This morning I gave a short talk at the “Astronomy Tea” at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy. No prizes for guessing what I talked about. The talk was followed by questions and then by a huge thunderstorm.
Here are the slides:
P.S. Today was the first day of teaching of the new academic year at the University of Sydney, so the campus was much busier today than it has been.
Yesterday I received two different emails from predatory publishers. The first invited me to submit a manuscript to the OSP Journal of Physics & Astronomy. I am informed that the journal is fully open access, with an Article Processing Charge of “only” $950. Of course $950 is $950 more than I’ll ever be prepared to pay for an APC, but did have a look at the website and found this:
A pretty good clue that OSP is a predatory publisher is that can spell neither “Scientific” nor “submit”…
Anyway, if you’re interested – and if I were you I wouldn’t be – you can find the OSP Journal of Physics & Astronomy here. I’ve skimmed the latest issue and the quality of articles is just as I expected.
The Second Encounter of the Predatory Kind was an email that begins thus:
I’ve never heard of the Auricle Global Society of Education and Research (AGSER) but the Open Journal of Astrophysics is not for sale to them (nor to anyone else, for that matter). Of course I don’t own OJAp anyway, but even if I did I wouldn’t sell it at any price. The only terms that I would agree to a takeover would be if the new owners committed to keep it as Diamond Open Access (i.e. free to authors and readers), and I can’t see any predators offering that!
I don’t know how AGSER arrived at a valuation of $70K but it got me thinking. We have so far published 128 articles at OJAp. Taking the APC for MNRAS of £2500 (approx $3000) as typical then we have saved the community about $384,000 in unnecessary publication charges.
It’s Saturday morning here in Sydney, which means it is time for another weekly update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics. In fact there is only one paper to report this week, being the 13th paper in Volume 7 (2024) and the 128th altogether. It was published on February 15th 2024.
The title is “Jet – counter-jet asymmetry in the jittering jets explosion mechanism of supernovae” and it This one is in the folder called High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. The paper presents a discussion of the production of jets in core-collapse supernovae and the resulting formation of neutron stars, and the implications for the morphology of the supernova remnant.
The sole author of the paper is Noam Soker of Technion, Haifa, in Israel.
Here is the overlay of the paper containing the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
Last year I wrote a piece about the resignation of the entire Editorial Board of an Elsevier journal. The main reason for this action was `extreme’ Article Processing Charges imposed by the publisher for so-called Gold Open Access to the papers. As I wrote then, the
… current system of ‘Gold’ Open Access is a scam, and it’s a terrible shame we have ended up having it foisted upon us. Fortunately, being forced to pay APCs of many thousands of euros to publish their papers, researchers are at last starting to realize that they are being ripped off. Recently, the entire Editorial Board of Neuroimage and its sister journal Neuroimage: Reports resigned in protest at the `extreme’ APC levels imposed by the publisher, Elsevier. I’m sure other academics will follow this example, as it becomes more and more obvious that the current arrangements are unsustainable. Previously the profits of the big publishers were hidden in library budgets. Now they are hitting researchers and their grants directly, as authors now have to pay, and people who previously hadn’t thought much about the absurdity of it all are now realizing what a racket academic publishing really is.
Well, the new journal founded by former Editorial Board of Neuroimage and Neuroimage: Reports has now appeared. It’s called Imaging Neuroscience and its rather website can be found here.
Good news, you would think.
But no…
Imaging Neuroscience is itself a Gold Open Access journal which charges an APC of $1600 per paper. That’s about half the Elsevier were charging ($3,450) but is still far too high. It simply does not cost this much to publish papers online! (There’s a paper that gives a summary of the commercial costs of different aspects of publishing here.) The journal claims to be non-profit making so I’d love to see what they are spending this money on. It can’t be on their website, which is very rudimentary.
It seems that the neuroscientists concerned have just decided to replace Elsevier’s absurd APCs with their own absurd APCs. Oh dear. And they seemed so close to getting it…
With all the excitement of my first weekend in Sydney I completely forgot to post an update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics. In fact there is only one paper to report from last week, being the 12th paper in Volume 7 (2024) and the 127th altogether. This one was published on 9th February 2024 and is the first published from Down Under.
The title is “Galaxy Clusters Discovered via the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect in the 500-square-degree SPTpol Survey” and it presents a catalogue of 689 galaxy clusters detected through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich using the dual-frequency polarization-sensitive camera SPTPol on the South Pole Telescope. This one is in the folder called Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics.
This paper has lead author Lindsey Bleem of the Argonne National Laboratory in the USA and has 127 other authors – too many to list individually here – but you can see them on the overlay below. I see quite a few names of people I know well!
