iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 02/10/2026

It shows you how bad the problem is that limiting people to 24 submissions a year will make a meaningful difference.

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Jolyon Troscianko @jtroscianko.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

🦋 Butterfly wing patterns create motion illusions that protect them from predators! Our new study (8 years in the making) is out in Nature today doi.org/10.1038/s415... @grahancock.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @scienceanna.bsky.social @lauraakelley.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

OA was mostly designed as a way to make sure taxpayer-funded research was available to taxpayers. Indeed, not really about peer review. But it ties in to the crisis as it was the impetus for this ridiculous growth we now see. So no, no one thought it was a way to peer review better.

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Total Internal Reflection🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦 @tirscienceblog.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Great 🧵 from @hansonmark.bsky.social on why all academics should be opting to publish in non-profit journals 👏👏👏👇

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No One Upstairs @nooneupstairs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yes, to all the thread. But government assessment of universities would need to change away from for-profit, quantity & IF. Many times, the rules for assessment are made by academics who enjoy the status quo, and so we continue with these problems.

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No One Upstairs @nooneupstairs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I agree with all that! it is not just unis and funders, but also government assessment of unis that puts pressure on quantity & IFs. These bodies are, many times, ran by academics who comfortable in the status quo, thus, nothing changes. (using my alt cause I need to keep my job)

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Yes, but I didn't really bring in the concept of preprints here so don't want to confuse the conversation! Basic premise, "pre-publication" includes all pre-finalisation. Many folks still do not use preprints too...

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Agree to disagree. 🙂 I do couple this with a proposal to simply stop peer reviewing everything (i.e. manuscripts should be taken as mature products even if not reviewed). But I think the political message there is separate. I also think journals, in some format, are a self-emergent thing.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Happy to disagree, and I'm aware of the exceptions and caveats of the non-profits/societies point (not interested in the hatbout dissection here). I do think this is largely true because the societies/nonprofits don't scale the same.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I do like the narrative CV. I know a lot of people feel like it doesn't actually help. I think the most effective action is funder/institute policy on getting current* academics to publish with non-profits. Hiring decisions will benefit over time if publishing offers more genuine quality signals.

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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born OTD in 1866. If you're ever feeling that your work is uending and unedifying, remember that he once said this: "Two years work wasted, I have been breeding those flies for all that time and I've got nothing out of it." 🌱🐋🧪 #HistSTM

Photograph of Morgan's Fly Room at Columbia University, around 1920. American Philosophical Society.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Sounds good 🙂 But I'll still leave this point: why not support a non-profit like Science, PNAS, etc... with a great work if you've got one? If you accept the premise of the thread, why ever choose a Cell or a Nature X (now 50+ journals profiteering off the Nature rep)?

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And beyond those in Review Commons... Like... I've got Science and PNAS as premier non-profits. If I can't publish there, why wouldn't I just go to EMBO, PLOS Biology, etc? There's no need for me to try Nature X or Cell Press. I have so many options within the non-profit sphere that are excellent.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Not to mention: if they do want to become a PI, you can still exhaust the best non-profit options before you move to for-profit ones. Different options in different research fields, but groups like Review Commons make this option LESS painful than most for-profit reject-and-resubmit cycles.

reviewcommons.org

Homepage

Improve your paper and streamline publication through journal-independent peer-review.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is always tough right? But it perpetuates the cycle. What I always tell PIs on this is: talk to your students. What do they want to do after their degree? If the answer isn't "become a PI," they don't need a 'prestige' publication. If the work is good, that doesn't change based on journal.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

To close: it's crazy to worry about profit motive in author COI declarations, but not journal editing itself. The damage this was causing was apparent before AI. The power to enact change lies with funders. Funders can use the same mechanisms they already use to support non-profit journals. 14/14

direct.mit.edu

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; ...

