Nicolas Clairis
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nclairis.bsky.social
Nicolas Clairis
@nclairis.bsky.social
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Postdoc passionate about effort-based decision-making and the roots of effort aversiveness.

If you are on Mastodon, my profile is: @[email protected]
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nclairis.bsky.social
In case you missed it, here is a related thread on the recent Drain on scientific publishing paper explaining why things need to change:
bsky.app/profile/hans...
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 17d
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/...
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.
November 18, 2025 at 2:34 PM
nclairis.bsky.social
If I may add though: at the individual level, declining reviewing for any journal that is for-profit would already make a huge impact and this only depends on scientists! If they lose all the editors and reviewers as happened in the case of NeuroImage the system would already collapse quite a lot
November 18, 2025 at 2:26 PM
nclairis.bsky.social
@erc.europa.eu @snsf.ch we count on you to stop this waste of public money!
November 13, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Nicolas Clairis
hansonmark.bsky.social
For-profit journals are supposed to improve research quality, yet they're perversely incentivized to churn out whatever they can monetize. This was happening before AI (see Strain: bit.ly/43gJPUM), and AI will make it worse.

It's insane that we volunteer our time to help them do so.

4/n
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
nclairis.bsky.social
Just reading this and seeing this smile makes you think 😅 www.thebookseller.com/news/springe...
Springer Nature's revenue increases to €926m as adjusted operating profit soars
Springer Nature's group revenue has risen by 6% to €926m (£800m) in the first half of 2025, while adjusted operating profit (AOP) was up by 10% to €241m (£208m).
www.thebookseller.com
October 23, 2025 at 2:13 PM
nclairis.bsky.social
it's already great to admit it and still time to quit free labor for journals that are for-profit 🙃 as a young scientist I feel it's hard to avoid completely submitting in these journals, but I feel no pressure to review or edit there... If all good editors move, then their model will crash...
October 23, 2025 at 2:12 PM
nclairis.bsky.social
sounds great!!! Will the recordings be available after the workshop? I won't be able to attend tomorrow but would really like to watch some of the talks!
October 21, 2025 at 1:55 PM
nclairis.bsky.social
@erc.europa.eu still time to consider for next calls...
October 20, 2025 at 9:11 AM
nclairis.bsky.social
refusing to use ERC public money funding to publish in for-profit journals like Nature would also work... Just saying 😁 #ScientificPublishing #AcademicSky bsky.app/profile/hans...
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Aug 4
If I could change one thing about #ScientificPublishing I'd ask funding bodies to stipulate all work they fund be published in non-profit journals.

The knock-on effects would alleviate most of the strain on #AcademicSky.

This isn't hard. It's big, but actually, it's pretty easy.

1/n
The strain on scientific publishing
Abstract. Scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of articles being published. The total number of articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science has grown exponentially in recent years; ...
direct.mit.edu
October 20, 2025 at 8:59 AM
nclairis.bsky.social
There is one for neuroeconomy as well:
go.bsky.app/1K9Suh
and several others in other subfields of neuroscience I believe!
October 16, 2025 at 7:50 AM