I’m grateful to Franco Vazza for pointing out this superb bit of product placement in the advertisements on yesterday’s blog post:
I wonder what advert it will place under this one? Will it cause an infinite regress?
The Cost of Elsevier
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Elsevier, Profiteering, Rapacious Bastards, RELX on March 8, 2023 by telescoperI’ve just seen the annual report of RELX, the parent company of academic publishing house Elsevier. This annual report for RELX contains the accounts for Elsevier for 2022 in which I found the following headline figures:
- Revenue: €3.26 billion
- Profit: €1.2 billion
- Margin: 37.8%
A couple of points of reference are worth mentioning.
One is that the entire annual budget for the European Research Council is €2.4 billion, so Elsevier’s profits on their own represent about half this budget. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather it were spent on actual research. People talk about a windfall tax on profiteering energy companies. Why not apply the same logic in this case?
The other is that Elsevier’s profit margin (37.8%) can be compared with that of, Google (21.2%) or Apple (24.56%). It’s easy money being an academic publisher.
I cannot understand why the academic community allows this parasitic industry to flourish by continuing to throw taxpayers’ money at it. I draw your attention to the Cost of Knowledge campaign and, when it comes to publishing in Elsevier journals, acting as Editor, or doing refereeing for them, just say no.
Maynooth University Library Cat Update
Posted in Maynooth with tags Maynooth University, Maynooth University Library Cat on March 8, 2023 by telescoper
It has been very cold in Maynooth for the last couple of days and the forecast is for sioc, oighear, sneachta agus flichshneachta. In inclement conditions I tend to worry about our resident feline, but have been reassured by various social media posts showing him fit and well:
Better still, this afternoon on my way back to the office from lunch I spotted him, oriented North-South on the wall next to the library. Judging by the empty feeding bowls behind him seems likely he was having a post-prandial snooze so I didn’t disturb him, though I was jealous that I don’t get to take a nap after lunch…
A Question of Electrostatic Repulsion
Posted in Cute Problems, The Universe and Stuff with tags electrostatics, surface charge density on March 7, 2023 by telescoperIt’s been a while since I posted a question in the Cute Physics Problems folder so I thought I’d offer this one. It’s not particularly hard, but I think it’s quite instructive.
A thin spherical shell of radius r carrying a charge Q spread uniformly with constant surface density is split into two equal halves by a narrow planar cut passing through the centre as shown in the detailed diagram below:
Calculate the force arising from electrostatic repulsion between the two hemispherical shells, expressing your answer in terms of Q and r in SI units.
Answers through the Comments Box please. First correct answer wins a tomato*
*subject to availability
Cosmology Talks: Keir Rogers on Ultralight Dark Matter and the S₈ tension
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags arXiv:2301.08361, Cosmology Talks, Keir Rogers, ULDM, Ultra-Light Dark Matter on March 6, 2023 by telescoperIt’s been far too long since I last shared another one of those interesting cosmology talks on the Youtube channel curated by Shaun Hotchkiss. This channel features technical talks rather than popular expositions so it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but for those seriously interested in cosmology at a research level find them seriously informative.
In this one, Keir Rogers talks about Ultra-Light Dark Matter (ULDM; for a detailed review of this idea, see here). To summarize the argument, it seems that ULDM consisting of a single particle can’t be responsible for all the dark matter, but this doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Keir Rogers discusses how much of the dark matter could be of ULDM form.
Another issue discussed here relates to the parameter S8 quantifies the matter-density fluctuations on a scale of 8 h-1 Mpc. There is a Cosmology Talk discussing the state of play with this parameter here. The structure-suppressing properties of ULDM could also have implications for the S8 tension, i.e. maybe a small sub-component of ULDM is what is causing the apparently low S8 in local measurements?
The paper describing this work can be found on the arXiv here and here is the video:
Examinations and Memory
Posted in Biographical, Education with tags Examinations, Memory, rote learning on March 5, 2023 by telescoperThis Sunday evening I take the text for my sermon from a piece about examinations by Katie Stripe in the Times Higher about examinations:
Testing students’ ability to show their learning in a closed context is not preparing them for a future in which technology is ubiquitous. There are few professional contexts that require you to recall information in a specific time frame.
I agree to some extent with the conclusion of the article but for different reasons. In particular, I don’t think this conclusion has much to do with the arrival of new technologies such as ChatGPT. Exams that simply require the students to “recall information” and nothing else seem to me to be of limited value from an educational point of view and should indeed be scrapped, but I think exams can play a role in testing other, more important, skills such as problem-solving.