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

When you devalue publications in for-profits: no matter the slop, be it paper mills, AI, or researchers themselves... churning out superfluous papers is fine. The academics without profit motive, non-profits, get to highlight quality science. Scholarly publishing is put 1st, and rewarded. 13/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Academics won't shift their behaviours themselves because of publish-or-perish. But unis and funders can ask them to shift it as a consideration for continued funding or employment. This props up non-profits, invests in them, to build their prestige. It devalues publications in for-profits. 12/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Most universities can at least have institutional policies that discourage wasteful spending on publishing. 📣: Unis don't need to somehow change their hiring standards. They just need to, going forward, request their academics support journals that put scholarly publishing 1st. 11/n

researchprofessionalnews.com

Another UK university drops big Elsevier deal - Research Professional News

York becomes third institution known to have cancelled agreement with academic publishing giant

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There are many issues with govt funders stipulating publishing only in non-profit journals – it's taxpayer money, but I digress... But charities can make whatever rules they want for their funding. Let's start there. Charity funders can require work they fund be published in non-profits❕ 10/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There is one regulatory mechanism that can make this happen: funder and university action. Funders and universities require the research they fund to be published. Great, keep doing that. Just require it to be in non-profit journals. Keep walking and talking with me here... 👣 9/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This sounds naive. It's not. Idealism isn't impossible. It's hard, but it's essential. There is no alternative. The strain on scientific publishing marches on, with its ~6% exponential growth rate. See: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... And: reviewer3.com/evidence/acc... 8/n

reviewer3.com

The Acceleration of Scientific Publishing

Science is growing faster than previously documented. Hanson et al. (2024) report 47% cumulative growth between 2016 and 2022, from 1.92M to 2.82M articles...

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Academics can choose to publish only with non-profit journals. This comes with the discomfort of accepting rejection, & persisting with another non-profit even if you view it as a 'journal tier' down (but 👀 RC!) The alternative, seeking validation from any journal, comes with a community cost. 7/n

reviewcommons.org

Homepage

Improve your paper and streamline publication through journal-independent peer-review.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Non-profits aren't motivated by quantity. Quantity is more work. Sans profit, the reward isn't the same. Non-profits are scholarly publishing 1st. Quality 1st. Both models seek growth, but for-profit publishing demands it. Creates it. Non-profit publishing only accepts it when valuable. 6/n

metaror.org

The drain of scientific publishing - MetaROR

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

How will non-profits change any of this? The prestige economy of publishing (IF, community rep) is based on who the community supports. For-profits are profit 1st, scholarly publishing 2nd; it's their business model. With Gold OA, their logical conclusion is to encourage quantity > quality. 5/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The solution isn't obvious. The end game is to adhere to DORA, CoARA, etc... But the committees making hiring decisions are mostly treading water to understand the papers' basic premise and rarely expert enough to critique it robustly. We need to play 4D chess here: publish with non-profits. 4/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

That comes down to career reward structures. Obsessing on N_papers as evidence of productivity is toxic. The game has always been prestige vs. quantity, now taken to an extreme by journal growth offering indefinite quantity. The utility of papers is secondary when there's money to be made. 3/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The strain on peer review is due to our obsession of submitting *everything* to a journal and requiring PRE-PUBLICATION peer review of it before it's deemed "mature science." The problem with peer review is that no one can accept we have to stop pre-publication reviewing as default. 2/n

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I'm surprised a community of publishing writers can blame AI for the problems of peer review when those same writers cite our study, "the strain on scientific publishing", which characterizes how this problem existed before AI. bit.ly/StrainQSS It's the incentives structure, not the AI. 1/n

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

Ask the Chefs: Peer Review Capacity — Uncomfortable Truths and Overlooked Conversations - The Scholarly Kitchen

For Peer Review Week 2026, we asked the Chefs two questions: What is one uncomfortable truth about peer review that the scholarly publishing community doesn’t talk about enough? And, beyond recruiting...

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Tosin Q. Orababa @tosinorababa.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Excited to share our new publication (in mSphere) describing the mechanism of action and general bacterial (S. aureus and A. baumannii) response to Bald’s eyesalve - a reconstructed historical antimicrobial remedy. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

journals.asm.org

Uncovering the mechanism of action of a historical antimicrobial against S. aureus and A. baumannii | mSphere

The increasing mortality and economic cost of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) have made it one of the biggest threats to global health. Available antibiotics are in short supply due to the slow progres...

