Thank you for coming to my TED Talk 🎤

If you’ve read this far and still need convincing, please check out our preprint arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 and this infographic: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
10/10

We’re asking research funders & universities to step up because together, they have the leverage - and frankly, the responsibility - to stop the drain and redirect billions currently flowing to commercial publishers 💸 back into community-owned systems that serve science, not profit.
9/n

Many call on researchers to behave differently. But researchers are dispersed across disciplines, institutions & countries. Let's face it, we are hard to coordinate.

So we call on the actors with real power:
Funders and institutions. 💪
They can set the policies and reshape incentives. 8/n

Re-communalization = community-owned & governed, w/ surplus going back to academic communities, not shareholder pockets.

7/n

So what now? 💥
We argue that scholarly publishing needs to be re-communalized.

No, not communism, just academia taking back control of:

1) its journals (hello breakaway journals)
2) its assessment systems (hello @barcelonadori.bsky.social)

6/n

So why hasn’t this happened yet? 🤷‍♀️

Because for-profit publishers have distorted Open Access so thoroughly that many authors now believe their only OA option is to pay astronomical APCs.

And we ask researchers to publish OA… while rewarding prestige controlled by the same oligopoly. 5/n

How? 🛠️
Good news: we already have everything needed to fix the system.

Alternative models without paywalls? ✔️
Preprints, diamond journals.

Open infrastructure at production cost not prestige markup? ✔️
@pkp.sfu.ca @scielo.org @redalyc.bsky.social @erudit.org
Community-run, community-governed. 4/n

Can you imagine what else we could do with that money?
Fund researchers, students, labs, infrastructure… which all sounds better to me than enriching a publishing oligopoly. 3/n

Why? 🤑
In just the last 5 years, 4 publishers made $US 41 billion in revenue and $14.7B in profit - money that largely comes from taxpayer-funded research budgets.

For context: the entire 2024 NSF budget was $9B USD.
@elsevierconnect.bsky.social made $3.9B that year at a 38% profit margin. 2/n

So interdisciplinary and international! Thanks @stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca @lariviev.bsky.social @paolocrosetto.bsky.social, @gemmaderrick.bsky.social,
@pagomba.bsky.social @stephenpinfield.bsky.social
@jameswilsdon.bsky.social, @danbrockington.bsky.social, Fernanda Beigel, Christine Noe

Other parts of the world had different histories of academic journal publishing (and of research and universities), and so (in some cases/places) can have a different relationship to for-profit publishers. I wish we knew more about mid/late-20thC journal publishing practices globally.

... and the reason that for-profit journal publishers are such a feature of the UK/European/NAmerican scientific ecosystem (in particular) is... history! Commercial practices saved struggling non-profit journals in the 1950s/60s (as I've shown doi.org/10.1177/0073...), but what happened next?

The Drain of Scientific Publishing details very clearly how for-profit publishers making >30% profit margins have corrupted any solution the research community has attempted.

Let's cut ourselves free.

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: bit.ly/StrainQSS
Oligopoly: bit.ly/OligSciPub

12/12

Thanks to all my wonderful co-authors and especially @danbrockington.bsky.social for spearheading this essential piece of scientific discussion.

Coauthors in next posts.
#ScientificPublishing #OpenScience #OpenAccess #AcademicSky #PhDchat #AcademicChatter #SciPub #ResearchIntegrity #PublishOrPerish

Wonderful work
@stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca, @lariviev.bsky.social, @paolocrosetto.bsky.social, @gemmaderrick.bsky.social, @pagomba.bsky.social, @aileenfyfe.bsky.social, @stephenpinfield.bsky.social, @jameswilsdon.bsky.social & Fernanda Beigel, Christine Noe (not on Bsky).

It was a privilege.

Americans are more likely to have a negative view of swearing than Australians or Britons

Americans: 43% have a negative view
Australians: 34%
Britons: 33%

yougov.co.uk/society/arti...