Over my lifetime the ratio of assessment to education in universities has risen sharply, with the undeniable result that academic standards have fallen especially in my own discipline of physics. The modular system encourages students to think of modules as little bit-sized bits of education to be consumed and then forgotten. Instead of learning to rely on their brains to solve problems, students tend to approach learning by memorizing chunks of their notes and regurgitating them in the exam. I find it very sad when students ask me what derivations they should memorize to prepare for examinations because that seems to imply that they think their brain is no more than a device for storing information. It became clear to me over the years that school education in the UK does not do enough to encourage students to develop their all-round intellectual potential, which means that very few have confidence in their ability to do anything other than remember things. It seems the same malaise affects the Irish system too.
On the other hand, a good memory is undoubtedly an extremely important asset in its own right.
I went to a traditional Grammar school that I feel provided me with a very good education in which rote learning played a significant part. Learning vocabulary and grammar was an essential part of their approach to foreign languages, for example. How can one learn Latin without knowing the correct declensions for nouns and conjugations for verbs? But although these basic elements are necessary, however, they are not sufficient. You need other aspects of your mental capacity to comprehend, translate or compose meaningful pieces of text.
The same considerations apply to STEM disciplines. It is important to have a basic knowledge of the essential elements of mathematics and physics as a grounding, but you also need to develop the skill to apply these in unusual settings. I also think it’s simplistic to think of memory and creative intelligence as entirely separate things. I seems to me that the latter feeds off the former in a very complex way. A good memory does give you rapid access to information, which means you can do many things more quickly than if you had to keep looking stuff up, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that. Our memories are an essential part of the overall functioning of our brain, which is not compartmentalized in such a simple way. For example, one aspect of problem-solving skill relies on the ability to see hidden connections; the brain’s own filing system plays a key role in this.
In recognizing the importance of memory I don’t mean that rote learning is necessarily the best way to develop the relevant skills. My own powers of recall are not great – and are certainly not improving with age – but I find I can remember things much better if I find them interesting and/or if I can see the point of remembering them and/or if I use them a lot. Remembering things because they’re memorable is far easier than remembering because you need to remember them to pass an examination!
Anyway, my point is that a good memory can help you learn, but is not in itself what should be assessed in an examination. I wish universities made more effort to educate students to understand that their brain can be much more than a memory device.
Here endeth the lesson.
Internazionale – Camille Souter
Posted in Art with tags Art, Camille Souter, Internazionale, painting on March 4, 2023 by telescoper
Internazionale by Camille Souter (1965, 76.2 x 63.5 cm, oil on newsprint, private collection).
Posted in tribute to the artist, who has passed away at the age of 93.
R.I.P. Camille Souter (1929-2023).
Academic Publishing as Exploitation
Posted in Open Access, Politics with tags academic publishing, Exploitation, Karl Marx, Marxism, Surplus Value on March 3, 2023 by telescoper
In yesterday’s post I asked the question whether anyone actually believes that it costs it costs £2310 to publish a scientific article online? I also posted the question on the Open Journal of Astrophysics Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/OJ_Astro/status/1631022314169987077?s=20
Only a few people responded to that question with a “yes”. Coincidentally all of them appear to be employed by the academic publishing industry. These people insist that the big publishers bring value to scientific papers. They don’t. Authors and referees do all the things that add value. What publishers do is take that value and turn it into its own profits. The fact that enormous profits are made out of this process in itself demonstrates that what the scientific community is being charged is nothing whatever to do with cost.
This reminds me of many discussions I had in my commie student days about surplus value, a concept explored in great detail by Karl Marx, in Das Kapital. According to the wikipedia page, the term “refers roughly to the new value created by workers that is in excess of their own labour-cost and which is therefore available to be appropriated by the capitalist, according to Marx; it allows then for profit and in so doing is the basis of capital accumulation.”
Engels is quoted there as follows:
Whence comes this surplus-value? It cannot come either from the buyer buying the commodities under their value, or from the seller selling them above their value. For in both cases the gains and the losses of each individual cancel each other, as each individual is in turn buyer and seller. Nor can it come from cheating, for though cheating can enrich one person at the expense of another, it cannot increase the total sum possessed by both, and therefore cannot augment the sum of the values in circulation. (…) This problem must be solved, and it must be solved in a purely economic way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force — the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?
Marx’s solution of this economical conundrum was central to his theory of exploitation:
…living labour at an adequate level of productivity is able to create and conserve more value than it costs the employer to buy; which is exactly the economic reason why the employer buys it, i.e. to preserve and augment the value of the capital at his command. Thus, the surplus-labour is unpaid labour appropriated by employers in the form of work-time and outputs.
In the context of academic publishing, the workers are scientific researchers and the employers are the publishers. The workers not only produce the science in the first place, but also carry out virtually all of the actions that the employers claim add value. The latter are simply appropriating the labour of the former, which is exploitation. It needs to stop.
