#elsevier

Mittlerweile ist es ja fast langweilig, noch ein Beispiel und noch ein Beispiel dafür zu sehen, wie die #Datenkartelle wie #Elsevier den wissenschaftlichen Diskurs verrotten lassen - aber wir wissen, was in der jetzigen Situation auf dem Spiel steht.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elsevier-journal-under-fire-over-ai-generated-review-comments

A decade later, this drivel is unretracted by Elsevier.

#Elsevier #PublicationEthics #ProgressInBiophysicsAndMolecularBiology #OttoRossler #Autism #CrackpotTheories #Elephants #Pseudoscience

Nächste Woche veranstalten meine Kollegin Lies van Roessel und ich einen Workshop zu medienindustriellen #Verwertung​sstrategien.

Wir fokussieren dafür neben den klassischen Medienindustrien (wie Musik) auch etwa die Games-Branche oder den Wissenschaftsverlag #Elsevier – es geht also über die reine #Urheberrecht​verwertung hinaus bis hin zu Daten, Werbung und Abomodellen.

Programm und CfP als handliches PDF: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15800073

Wen das interessiert: ein paar Plätzchen sind noch frei :)

#Elsevier #mäusecon25 #bibliocon25

I am a member of the German Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (to stay in the loop and be able to attend conferences). Today, I received an email from them distributing a mail from FEBS letters. They remind us scientists that they (the FEBS association) use their revenue from the journals to support meetings, fund fellowships, courses, etc.

They state that German scientists seem rather to publish with PLOS, Elsevier and MDPI. Now, while we can certainly all agree that publishing with #Elsevier and #MDPI is NOT a good idea.

Yet, FEBS' APCs are so high, that my uni would not support publishing with them.

#academicpublishing #academicchatter

Event: #Academia at the Digital Crossroads - join us to discuss chances and risks of the digital transformation of the #university, #DigitalSovereignty, #publishing and #BigTech. September 25 in #Groningen

Register at: https://www.rug.nl/library/calendar/250925-academia-at-the-digital-crossroads

With: Tamar Sharon (Radboud #Philosophy), Juliette Schaafsma (Tilburg), David Cheruiyot (UG journalism), Marijke Folgering-van der Vliet (@Bibliothecaris) Michiel Kolman (#Elsevier), Nolda Tipping (@CIT_RUG), and @FleurZeldenrust (@DeJongeAkademie)

Update. "Since 2017, the #UK has mandated organisations employing more than 250 people to publicly report their annual #gender #PayGap…Every science publisher pays men more than women. In 2024, the lowest median pay gap favouring men was 9.5% (#SpringerNature), followed by #Sage (13.3%), #Wiley (17.7%), and #Informa (formerly Taylor & Francis) (22.7%). #Elsevier remains an outlier in the magnitude of its gender pay gap and in the lack of progress. Eight years ago Elsevier stood out among publishers, with a median pay gap in 2017 of 40.4% in favour of men over women in its UK business…Elsevier’s median pay gap for 2024 is 32.8%, maintaining its position as worst performer among peers over all eight years of mandatory reporting."
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0004673

#Publishers #ScholComm

Read of the day:

Clark J, Zuccala E (2025) Gender pay gaps and inequity at science publishers. PLOS Glob Public Health 5(6): e0004673. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0004673

"Eight years ago Elsevier stood out among publishers, with a median pay gap in 2017 of 40.4% in favour of men over women in its UK business. The UK average that year was 18.4% and we called Elsevier’s gap – double the national average – unacceptable"

not enough seems to have changed

#Elsevier #Publishing

Eleven studies by Spanish scientist Rafael Luque are retracted due to fraudulent practices.

A new tool reveals the alleged cheating committed for years by the chemist, who was suspiciously prolific.

With his 11 studies eliminated by publishers, he is already “in the top 0.1% of the most retracted authors of all time”.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20250610-eleven-studies-by-spanish-scientist-rafael-luque-are-retracted-due-to-fraudulent-practices?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#Science #RafaelLuque #ScientificIntegrity #Argos #Research #DataManipulation #Retraction #Academia #Cheating #Chemistry #Wiley #Elsevier #Scitility

New From #Elsevier / #Scopus: "Introducing #CiteScore 2024: A Comprehensive and Transparent Metric for Journal Impact" https://blog.scopus.com/introducing-citescore-2024/ #scholcomm #libraries #metrics #publishing

@neuralreckoning not to mention many journals are absurldy #paywalled (#Elsevier are just the greediest #rentseekers!) whilst also charging for #submissions to the point that some are existing mostly as a means of #corporations to commit "#AssetDenial" against competitiors by #publishing their own research, thus enshuring the #competition can't #patent a specific product.

Don't ask me how I know...