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University of Exeter, Cornwall @cornwall.exeter.ac.uk · 21/09/2026

Led by @hansonmark.bsky.social and Bartek Troczka at the University of Exeter Cornwall and Luke Alphey at the Univesity of York, the new project will aim to develop “genetic tools” that could protect the UK’s pollinators from population collapse. 🐝🦋

news.exeter.ac.uk

New ‘genetic tools’ could protect UK’s pollinators

Scientists aim to develop “genetic tools” that could protect the UK's pollinators from population collapse. Pollinators face mounting pressure from insecticides, habitat loss and new disease risks dri...

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Excited to finally announce we are ARIA-funded to engineer infection resilience into British Bees! My group will be characterising antimicrobial peptide - microbe interactions of bumblebees to better charactertise bee immunity, key peptides to regulate the microbiota, and principles of infection.

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Jim Woodgett @jwoodgett.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

46th Terry Fox Run. Only 10K. Terry ran 4X this distance, on one leg, every single day for 146 days, rain, snow or shine. #FinishIt

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This could be a game changer for folks working on arthropods other than Drosophila

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 14/09/2026

Your regular reminder: If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends. If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Thread. Apologies in advance, I've been grinding away for weeks on a grant with maybe a 10% success rate. Canadian researchers work in buildings held together with duct tape, run labs on shoestrings, and spend more and more time competing for lower and lower success rate operating programs.

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 13/09/2026

This will be bad for: - the students - the research progress - the universities - the towns the universities are in - the companies hiring students - the states the universities are in - the national economy - national security - the country - the world

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And a lesson on how secure your place is 😅

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Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Let me bring up one example from Anthropic's report and compare the proposed research to a paper we wrote: "Genomic and phenotypic analyses suggest moderate fitness differences among Zika virus lineages". See the difference? Yeah, except the virus, me neither. journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...

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Robin May @robinmay9.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Unravelling the evolution of innate immunity in Drosophila with @hansonmark.bsky.social at the @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social meeting. Plus I learnt that Persian cats have a genetic mutation in calprotectin that makes them susceptible to ringworm...#catmysteriesexplained.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

And I learned that complement mutations are associated with susceptibility to meningococcus! Very interesting... Remembered after, cool paper on a non-canonical mouse AMP uniquely important for Parasutterella control. www.nature.com/articles/s41... AMPs as silver bullets to regulate commensals.

nature.com

Ribonuclease 4 functions as an intestinal antimicrobial protein to maintain gut microbiota and metabolite homeostasis - Nature Communications

Antimicrobial proteins have been implicated in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Here the authors report, using both mouse genetic models and human samples, RNASE4 as a potential antimicrobial protein...

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Dr. Merritt Rae Turetsky @queenofpeat.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Forget planting trees for a second. Let's talk about BOGS. Did you know that peatlands cover a tiny 3% of Earth’s land, but store MORE CARBON than all the world's forests combined?They are an ultimate MVP of our climate system and it’s time we start hyping them. Join me! 🧵 1/

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eLife @elife.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Ever found yourself victim of the dreaded #Reviewer2? At eLife, reviewers discuss their reviews before reaching a consensus, letting you focus on how to improve. In fact, how, when and even if you revise is up to you. Learn more about our process ⬇️ elifesciences.org/about/peer-r...

elifesciences.org

Peer review and publishing at eLife · eLife

eLife is pioneering an approach to scientific publishing that combines the immediacy and openness of preprints with the scrutiny of peer review by experts.

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Marleny García Lozano @marlenygarcial.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The second chapter of my PhD thesis is out in @NatureComms 🎉!! we found that a "Yellow" protein, the same gene family known for pigmentation in many insects, has been repurposed to protect a beetle's bacterial symbiont. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Yellow protein co-opted to sustain obligate symbiosis in leaf beetles - Nature Communications

Insects have evolved diverse strategies to protect their genome-reduced symbionts during vertical transmission. Here, authors show that tortoise beetles have co-opted a Yellow protein to form spheres ...

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HHMI @hhmi-science.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

(1/2) When Janelia set out to map every neuron in the fly brain in 2008, many thought it couldn’t be done. Nearly 20 years later, a complete wiring diagram of the 166,000+ neurons of the adult male fruit fly is helping to reveal the brain’s secrets: bit.ly/4zT7jPf.

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