iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Louder for the people at the back, and at the top Flooding the world with tech that serves no functional purpose (other than to break everything and make it worse), then demand the embittered victims find a use for it reveals a profoundly fatal flaw

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

a classic of the genre! amazing to see this again.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Excellent news. A great start in being able to add genai-blockers into browsers and apps to prevent all genned content appearing. Back to a more usable, reliable, functional, non-swamp internet. Unfortunate there seems to be some exemption, but hopefully they close that up in due course.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I am sure every journal editor will find something in this article that really resonates with their experiences.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Amazing result, congratulations! Straight in to the top half of the table is great. Very well deserved after many years of hard work. Thanks to @pensoft.net for the ARPHA journal platform too. It has played a big part in helping take the journal to that next level.

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Reposted by Duncan Nicholas

Iain Roberts @slowbikeiain.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

European alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office launches on 9 June: free, open source and online, using existing building blocks. An important step in freeing ourselves from US control. www.zdnet.com/article/euro...

zdnet.com

Euro-Office, Europe's open-source alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs, launches June 9

European tech firms will ship the first stable release of Euro-Office next month, giving governments and businesses worldwide a ready-to-run, sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs.

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Reposted by Duncan Nicholas

Reproductive BioMedicine Online @rbmonline.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Reproductive BioMedicine Online invite you to the journal’s RGE Prize edition of our quarterly webinar series, held in collaboration with the International IVF Initiative. Join us Tuesday 9th June, 2026, at 3pm EST/ 8pm UK/ 9pm CET. us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... 1/5

us02web.zoom.us

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Wrong decision there for sure. Giving people the chance to make their fabricated papers look more plausible is not really editorial rigour.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

This is an excellent policy long overdue. It is wild that publishers have been doing things like simply tidying up fabricated (hallucinated, blegh) references and carrying on with the paper. Good to see this first step of properly dealing with botted papers

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Hi. Yes, sure - Arpha (Pensoft), Scholastica, JAMS, and RiverValley would all be worth checking out.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Fantastic news! Congratulations Iryna. A marvelous addition and unique perspective to add to the COPE Council.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I don’t just mean in academia (where I will also acknowledge the term ‘fraud’ has an extra weight of implication), but in general, in every creative application of slopbots

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Ok, I’ll go half’s and agree on misconduct, because it’s also true, but it’s still fraud, because these LLMs are just fraud engines. I don’t think it helps to pretend they are not, and especially not use anthropomorphised cutesy words like ‘hallucinate’ (which is sleight of hand to bury the lede)

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Right?! It’s remarkable that people - publishers, journal editors - are approaching ‘hallucinations’ (a cutesy word for fraud) as something that can be tidied up with some post acceptance checks Instead of being a screaming red flag, on submission, that the authors have fabricated their article

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Absolutely superb session tonight. Fascinating talks and fantastic speakers. Will have the video up on the RBMO youtube channel in a week or so. if you have nay interest in public health family planning, fertility and population demographics, this will be for you. Some clips in this thread >>>

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

I am looking forward to this. The EASE Summer Symposium is starting to take shape. It is going to be a superb event, with some choice sessions over several days - and this satellite event to get things off to an early start!

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Olivia always on the sharpest point

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Polanski’s responses in this interview are absolute class. The Sky presenters coming from a place of incredibly aggressive bad faith, dealt with in the way we always dream of such disingenuous and biased questioning being deal with.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Journal editors and publishers, do check out this course! There are few, if any, quite like it; comprehensive, interactive and very practical.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Another interesting article of scientific and social advances from RBMO today! Among other aspects, it touches on the way IVF technology is assisting space research, which in turn provides new information for IVF tech and treatments on Earth.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

this is 100% right. Glad to be seeing a lot more of these more sober sensible takes so far this year. Now to go to LinkedIn to give this a bump there too, where it is even more sorely needed than here.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Insert *Pretends to be shocked* meme

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

It is baffling that anyone is still there. They should have all left years ago, when it was clear that staying on it was only support for it as a far right propaganda tool.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Discussing and applying are two entirely discrete actions, surely?

