Eric Schares
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eschares.bsky.social
Eric Schares
@eschares.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.1K following 320 posts
Collection Analysis Librarian, Iowa State University & Research Associate, #ScholCommLab. Views my own.
Data science, bibliometrics, python, Open Access, academic publishing, (applied) stats, causal inference, Learned League.
More at eschares.github.io
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eschares.bsky.social
Eric Schares @eschares.bsky.social · Nov 18
🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 years.

A. $8.349 billion ($8.968 B in 2023 USD)

$2.5B in 2023 alone.

arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #metasci
Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023
This study presents estimates of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. APCs are fees charged for publishing in some ...
arxiv.org
eschares.bsky.social
How does a #DAG work on a calculated quantity? Presumably, any of these nodes could have a causal effect on the others.

Say we have a mixture of red and white balls. How do total number, num red, num white, and % red interact?

#stats
Dag showing total number of balls -> % red <- num red DAG showing total number of balls -> % red <- num white DAG showing total number of balls -> % red -> num white DAG showing total number of balls <- % red <- num red
November 20, 2025 at 10:18 PM
eschares.bsky.social
"...revealed the hidden economics of how science gets published and accessed. Most Americans don’t realize they are paying not once, not twice, but at least three times for the same body of research."

The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research by @jsmoliga.bsky.social on @undark.org #metasci
The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research
Opinion | The hidden economics behind federal research funding causes Americans to pay three times for the same body of research.
undark.org
November 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM
eschares.bsky.social
I love a good metaphor.

Someone who was so engaged to hang this flag on a busy road in town, but now can’t be bothered to fix its frayed and tattered condition.
House with giant Trump flag displayed flag against the siding, but all torn, half gone, barely readable now
November 19, 2025 at 12:47 PM
eschares.bsky.social
MANAGER SPECIAL
Bananas with a sign that says Manager Special. Was 54c, now 53c
November 18, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Reposted by Eric Schares
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing.

Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
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
eschares.bsky.social
Needs a six_seven() function
hadley.nz Hadley Wickham @hadley.nz · 19d
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....

genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
GitHub - hadley/genzplyr: dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap
dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap. Contribute to hadley/genzplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:36 AM
eschares.bsky.social
Watching @andrew.heiss.phd Youtube lectures and just got to IPW. I wondered if this can only be used with binary outcomes (treated or not), and a search showed me another blog post of his that investigates this exact question.

Refreshingly, it ends with "this works but I'm not sure why".

#stats
Generating inverse probability weights for both binary and continuous treatments | Andrew Heiss
Use R to close backdoor confounding by generating and using inverse probability weights for both binary and continuous treatments
www.andrewheiss.com
November 6, 2025 at 9:16 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Mostly German, some Dutch and a little of the music course.
October 29, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
Trump policy seems to have caused an economic contraction in Iowa (6.1% drop in GDP) that is substantially bigger in magnitude than that of the Great Recession

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/u...
In Trump-Friendly Iowa, the President’s Policies Have Hit Hard
www.nytimes.com
October 26, 2025 at 9:11 PM
eschares.bsky.social
I’ve done a lot of work in my career around unbundling academic journals. See for example unsubextender.lib.iastate.edu and doi.org/10.1162/qss_....
October 23, 2025 at 12:06 PM
eschares.bsky.social
I just called both my Senators and Representative. On my personal time and on my personal device. Ridiculous.