Here is the overlay of the paper containing the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
P.S. Incidentally, while I’m here I thought I’d share this little graphic I’ve generated (for other purposes) that shows how the rate of submissions to OJAp has increased over the last 5 years:
Now that I’m settled in Sydney it’s time to post another update relating to the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published two more papers, taking the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 11 and the total published by OJAp up to 126. I should have posted these before leaving but it slipped my mind.
Both the current papers discussed here are in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, our most popular category.
Anyway, the first paper of the most recent pair – published on February 1st – is “LimberJack.jl: auto-differentiable methods for angular power spectra analyses”, Jaime Ruiz-Zapatero (Oxford, UK), David Alonso (Oxford, UK), Carlos García-García (Oxford, UK) , Andrina Nicola (Bonn, Germany), Arrykrishna Mootoovaloo (Oxford, UK), Jamie Sullivan (Berkeley, USA), Marco Bonici (Milan, Italy), and Pedro Ferreira (Oxford, UK). This paper presents a fully auto-differentiable code for cosmological analyses of two-point auto- and cross-correlation measurements from galaxy clustering, CMB lensing and weak lensing data written in Julia.
Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
The second paper was published on Friday 2nd February and has the title “Can we constrain structure growth from galaxy proper motions?” which, as its title suggests, looks at the feasibility of using transverse peculiar velocities (i.e. proper motions) of galaxies for cosmological studies. The authors are Iain Duncan (Oxford, UK), David Alonso (Oxford, UK), Anže Slosar (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA), and Kate Storey-Fisher (New York University, USA). To find out the answer to the question posed in its title you’ll have to read the paper!
Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
Because of the high rate of publications coming out, we’re moving to a system where we register papers in batches once a week rather than individually as they are published. This is just a temporary measure until we can automate this process more fully. Anyway, you can expect another update in a week or so.
As the first month of 2024 is now over, I thought I’d post an update relating to the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published two papers, taking the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 9 (the total for January) and the total published by OJAp up to 124. We will have others soon, but I will be travelling for the first few days of February so the next update will be in a week or so.
Using our sophisticated forecasting algorithm, based on the first month of 2024 as input, I predict that we will publish around 9×12=108 papers in 2024, more than double last year’s total of 50.
Both the current papers discussed here are in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, our most popular category.
Anyway, the first paper of the most recent pair – published on January 30th – is “Capse.jl: efficient and auto-differentiable CMB power spectra emulation”, by Marco Bonici (INAF Milano, Italy & Waterloo, Canada), Federico Bianchini (Stanford, USA) and Jaime Ruiz-Zapatero (Oxford, UK). This paper presents an emulator for rapid and accurate prediction of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature, polarization, and lensing angular power spectra, that works much faster than traditional methods. The code is written in Julia, in which language we are seeing an increasing number of submissions to OJAp.
Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
The second paper was published yesterday (31st January 2024) and has the title “Cosmological Inflation in N-Dimensional Gaussian Random Fields with Algorithmic Data Compression” which is a study of inflationary models with Gaussian random potentials for multiple scalar fields, tracking the evolutionary trajectories numerically. The authors are Connor Painter and Emory Bunn, both the Physics Department at the University of Richmond, Virginia (USA). Ted Bunn (as he is usually known) is a longstanding member of the Editorial Board of the Open Journal of Astrophysics (and was thereby excluded from any involvement in the editorial process for this paper).
Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:
You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
Here Endeth the Update.
Once again it’s a good time for a roundup of the week’s business at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This past week we have once again published three papers, taking the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 7 and the total published by OJAp up to 122. Looking at the current work flow I expect there to be at least three next week too.
In chronological order, the three papers published this week, with their overlays, are as follows. You can click on the images of the overlays to make them larger should you wish to do so.
First one up is “The extraordinary frequency pattern variation in δ Scuti stars” by Luis A. Balona of the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa. This paper, published on 22nd January 2024, is a study of the (lack of) correlation in the structure of periodograms in Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data relating to a oscillating delta Scuti variable stars. This paper is in the category of Solar and Stelllar Astrophysics.
Here is a screen grab of the overlay, which includes the abstract:
You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
The second paper to announce is “The Millions of Optical-Radio/X-ray Associations (MORX) Catalogue, v2” by Eric Wim Flesch, an independent researcher based in New Zealand. This presents the MORX catalogue of optical/radio/X-ray/ galaxy associations, containing over three million objects. The catalogue itself can be found in a number of locations on the web, e.g. here or here.
The paper was also published on 23rdJanuary 2024 in the category Astrophysics of Galaxies . You can see the overlay here:
The accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.
The last paper of this batch is entitled “The runaway velocity of the white dwarf companion in the double detonation scenario of supernovae” and the authors are Jessica Braudo and Noam Soker of Technion, Haifa, in Israel. This paper, which presents a study of ejection velocities in the double-detonation scenario of Type 1a Supernovae was published on 24th January 2024 and is in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena.
Here is the overlay:
You can find the full text for this one on the arXiv here.
