Archive for Open Access

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 22/11/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for the usual update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published another five papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 180, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 415.

The first paper to report this week is “Probing Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Foreground-Marginalised SPT B-mode Likelihoods” by Lennart Balkenhol (Sorbonne Université, France), A. Coerver (UC Berkeley, USA), C. L. Reichardt (U. Melbourne, Australia) and J. A. Zebrowski (U. Chicago, USA). This paper was published on Monday November 17th in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. It presents a way of using data from the Souh Pole Telescope (SPT) in the CMB-lite framework to constrain the level of cosmic birefringence.  The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Probing Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Foreground-Marginalised SPT B-mode Likelihoods" by Lennart Balkenhol (Sorbonne Université, France), A. Coerver (UC Berkeley, USA), C. L. Reichardt (U. Melbourne, Australia) and J. A. Zebrowski (U. Chicago, USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147459

November 17, 2025, 8:43 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The second paper of the week is “Radio Observations of a Candidate Redback Millisecond Pulsar: 1FGL J0523.5-2529” by Owen. A. Johnson & E. F. Keane (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), D. J. McKenna (ASTRON, NL), H. Qiu (SKAO, UK), S. J. Swihart (Insitute for Defense Analyses, USA), J. Strader (Michigan State U., USA) and M. McLaughlin (West Virginia U., USA). This one was published on Tuesday November 18th 2025 in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena and it describes a search for radio emission from a candidate “redback pulsar” J0523.5-2529 resulting in upper limits but no detection.

The overlay is here:

You can find the official version of this one on arXiv here. The federated announcement on Mastodon is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Radio Observations of a Candidate Redback Millisecond Pulsar: 1FGL J0523.5-2529" by Owen. A. Johnson & E. F. Keane (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), D. J. McKenna (ASTRON, NL), H. Qiu (SKAO, UK), S. J. Swihart (Insitute for Defense Analyses, USA), J. Strader (Michigan State U., USA) and M. McLaughlin (West Virginia U., USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147516

November 18, 2025, 8:42 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

Next one up is “The role of turbulence in setting the phase of the ISM and implications for the star formation rate” by Tine Colman (Université Paris-Saclay, France) and 13 others based in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. This was published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies on Tuesday November 18th. It descrtibes using a suite of stratified box simulations to explore the link between star formation, turbulence and the thermal state of the multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM).

The overlay is here:

You can find the official accepted version on arXiv here. The fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The role of turbulence in setting the phase of the ISM and implications for the star formation rate" by Tine Colman (Université Paris-Saclay, France) and 13 others based in France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147517

November 19, 2025, 8:19 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

The fourth paper of the week is “A Bimodal Metallicity Distribution Function in the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Reticulum II” by Alice M. Luna (U. Chicago, USA) and 8 others based in the USA, Korea and Canada. This was published on Wednesday November 19th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It decribes low-resolution Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of 167 stars in the ultra-faint galaxy Reticulum II, revealing a clearly bimodal distribution.

The overlay is here:

You can find the official published version on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement follows:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Bimodal Metallicity Distribution Function in the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Reticulum II" by Alice M. Luna (U. Chicago, USA) and 8 others based in the USA, Korea and Canada.

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147696

November 19, 2025, 8:37 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

The fifth and final paper for this week is “Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium of Massive Post Starburst Galaxies” by Zoe Harvey, Sahyadri Krishna, Vivienne Wild & Rita Tojeiro (U. St Andrews, UK) and Paul Hewett (U. Cambridge, UK). This was published on Thursday November 20th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium of