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• Post #4480585

• Post #4165255

  Although many biologists regard variability as at best a nuisance and at worst a hindrance to biological systems, many empirical examples demonstrate that variability is an ability, not a disability. From the molecular to the ecological level, there is evidence that this ability to vary has been harnessed by biological systems and is a positive force for adaptation and change. The @Co_Biologists@biologists.social just funded our workshop "Playing Dice: Chance as a Biological Strategy"...

• Post #3986824

  Authoritative review on how academic #publishing turned bad: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/05390184261456132 #academicchatter

• Post #3888728

  "If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines" https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ai-not-peer-so-it-cant-do-peer-review #ai #peerreview #academia

• Post #3529567

• Post #2313018

  The sky is queer around here 😁

• Post #2313016

  After the Council of the EU demanded to address the "Hazards of Scholarly publishing" https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/05/23/council-calls-for-transparent-equitable-and-open-access-to-scholarly-publications/ a whitepaper was published that outlined the plans: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/3603e219-6a65-11ef-a8ba-01aa75ed71a1/language-en this year, ORE is set to launch the next stage: https://home.cern/cern-host-europes...

• Post #2313014

  Bob Calin-Jageman referencing extremely useful resources on experimental design and #reproducibility in #neuroscience : Beyond the Basics: Experimental Design in Neuroscience https://blog.eneuro.org/2026/02/discussion_beyond-the-basics-exp-design?_hsmi=417745689 #science

• Post #2142631

  "How disruptive would it be if GitHub started deleting repositories, or Google Scholar started hiding certain papers in response to U.S. government demands?" https://www.thetransmitter.org/policy/science-must-step-away-from-nationally-managed-infrastructure/ Most people with some interest have seen precisely this coming for more than a decade. @neuralreckoning is among them. It's great that outlets like @thetransmitter are now also recognizing this problem and are h...

• Post #2124062

  RE: https://stiftungen.social/@carl_zeiss_stiftung/116516249592998662 Also das ist mal wirklich eine tolle Initiative: „stiftungen.social - Eine demokratische Instanz“ https://www.die-stiftung.de/news/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/16-stiftungen-starten-mastodon-server-161535/ Davon könnte die Welt mehr gebrauchen!

• Post #2110177

  Und genau das ist es, was die Ex-Verlage charakterisiert, die Umkehr des Datenflusses: "die Daten fließen nur in eine Richtung, nämlich von der Wissenschaft zu Elsevier." Als diese Überwachungskonzerne noch Verlage waren, war das noch die andere Richtung. "#Datentracking bei Elsevier: Yuliya Fadeeva im Interview" https://irights.info/artikel/datentracking-elsevier-yuliya-fadeeva-interview/32777 Mittlerweile macht, nach eigener Aussage, die Verlagstätigke...

• Post #1897307

  TIL that "carbon footprint" is a campaign started by British Petroleum (BP) in order to distract attention away from coporate responsibility and culpability towards individual responsibility and culpability. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781541700116 If you are concerned about your carbon footprint or shame others about their's, it shows how well this campaign has worked and is still working. But you know what is really on us? To stop this madness right now and de...

• Post #1778905

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115230366976982724 It just got even easier for #academic #scholarly #institutions to host their own Mastodon instance! #academicchatter

• Post #1745257

  Seltener wurde es klarer formuliert: "Wir haben Systeme gebaut, die Schein über Sein stellen, Quantität über Qualität, Sichtbarkeit über Substanz." https://www.laborjournal.de/editorials/3477.php Wir belohnen die Fliessbandproduktion und brauchen uns daher nicht zu wundern, wenn nur Fliessbandware heraus kommt. Dies ist ein systemisches Problem der #Wissenschaft , das nur mit systemischen Lösungen addressiert werden kann, s.z.B.: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/arti...

• Post #1708660

  I love it how more and more people are daring to do behavioral #neuroscience with non-laboratory animals: "Olfactory learning in two Amblypygi species Paraphrynus laevifrons and Phrynus pseudoparvulus" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-026-02065-1 #biology #ethology

• Post #1662639

  To my knowledge, the second study now showing this: “authors choose to publish in more expensive journals” https://buff.ly/3gA9JhF h/t @SvenjaHagenhoff #openaccess #openscience

• Post #1563457

  Interesting #preprint on automated reference-checking. It "runs entirely on [one] machine (free public databases, a single consumer GPU, and open-weights models) with no [...] external services. The pipeline verifies that references exist, checks retraction status, compares metadata against canonical records, downloads and parses cited papers, verifies that they support the claims made about them, and [...] checks cited papers' own bibliographies. " https://arxiv.org...

