Duncan Nicholas
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dnjournals.bsky.social
Duncan Nicholas
@dnjournals.bsky.social
500 followers 1K following 190 posts
RBMOnline Development Editor, EASE Past-President
Near 20-years of editorial management, consultancy and training for academic journals, publishers, and researchers.

https://linktr.ee/dnjournals

#JournalEditorial #PeerReview #PublishingEthics
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dnjournals.bsky.social
Journal editors and publishers, do check out this course!

There are few, if any, quite like it; comprehensive, interactive and very practical.
easeeditors.bsky.social European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · 9d
Would you like to improve your journal's visibility and impact?

The EASE Editorial School for Journal Editors is an 8 module online training course, delivered by experts in their field, to help you develop your journal and engage your Editorial Board.

Find out more - bit.ly/EASEeditorialschool26
February 6, 2026 at 11:13 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
rbmonline.bsky.social Reproductive BioMedicine Online @rbmonline.bsky.social · 11d
We are pleased to publish a new review article which addresses a difficult but essential question for human spaceflight: how spaceflight conditions may affect reproduction, fertility, and long-term human health, and just as importantly, where the evidence is still missing.

doi.org/10.1016/j.rb...
February 4, 2026 at 8:51 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
jensfoell.de Dr. Jens Foell @jensfoell.de · 20d
LinkedIn probably wasn’t the best channel to post this, but I stand by it
A LinkedIn post from my profile, reading: “It's a very simple equation, really: Science communication needs to be accurate, it needs to be authentic, and it needs to be transparent. If you're not doing it that way, you're not doing science communication at all. In addition, *good* science communication is inclusive, it's ethical, it's sustainable. If you're not heeding these things, you're not doing science communication right. Which is why I am profoundly shocked by ostensibly reasonable people promoting the use of chatbots for science communication. Their use decreases factual accuracy. It decreases transparency. It decreases authenticity. Those things are true regardless of *which* chatbot you're using and regardless of *how* you're using it. Plus, the tech is not sustainable, not inclusive, not ethical. The promotion and use of Al chatbots is already damaging science communication and, if taken to the extreme, will be capable of quickly destroying it. Not through the rise of evil Al, but through ignorance on part of the users, rapidly destroying the trust that science communicators have been able to build over decades. Everything I will ever publish will be written by humans, and by humans only. If science communication goes the way of the robots, it will go there without me.”
January 26, 2026 at 10:54 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
Insert *Pretends to be shocked* meme
edzitron.com Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 29d
These are totally unsupported claims with no links, citations or even statements like “sources familiar with the matter.” I read basically every single story about AI efficacy at big companies, especially salesforce. These are either made up or egregious extrapolations of things.
January 17, 2026 at 11:07 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
doctorzen.net Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · Dec 1
If you run across a gen A.I. slop 🤖💩 diagram in an academic journal, I’d love to know about it! Please fill out this form:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Slop in journals is illuminating about journals’ quality control. And journals would like you to forget their mistakes.

#AcademicChatter
Slop graphics in academic journals
Use this form to share graphics (e.g., figures, covers, graphical abstracts) made using generative A.I. that have appeared in academic journals. The plan is to compile these slop graphics in an ope...
docs.google.com
December 2, 2025 at 7:10 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
It is very noticeable, and I do very much care.

You will lose my interest and confidence in a nanosecond.
astrokatie.com Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · Nov 28
I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.
November 28, 2025 at 6:38 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
feralrobots.bsky.social Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629 @feralrobots.bsky.social · Nov 27
Hey @nature.com, have you got an explanation for how the hell THIS happened? & especially why you accepted a paper with such a bizarre piece of genAI slop in it?!
& more to the point, why we should take you seriously at all going forward?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Figure 1 from a paper published in Nature (linked in post). The figure purports to be an infographic depiction of the "Overall working of the framework" for 'explainably' diagnosing autism spectrum disorder. The infographic is plainly nonsense, containing many spelling errors, nonsense words, meaningless images and graphs. Clearly created using generative AI and (crucially) NEVER CHECKED AT ANY STEP OF THE WRITING OR PUBLICATION PROCESS.
November 28, 2025 at 3:03 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
What a company.

