today’s corporate work environment. This study documents how, often under the pretense of cybersecurity or risk analysis (sort of like academic publishers, actually), companies analyze the behavioral data they collect […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...
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