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...
Trump Administration Live Updates: White House Changes Course and Will Demolish Entire East Wing
www.nytimes.com
October 22, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
I recently reflected on the Royal Society Conference on the Future of Scientific Publishing and summarized my thoughts in an ISSP blog post: www.uottawa.ca/research-inn...
#OpenAccess #ScientificPublishing #AcademicSky
Why the Economics of Scientific Publishing Need Urgent Reform | Research and innovation
www.uottawa.ca
October 22, 2025 at 7:57 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Is this anything?
Venn diagram between Macbeth witches and bad baseball umps, with overlap being "what's fair is foul, what's foul is fair"
October 22, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
gelliottmorris.com
Good evening. We estimate that between 4.2 and 7.6 million people turned out for the No Kings Day demonstrations held around the country on Saturday. This makes Oct 18 very likely the biggest single-day U.S. protest event since 1970. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...
Second "No Kings Day" protests likely the largest single-day political demonstration since 1970, with 4.2-7.6 million participants
Here are the initial results from our crowdsourced crowd-counting estimates
www.gelliottmorris.com
October 19, 2025 at 3:17 AM
eschares.bsky.social
Homemade Sign that says All the money that you made will never buy back your soul
October 18, 2025 at 3:12 PM
eschares.bsky.social
It’s time for apple tasting!
Six apples in a row Apples cut into slices and on two plates
October 18, 2025 at 12:16 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Ha, I have these shoes and they DO squeak!

www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...
Customers sue sneaker company On over shoes that cause 'noisy and embarrassing squeak'
"No reasonable consumer would purchase Defendant’s shoes — or pay as much for them as they did — knowing each step creates an audible and noticeable squeak," the lawsuit states.
www.nbcnews.com
October 17, 2025 at 10:44 PM
eschares.bsky.social
What’s it like to tell someone she won a Nobel Prize? | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
What’s it like to tell someone she won a Nobel Prize?
Science chats with photographer Lindsey Wasson, who captured how Nobel winner Mary Brunkow reacted to life-changing news
www.science.org
October 10, 2025 at 1:02 PM
eschares.bsky.social
SQL is hard because you can use something before you create it.
October 8, 2025 at 9:34 PM
eschares.bsky.social
I had a new experience last week - a journalist asked for my comment on a news story!

In this case it was AAAS's response to the NIH proposed APC cap scenarios. I agreed with some things in the release but disagreed with others.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-usa-...
Eric Schares, engineering and collection analysis librarian at Iowa State University, told Research Professional News he agreed with AAAS that APC caps would become floors, but he said the AAAS response “contorts itself to both defend and criticise APCs at the same time”. Schares co-authored an analysis of NIH publishing scenarios earlier this month and noted that AAAS charges an APC of $5,450 at Science Advances, its one gold open access journal. The analysis found 433 NIH-funded papers published this year, making it the sixth most popular NIH journal. “I would ask why Science Advances has an APC at all and if the AAAS will consider moving it to align with the rest of their portfolio in providing open access through the green route without an APC,” Schares said. He also questioned the AAAS’s suggestion that the NIH should only cover APCs if publishers can demonstrate integrity practices. “This seems at odds with priorities stated elsewhere in the document, including the very next paragraph that emphasises researcher choice,” he said.
October 6, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Reposted by Eric Schares
ludowaltman.bsky.social
Fully agree with Aaron's advice: "Libraries, institutions, open science advocates must redouble efforts to push for genuinely open metadata policies. We need to explore linking this advocacy to subscription renewal negotiations, making value of open abstracts part of conversation with publishers."
October 1, 2025 at 7:16 PM
eschares.bsky.social
New OpenAlex logo looks like QSS.

blog.openalex.org/a-new-logo-f...
New logo for OpenAlex Logo for the journal Quantitative Science Studies
October 1, 2025 at 1:01 PM
eschares.bsky.social
OurResearch rebrands to OpenAlex.

blog.openalex.org/were-now-ope...
We’re now OpenAlex - OpenAlex blog
For years, we’ve been working under the name OurResearch. That name sat at the top of our org chart, with three child projects under it: OpenAlex, Unpaywall, and Unsub. Starting today, things are simp...
blog.openalex.org
September 29, 2025 at 8:47 PM
eschares.bsky.social
Now that I've actually read the post, my opinions are:
1) Don't mint a new DOI until the actual content of the manuscript changes. Having it duplicated at MetaROR with supporting files isn't enough
2) Define a new type, such as "reviewed preprint"
September 27, 2025 at 4:39 PM