This is indeed who you’re supporting when you use ChatGPT.
November 26, 2025 at 5:52 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
‘Token karaoke’ and ‘hobo tech’ are great
November 22, 2025 at 6:08 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
A lot of very useful and detailed resources for everyone from the novice to seasoned (and jaded) peer reviewer!
easeeditors.bsky.social European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · Nov 13
From our Oslo Conference we share the poster from our Peer Review Committee, showcasing the work of the team - including trainings, webinars, research projects, and produced 12 Guides and 4 Infographics, available through the Peer Review Toolkit page.

doi.org/10.14293/EAS...

#PeerReview
November 13, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Duncan Nicholas
hansonmark.bsky.social
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 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Duncan Nicholas
easeeditors.bsky.social
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
November 10, 2025 at 12:29 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
A magnificent and most-needed paper
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
October 29, 2025 at 5:44 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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
easeeditors.bsky.social European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · Oct 29
Journal Editors! Managing Editors!

A call for 20 minutes of your time please, to contribute to this survey of editorial board management.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
October 29, 2025 at 3:13 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
easeeditors.bsky.social European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · Oct 9
EASE Update Issue 7 is up and out!

In this edition we announce our new Survey on Editorial Board Practices, several forthcoming webinars including our collaborative SDG-related event with STM, revisit our Peer Review Infographics (icymt), and more.

Enjoy!

sh1.sendinblue.com/ahdfghmkclpf...
EASE Update Issue 7
sh1.sendinblue.com
October 14, 2025 at 10:03 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
anotheraspirin.bsky.social Rutger K. 🟥 @anotheraspirin.bsky.social · Sep 26
This is a problem.
September 26, 2025 at 10:44 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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.
September 22, 2025 at 2:22 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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

👇🏽
easeeditors.bsky.social European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · Sep 19
Part II of the EASE Editorial School for Journal Editors begins in October.

No need to take Part I first, you can start here with four modules to help your journals enhance their publishing strategy, visibility, impact, and editorial processes

ease.org.uk/ease-events/...
September 19, 2025 at 3:17 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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!
rbmonline.bsky.social Reproductive BioMedicine Online @rbmonline.bsky.social · Sep 16
Our Development Editor @dnjournals.bsky.social talking Peer Review - values, purpose, goals, processes, techniques for authors and reviewers at RBMO, but also the global scholarly community
September 17, 2025 at 9:34 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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...
September 16, 2025 at 7:12 PM
dnjournals.bsky.social
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
rbmonline.bsky.social Reproductive BioMedicine Online @rbmonline.bsky.social · Sep 10
Join us Tuesday, 16 September for a special Journal Submission Masterclass edition of RBMO LIVE.

Joining our Editorial team for the webinar will be Dr Gareth Dyke – consultant to author services and publishing companies, with over 380 peer reviewed publications to his name.

bit.ly/RBMOlive13

1/3
September 10, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Duncan Nicholas
easeeditors.bsky.social
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...
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'.
ease.org.uk
August 5, 2025 at 11:54 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
Really great thorough work on illustrating the scale at which paper mills are operating.

and to repeat myself on another wake up call - allowing the unfettered use of LLMs like ChatGPT etc without getting them watermarked and blocked is going to exacerbate this problem tenfold
reeserichardson.bsky.social Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · Aug 4
Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community.

reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...
A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise
Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”
reeserichardson.blog
August 5, 2025 at 9:40 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
Welcome to the new EASE Council!

Great that everyone could attend the conference in person. An exciting auspicious start to their term.
easeeditors.bsky.social European Association of Science Editors @easeeditors.bsky.social · May 23
A lovely photograph from our Oslo Conference, where our new Council for 2025-2027 were able to meet in person to begin discussing our next initiatives!

See details of the Council on our webpage!

ease.org.uk/about-us/org...
EASE Council From left to right: Jason Roberts, Ashley Cooper, Ksenija Bazdaric (ESE Editor in Chief), Sigmar Rode, Mary Hodgson (Secretary), Iva Grabaric Andonovski (Vice-President), Cem Uzun (Past-President), Bahar Mehmani (President), Ali Şahin, Jo Wixon, Phill Jones, and Are Brean (Vice President).
May 23, 2025 at 11:56 AM
dnjournals.bsky.social
I signed up for this. Interested to listen in on this discussion.
May 19, 2025 at 3:50 PM