Today in how #Elsevier ruins my mood: Pure repositories pollute #Unpaywall with garbage data.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T396127
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T396126

#OAbot #GreenOA #OpenAccess

Why does #DOAJ have abstracts for articles which are closed access (nonfreely licensed and paywalled)?

https://doaj.org/article/13b03a41fdac43c0b6772f0d7be22ccb (doi:10.1016/j.nbd.2016.07.010, #GreenOA at http://hdl.handle.net/10138/311483)

This is an article published in 2017 in an #Elsevier journal which in 2020 professed to turn "#OpenAccess".
https://doaj.org/toc/1095-953X

Rafael Luque in the news again... https://cen.acs.org/people/Russia-honors-chemist-suspended-Spain/103/web/2025/05

No mention of Elsevier's role in his prodigious output

#Elsevier #ScienceFraud #Russia

https://www.europesays.com/uk/70153/ Motivation Struggles Persist After Depression Recovery #BrainResearch #Depression #Elsevier #Health #MentalHealth #motivation #neurobiology #Neuroscience #Psychology #UK #UnitedKingdom

Publish with Elsevier at your peril...

“Williams-Hoffman was surprised to discover that the online version of the paper contained an AI-generated question and answer section immediately below the abstract. She was even more surprised to read its claim that the paper was based on just three measurements, not 51. “

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ai-summary-trashed-authors-work-and-took-weeks-be-corrected

#Elsevier

This from a company making billions off the free labour of academics:

https://ukrant.nl/magazine/elseviers-stranglehold-on-academia-how-publishers-get-rich-from-our-data/?lang=en

2/2

#academicChatter #elsevier

ResearchFish Again

One of the things I definitely don’t miss about working in the UK university system is the dreaded Researchfish. If you’ve never heard of this bit of software, it’s intended to collect data relating to the outputs of research grants funded by the various Research Councils. That’s not an unreasonable thing to want to do, of course, but the interface is – or at least was when I last used it several years ago – extremely clunky and user-unfriendly. That meant that, once a year, along with other academics with research grants (in my case from STFC) I had to waste hours uploading bibliometric and other data by hand. A sensible system would have harvested this automatically as it is mostly available online at various locations or allowed users simply to upload their own publication list as a file; most of us keep an up-to-date list of publications for various reasons (including vanity!) anyway. Institutions also keep track of all this stuff independently. All this duplication seemed utterly pointless.

I always wondered what happened to the information I uploaded every year, which seemed to disappear without trace into the bowels of RCUK. I assume it was used for something, but mere researchers were never told to what purpose. I guess it was used to assess the performance of researchers in some way.

When I left the UK in 2018 to work full-time in Ireland, I took great pleasure in ignoring the multiple emails demanding that I do yet another Researchfish upload. The automated reminders turned into individual emails threatening that I would never again be eligible for funding if I didn’t do it, to which I eventually replied that I wouldn’t be applying for UK research grants anymore anyway. So there. Eventually the emails stopped.

Then, about three years ago, ResearchFish went from being merely pointless to downright sinister as a scandal erupted about the company that operates it (called Infotech), involving the abuse of data and the bullying of academics. I wrote about this here. It then transpired that UKRI, the umbrella organization governing the UK’s research council had been actively conniving with Infotech to target critics. An inquiry was promised but I don’t know what became of that.

Anyway, all that was a while ago and I neither longer live nor work in the UK so why mention ResearchFish again, now?

The reason is something that shocked me when I found out about it a few days ago. Researchfish is now operated by commercial publishing house Elsevier.

Words fail. I can’t be the only person to see a gigantic conflict of interest. How can a government agency allow the assessment of its research outputs to be outsourced to a company that profits hugely by the publication of those outputs? There’s a phrase in British English which I think is in fairly common usage: marking your own homework. This relates to individuals or organizations who have been given the responsibility for regulating their own products. Is very apt here.

The acquisition of Researchfish isn’t the only example of Elsevier getting its talons stuck into academia life. Elsevier also “runs” the bibliometric service Scopus which it markets as a sort of quality indicator for academic articles. I put “runs” in inverted commas because Scopus is hopelessly inaccurate and unreliable. I can certainly speak from experience on that. Nevertheless, Elsevier has managed to dupe research managers – clearly not the brightest people in the world – into thinking that Scopus is a quality product. I suppose the more you pay for something the less inclined you are to doubt its worth, because if you do find you have paid worthless junk you look like an idiot.

A few days ago I posted a piece that include this excerpt from an article in Wired:

Every industry has certain problems universally acknowledged as broken: insurance in health care, licensing in music, standardized testing in education, tipping in the restaurant business. In academia, it’s publishing. Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit giants like Elsevier and Springer. Calling their practice a form of thuggery isn’t so much an insult as an economic observation. 

With the steady encroachment of the likes of Elsevier into research assessment, it is clear that as well as raking in huge profits, the thugs are now also assuming the role of the police. The academic publishing industry is a monstrous juggernaut that is doing untold damage to research and is set to do more. It has to stop.

#bibliometrics #Elsevier #Infotech #ResearchAssessment #Researchfish #SCOPUS #UKRI

I appreciate the irony in my university inviting me to a workshop on Ethics in Scientific Publishing, hosted by Elsevier.

#publishing #science #elsevier

@kvn_jean So let's boycott the publisher #Elsevier which continues to promote fossil fuel expansion!

https://www.climaterightscoalition.com/