University of Groningen: ⭐ no more big-tech by 2030 ⭐ Google Workplace 🚫 Windows 🚫 MS Office 🚫 ChatGPT 🚫 A huge challenge! Meeting culture won't get us there. Dedication and focus will. 💪🚀 Let's get to work.
ukrant.nl/magazine/we-... @rug.nl @rug-gmw.bsky.social #science
"Speaking: The Free Book" has migrated to vitpia.github.io/speaking/ The only true, freely available textbook for teaching and learning more about language **production** (which tends to get neglected in textbooks on "language"). Chapters written by experts in the field. New chapter expected soon!
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/...
No one (two) better to bring the project to completion than @colinwhoy.bsky.social and @anask07.bsky.social
New chapter on sentence production in "Speaking: The Free Book" bookdown.org/v_piai_resea... beautifully written by @drlearnasaurus.bsky.social Go check, very useful resource for free (!) for teaching & initiating folks on topic of language production (usually missing from textbooks on "language"!)
Very happy to see Angelique's paper on semantic processing and the ATL with @vipiai.bsky.social, @profkatie.bsky.social out now in Cortex : www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Or our explicit discussion of the lack of understanding of what that relationship is 😝
"Language and/or memory: How to slice the domain-cake?"
Really happy to see this finally published. Hard work together with colleagues @engra.me and @jolienfrancken.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Great to hear you liked it! It was really, really hard work. The within-discipline bits were easy, getting the integration across philosophy and cog psych was hard, exciting, and rewarding. @jolienfrancken.bsky.social was instrumental (and I sometimes so wish I were a philosopher like her 😝)
It’s ironic that amid huge cuts to science and education funding and enforcement of Dutch-only programs, extra money is spent attracting US scientists. I support international collaboration, but without investing in our own students and education, science can’t thrive.
www.nwo.nl/en/news/upda...
They are amazing, often sitting peacefully and still for long minutes on end, maybe they like being watched 🤩
And we can't wait to have you visit! Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉
I went for bookdown, Daniel has his on GitHub (I think). So there are lots of options, really. I guess it's more about what one really wants to achieve with a book...
The very first event I presented my work at (Master's thesis at that point), really loved it!!
Contributions are welcome 😁
The section is a resource for teaching about current views on how speakers go from a phonological representation to its articulatory control. 🧠 🗣️
Main motivation: existing teaching resources on "language" are mostly comprehension or do poor job at covering production beyond motor stuff. I hope it'll be valuable addition to community & this one is FREE! More to come in the future but I feel it is important to keep building it and releasing.
and Annie Ohlerth
Huge thanks to contributors @sries.bsky.social @juliachauvet.bsky.social @briellestark.bsky.social @angeladebruin.bsky.social Rinus Verdonschot, Carrie Niziolek, Willemijn Doedens, Jana Klaus and others. If you want to contribute content, get in touch
For those who don't know the resource, it's a free book on Speaking, written by the community (for beginners).
What a better way to kick off here than the release of a new, critical chapter for "Speaking: The free book (chapter)" bookdown.org/v_piai_resea... "Form to Articulation" by the amazing @juliachauvet.bsky.social 💥 bringing together the psycholinguistics and motor control literatures, no small feat!!