• Post #1300816

  The appropriate conclusions drawn from a professional analysis of "gransformative agreements": "Instead of waiting for another 70 years for an OA transition to finally materialize, decision-makers should radically rethink their approach and divest their time and energy from such harmful deals." https://katinamagazine.org/content/article/open-knowledge/2024/transformative-agreements-a-blind-alley #openaccess

• Post #1262403

  How to fund #research with less bias and lower costs? Use more lotteries! "Lottery before peer review is associated with increased female representation and reduced cost" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65660-9 Give that this is only one of many such reports over the last decades, surely, this has become the standard by now? Oh, wait... "taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself" https://www.nature.com/ar...

• Post #1177190

  RE: https://wisskomm.social/@uni_regensburg/116402466905827105 Meine Universität, wie sie genau das Gegenteil von dem macht, was man von einer modernen Universität heutzutage erwarten würde.

• Post #1073436

  Of all three reviews of a recent Science Advances submission, mine was the one that was paricularly critical of the methods, with numerous questions about documentation, references, data, sample sizes, etc. Guess which reviewer was the only one not invited for a second round of reviews and now the paper is accepted? Point in case why GlamMagz are the main driver of the #replication crisis and not paper mills or AI slop. The latter are just convenient distractors from the actual problem.

• Post #1016524

  I usually love the work of Philip Ball, but what the hell is this: "Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science?" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03817-6 I mean the first many labs project was published in 2012! We really don't need AI - we have been perfectly capable of creating a reproducibility crisis in science all by ourselves. Humans and GlamMagz like the rag where this article is published in, are all it took. This article just completely i...

• Post #971316

  They're not wrong: "Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has announced it will cease funding #openaccess (#OA) publishing costs, arguing that the current model is failing to deliver a fair and efficient system for disseminating research." https://www.researchinformation.info/news/cancer-research-uk-to-stop-funding-open-access-publishing/ I wonder if the ORE announcement may have anything to do with that decision? https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-...

• Post #817029

  The PNAS paper from Monday got a lot of attention https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122 One particularly attention-grabbing point was the growth of paper mill papers, i.e., the red line. The area under the black curve is the entire scholarly literature. Judging from reproducibility projects, I have added the # of articles that are likely to be irreproducible (yellow). Sure, paper mills can some day be a problem. But compared to irreproducibility, it's a really minor problem: https:/...

• Post #817027

  This should have been big news! Ten funding agencies from eight European countries have pledged to support a public infrastructure that is poised to replace academic journals: FWF 🇦🇹 RCN 🇳🇴 Forte 🇸🇪 ARIS 🇸🇮 SRC 🇸🇪 FCT 🇵🇹 CSIC 🇪🇸 DFG 🇩🇪 Formas 🇸🇪 ANR 🇫🇷 Only two of them issued press releases in English: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/news/detail/joint-commitment-to-strengthening-open-research-europe https://www.fccn.pt/en/atualidade/fct-assina-declaracao-fortalecimento-open-research-europe-ore/ and on...

• Post #817023

  Die Wissenschaft ist verwundbar. Wir sollten besser jetzt handeln als hinterher jammern. Niemand kann sagen, wir hätten es nicht kommen sehen können: "Deutschlands Hochschulen im Stresstest: Wenn Populismus auf Wissenschaftsfinanzierung trifft" https://www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/11/18/deutschlands-hochschulen-im-stresstest-wenn-populismus-auf

• Post #812237

  At last! It starts this fall: "A new era for Open Research Europe" https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/new-era-open-research-europe-2026-03-26_en Diamond #openaccess for all authors from 11 supporting countries: 🇦🇹 Austria 🇫🇷 France 🇩🇪 Germany 🇮🇹 Italy 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🇳🇴 Norway 🇵🇹 Portugal 🇸🇮 Slovenia 🇪🇸 Spain 🇸🇪 Sweden 🇨🇭 Switzerland Now "incentivize" institutions to make this the default #publishing option. #openscie...

• Post #792961

  It's beginning! EU journal replacement set to start this fall. Free OA publishing for all authors from 11 supporting countries. This is Germany's DFG press release: "New Publishing Opportunities for Researchers: Germany Joins Open Research Europe" https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2026/ifr-26-21 #openaccess #publishing #openscience #ORE

• Post #366831

  Procurement Before Prestige: How audit rules and public #infrastructure could break #science’s #publishing monopolies. https://bjoern.brembs.net/2026/01/procurement-before-prestige/ An English version of my post in German for the Verfassungsblog: https://verfassungsblog.de/rechnungshof-statt-redaktionsschluss/ #academicchatter #research

• Post #366827

  New data suggest that just like regular journals (i.e., non-GlamMagz), also female authors really do seem to publish higher quality articles - which, consequently, leads to fewer #retractions for both: https://bjoern.brembs.net/2026/01/retraction-data-are-still-useless-almost/ #womeininstem