Julián Moyano Di Carlo

Modeling and pizza. I have never heard anything more perfect 😍

Replace [lithics] with almost everything else and still applies…

Comic: Common Sailing Rigs. [18 boats with different sail types, labeled.] Lateen; Bermuda rigged sloop; Ketch, Gaff rigged sloop; yawl; schooner; Ketch-rigged Gaff; Kloop-rigged sketch; bunkbed rig; Flettner rig; Oops, all Spinnakers; keel rig; kite rig; longsail rig; deckhand obliterator; offset rig; mastless rig; unclassifiable chaos rig.

Sailing Rigs

xkcd.com/3193/

The "Szilard Point."

When we talk about The strain and the drain on scientific publishing, it's this.
Researchers working just to stay afloat, and not on what we actually want them to do: research, discover, innovate.

Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820

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.

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/...

Not this year. Maybe next one 🥲

Surely the US wave 🤦🏻‍♂️. Is there a number reserved for european citizens??

The anonymous fate of the silenced

BTC Call for Action - EAA

EAA reversed its decision to exclude Israeli institutions complicit in the genocide of Palestinians after intimidation campaigns.

Read & share the full statement: blacktrowelcollective.wordpress.com/2025/09/02/b...

🙄

True story 🥲

Particularly without serious regulation…

Bridging theory and data: A computational workflow for cultural evolution | PNAS Cultural evolution applies evolutionary concepts and tools to explain the change of culture over time. Despite advances in both theoretical and emp...

Here's a paper with a skeleton of the idea, but there is really lots of research to do on the structure of workflow networks, now to make them robust, how to development diagnostics and calculi for steps within them. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Great! I will check my calendar. Those days are tricky to travel

Hi Izzy! Is it hybrid? Not clear in the website?

5-panel comic. (1) [teacher with long hair next to whiteboard] TEACHER: I’m supposed to give you the tools to do good science. (2) [teacher addressing students] But what *are* those tools? Methodology is hard and there are so many ways to get incorrect results. What is the magic ingredient that makes for good science? (3) TEACHER: To figure it out, I ran a regression with all the factors people say are important: [embedded list in sub-panel, cut off at end] Outcome variable: correct scientific results. Predictors: collaboration; skepticism of others’ claims; questioning your own beliefs; trying to falsify hypotheses; checking citations; statistical rigor; blinded analysis; financial disclosure; open data (4) TEACHER: The regression says two ingredients are the most crucial: 1) genuine curiosity about the answer to a question, and 2) ammonium hydroxide. (5) STUDENT: Wait, why did *ammonia* score so high? How did it even get on the list? LONG HAIR: ...And now you’re doing good science!

Good Science

xkcd.com/3101/

Excited to share a new dataset featuring 2000 #radiocarbon dates from southeast Norway, spanning the Late #Neolithic to #BronzeAge. This dataset, which has been part of my doctoral work, builds on the efforts of @steinarsol.bsky.social and Kjetil Loftsgarden @uio.no. #DataSharing in #Archaeology

Presenting Counterpoints to the Dominant Terrestrial Narrative of European Prehistory - Oxbow Books Challenges the terrestrial focus of European prehistory, emphasizing the significance of seascapes, maritime networks, and coastal societies in shaping prehi...

Check out our new book on the maritime prehistory of Atlantic Europe. It's the first volume in our Maritime Encounters series and is available open access!

www.oxbowbooks.com/979888857184...

Seafaring and navigation in the Nordic Bronze Age: The application of an ocean voyage tool and boat performance data for comparing direct open water crossings with sheltered coastal routes This study presents an “ocean voyaging tool” that combines predicted vessel performance data with agent-based simulations. This tool offers a new way to assess navigation and seafaring abilities in pr...

Our paper on ocean voyaging in the Bronze Age was just published in PLOS One - have a read: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Major JOB ALERT! I and close colleagues have 4 (!) positions open. So if you're looking for a postdoc or PhD, do read on:

This should be happening in many journals until the madness stops

Some days 😅

Do we? 😈

Nordic Bronze Age Economies Cambridge Core - Archaeology: General Interest - Nordic Bronze Age Economies

Our book on the Nordic Bronze Age is finally out! It is open access here: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Children as playful artists: Integrating developmental psychology to identify children’s art in the Upper Palaeolithic: Hunter Gatherer Research: Vol 0, No 0 Children’s agential behaviours in the archaeological record have often been overlooked. Despite efforts to centre children in the past through ‘an archaeology of childhood’, there remains a fundamenta...

New paper out! Children actively made hand-stencils and flutings in the Upper Palaeolithic, but can we identify children's cave art without anatomical measurements? We present a new framework using universal features of young children's drawings 🏺 www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

An amazing school in an amazing city!

Traditions of Equality: The Archaeology of Egalitarianism and Egalitarian Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa (First and Second Millennium CE) - Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Interest in egalitarianism and egalitarian behavior in complex societies has grown in recent years, spurred by anarchist approaches and collective action theory. Sub-Saharan Africa, however, has seldo...

Acaba de salir el paper que más he disfrutado escribiendo en muchos años: arqueología del igualitarismo en África. Movilidad subversiva, logísticas rebeldes, objetos de resistencia y reyes sagrados. En acceso abierto aquí:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...