And that concludes the update. As you can see, we’re getting a bit more diverse in terms of subject matter, which is nice. There’ll be more next week!
I just saw an interesting paper published by the Royal Society last year with the abstract:
Replacing traditional journals with a more modern solution is not a new idea. Here, we propose ways to overcome the social dilemma underlying the decades of inaction. Any solution needs to not only resolve the current problems but also be capable of preventing takeover by corporations: it needs to replace traditional journals with a decentralized, resilient, evolvable network that is interconnected by open standards and open-source norms under the governance of the scholarly community. It needs to replace the monopolies connected to journals with a genuine, functioning and well-regulated market. In this new market, substitutable service providers compete and innovate according to the conditions of the scholarly community, avoiding sustained vendor lock-in. Therefore, a standards body needs to form under the governance of the scholarly community to allow the development of open scholarly infrastructures servicing the entire research workflow. We propose a redirection of money from legacy publishers to the new network by funding bodies broadening their minimal infrastructure requirements at recipient institutions to include modern infrastructure components replacing and complementing journal functionalities. Such updated eligibility criteria by funding agencies would help realign the financial incentives for recipient institutions with public and scholarly interest.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230206
The article is well worth reading in full. It says things that I have said on this blog (e.g. here) but rather more eloquently than I managed. I’ll just make a couple of comments.
First, in the first paragraph of the first section it says:
Replacing traditional journals with a more modern solution is not a new idea […], but the lack of progress since the first calls and ideas more than 20 years ago has convinced an increasing number of experts that the time for small tweaks is long gone and a disruptive break is now overdue.
I agree, of course, and I think one of the problems is the perennial problem of academia: there’s a huge excess of talking over doing. With the Open Journal of Astrophysics I’m proud to be one of the doers. Incidentally, a senior member of the Royal Astronomical Society recently told me that they were finding OApJ “disruptive”. That is, of course, the point. We need a lot more disruption.
Another issue I’ve written about before is whether there is any future in academic journals as such at all. The concept dates from the 17th Century – when it was extremely valuable and useful – but is now very outdated. As I wrote here more than a decade ago:
I’d say that, at least in my discipline, traditional journals are simply no longer necessary for communicating scientific research. I find all the papers I need to do my research on the arXiv and most of my colleagues do the same. We simply don’t need old-fashioned journals anymore. Yet we keep paying for them. It’s time for those of us who believe that we should spend as much of our funding as we can on research instead of throwing it away on expensive and outdated methods of publication to put an end to this absurd system. We academics need to get the academic publishing industry off our backs.
https://telescoper.blog/2015/11/05/enough-of-the-academic-publishing-racket/
The revolution has been a slower process than I expected, but I do sense that the worm is at last turning.
As promised yesterday, it’s time for a roundup of the week’s business at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This past week we have published three papers, taking the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 4 and the total published by OJAp up to 119. There are quite a few more ready to go as people return from the Christmas break.
In chronological order, the three papers published this week, with their overlays, are as follows. You can click on the images of the overlays to make them larger should you wish to do so.
First one up is “Prospects for studying the mass and gas in protoclusters with future CMB observations” by Anna Gardner and Eric Baxter (Hawaii, USA), Srinivasan Raghunathan (NCSA, USA), Weiguang Cui (Edinburgh, UK), and Daniel Ceverino (Madrid, Spain). This paper, published on 17th January 2024, uses realistic hydrodynamical simulations to probe the ability of CMB Stage 4-like (CMB-S4) experiments to detect and characterize protoclusters via gravitational lensing and the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect. This paper is in the category of Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics.
Here is a screen grab of the overlay, which includes the abstract:
You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.
The second paper to announce is “SDSS J125417.98+274004.6: An X-ray Detected Minor Merger Dual AGN” and is by Marko Mićić, Brenna Wells, Olivia Holmes, and Jimmy Irwin (all of the University of Alabama, USA). This presents the discovery of a dual AGN in a merger between the galaxy SDSS J125417.98+274004.6 and dwarf satellite, studied using X-ray observations from the Chandra satellite. The paper was also published on 18th January 2024 in the category Astrophysics of Galaxies . You can see the overlay here:
The accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.
The last paper of this batch is entitled “Population III star formation: multiple gas phases prevent the use of an equation of state at high densities” and the authors are: Lewis Prole (Maynooth, Ireland), Paul Clark (Cardiff, UK), Felix Priestley (Cardiff, UK), Simon Glover (Heidelberg, Germany) and John Regan (Maynooth, Ireland). This paper, which presents a comparison of results obtained using chemical networks and a simpler equation-of-state approach for primordial star formation (showing the limitations of the latter) was published on 19th January 2024 and also in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies.
Here is the overlay:
You can find the full text for this one on the arXiv here.
And that concludes the update. There’ll be more next week!
In the Dark 