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

The galaxy brained understanderer had logged on

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Adding this to my toolbar for quick reference. I don’t expect I’ll be the first to notice such things in any papers, but I’ll keep it to hand just in case.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

It is very noticeable, and I do very much care. You will lose my interest and confidence in a nanosecond.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Good to see this article has a cautionary note already. I expect it will be retracted in due course. Shocking that this has made it to publication. It does not help, of course, that publishers keep hemming and hawing around GenAI instead of shutting it down. Mixed messages only invite this stuff.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

What a company. This is indeed who you’re supporting when you use ChatGPT.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

‘Token karaoke’ and ‘hobo tech’ are great

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

A lot of very useful and detailed resources for everyone from the novice to seasoned (and jaded) peer reviewer!

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Reposted by Duncan Nicholas

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

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.

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Reposted by Duncan Nicholas

European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

We are excited to reveal the first of our plans towards our next online conference. Help us choose the theme for conference sessions by voting for your favorite from three shortlisted options suggested by our Council. bit.ly/ease2026poll

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

A magnificent and most-needed paper

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

This survey will help us better understand - global activity around board management, - policies and processes for managing Ed Boards; - public information on role profiles and requirements; - regularity of performance reviews and more Please do take the time to provide your experiences

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Catch up with the latest EASE news, valuable resources for Editors and Peer Reviewers, recent publications from European Science Editing and more, in the bi-monthly newsletter, EASE Update.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

completely unacceptable to force people to click the thieving plagiarism slop box But again, perhaps another signal from publishers their complaints about 'piracy' have not been serious all along, and everyone should be SciHubbing to their hearts content.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

I do really like Zoom as a platform, but the recordings are getting increasingly worse for having out of sync audio and video. little slow-downs in the video make it impossible to correct, it's so weirdly warped. It takes a lot of editing to cover over, and/or makes the recordings look so bad.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Calling all journal editors and managers interested in refreshing your strategies and updating approaches and skills to running your journals! The EASE Editor School starts in 1st October with extremely insightful and experienced trainers who know their game Full details in the link 👇🏽

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

New Lamp track just dropped. Album of the year incoming, if you’re into grandiose Satyricon style epics of rabid animalism. youtu.be/F8rcY_1d-mo?...

youtu.be

Lamp of Murmuur - Forest of Hallucinations (Track Premiere)

YouTube video by Black Metal Promotion

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

the first half about the reasons for growth of Reform is incisive. not sure about the policy suggestions; and no mention of Starmer's freeport deals, selling the country into private caplitalist ownership, which drains money out, contradicts the positive spin on Reeve's economic strategy.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

had the chance to get out my SpotOn conference peer review paddles for the webinar last night. Didn't quite make use of them as I had intended, but still they made an appearance! webinar was great fun, and jam-packed full of information from all speakers. The recording will be up soon!

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

RBMO Live is Live! Feel free to jump in to our journal submission masterclass session! Come join the editorial team of @rbmonline.bsky.social for some behind-the-scenes insights and advice into writing high impact articles, ai, peer review and science editing! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Looking forward to this webinar a lot! It is open to anyone interested in submitting to top tier journals - especially in the IVF and fertility field, but not limited to those specialities. Tuesday 16th September! My part is on peer review - in time for @peerreviewweek.bsky.social

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

any day now all those 2nd amendment advocates that freak out about stricter gun controls are going to show up to exercise the purpose of the clause...right? any day now.

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Reposted by Duncan Nicholas

European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

New in the Bookshelf section of the EASE Digest blog, we share a new study published in PNAS which provides further insights into the scale of the industrially-produced research papers from ‘paper mills’. @reeserichardson.bsky.social @jabyrnesci.bsky.social ease.org.uk/2025/08/frau...

ease.org.uk

Fraudulent publication growth is outpacing legitimate science - EASE

A new study published in PNAS illustrates the scale of industrially-produced research papers from 'paper mills'.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Yeah, it’s an entirely bad faith enterprise all the way through, which is why I’m surprised any serious organisation or person has entertained it. Letting their doom in by the front door.

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Duncan Nicholas @dnjournals.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Yes, it’s too ambiguous to have ever been allowed in the door until there was a suitable check on it. Every day I remain bemused at how they’ve been given such a free ride. There’s no real need for anyone to use them for anything, compounded by use supporting these morally dubious companies.

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