R.I.P. Wayne Shorter (1933-2023)
Posted in Jazz, R.I.P. with tags Speak No Evil, Wayne Shorter on March 2, 2023 by telescoperI got home this evening to find the sad news that legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter has passed away at the age of 89. I only got to hear him live once, many moons ago, when he was part of a band led by drummer Jack de Johnette (I think that was in the early 1990s) but I have a big collection of CDs of him in various settings, including with Miles Davis, The Jazz Messengers, and, of course, Weather Report. As a tribute I feel it’s appropriate to post a great record he made as leader.
Speak No Evil was recorded in 1964 and released as a Blue Note LP in 1966. It features a superb band, including Freddie Hubbard (tpt), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b) and Elvin Jones (d) alongside Shorter himself on tenor saxophone. It’s one of the must-have jazz albums, and it demonstrates Shorter’s flair for composition as well as improvisation. In both respects his approach to this album is very different from that he took just a few years earlier with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Standout tracks on this album include the suave yet unsettling Dance Cadaverous, the brooding Fee-fi-fo-fum, and the curiously agitated Witch Hunt.
Every piece on this album was composed by Shorter and as a player he revels in the ambiguous harmonies he created alongside the melodies. Although his style is clearly influenced by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, his tone is unlike either of these other giants, and Shorter expresses his individuality through varying emphasis producing asymmetric phrases. His playing is very quick-witted, full of abrupt changes of mood and dashes of fierce humour. A good example is Infant Eyes, a theme made up of three 9-bar phrases, played at a leisurely pace, on which Shorter’s lines impose a sense of determined exploration when many other soloists would have dawdled.
Anyway, don’t take my word for it. You can listen to the full album as a playlist on Youtube. The track order is: Witch Hunt, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, Dance Cadaverous, Speak No Evil, Infant Eyes and Wild Flower.
R.I.P. Wayne Shorter (1933-2023)
Article Processing Charges at the Royal Astronomical Society
Posted in Open Access with tags MNRAS, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Open Journal of Astrophysics, Royal Astronomical Society on March 2, 2023 by telescoper
As it was foretold, the Royal Astronomical Society has now officially announced that all its journals will be moving to Gold Open Access. The only thing that surprised me about this is the speed that it will be done – from January 1st 2024. The announcement confirms that the “rumour” I reported in 2020 was true (as I knew it was, given the reliability of the source). I did, however, think the timescale would be “within a few years” and it turns out to be much shorter than that.
For the journal of most relevance to myself, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) this decision means that authors will have to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) at the (suitably astronomical) level of £2310 for each paper (although there will be exemptions in certain situations). Does anyone genuinely believe that it costs that much to publish an article online? Really?
I did actually laugh out loud when I saw the spin the RAS are trying to put on this decision:
The RAS is excited to be a key contributor to the open science movement, helping to drive discoverability and change.
Au contraire. Gold Open Access a serious hindrance to the open science movement, as it involves hugely inflated costs to the authors in attempt to protect revenue in the face of declining subscription income. Switching from a ‘fleece-the-libraries’ model to a ‘fleece-the-authors’ alternative can in no way be regarded as a progressive move.
Other notable astronomy-related journals, such as the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ) and Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), have levied “page charges” (effectively APCs by another name) for as long as I can remember, though in the latter case there is a waiver for researchers in “member” countries. ApJ and other journals also have a waiver scheme for those who cannot afford to pay. For those who have to pay, the fee is usually about $100 per page. For a long time MNRAS was the exception and indeed the only feasible choice for people who don’t have access to funding to cover page charges, including many in the developing world. More recently, however, MNRAS introduced a charge for longer papers: £50 per page over 20 pages, so a paper of 21 pages costs £50 and one of 30 pages costs £500, etc. Now there will be a flat fee of £2310 per paper.
It is true that some institutions will pay the APC on behalf of their authors, but that is hardly the point. If institutions have cash to pay for astronomy publications to be open access then they would do far more good to the research community by giving it to the arXiv rather than to the publishing industry. When authors themselves see how much they have to pay to publish their work, many will realize that it is simply not worth the money. (I refuse to pay any APC on principle.)
The Twitter feed for the Open Journal of Astrophysics (OJAp) was buzzing all day yesterday with negative reactions to the RAS announcement. Obviously I am biased in this matter, but I do encourage those thinking of switching to give it a try. The RAS has played into the hands of OJAp, which publishes papers (online only) in all the areas of Astrophysics covered by MNRAS, and more, but is entirely free both for authors and readers. The annual running costs of OJAp are substantially less than one APC at the level proposed by MNRAS.
The comments I have seen brought this image to my mind:
(The allusion to sharks is not accidental.)
The question for the Royal Astronomical Society, and indeed the other learned societies that fund their activities in a similar way, is whether they can find a sustainable funding model that takes proper account of the digital publishing revolution. If their revenue from publishing does fall, can they replace it? And, if not, in what form can they survive? I’d like to think that future operating models for such organizations would involve serving their respective communities, rather than fleecing them.
In the Dark 
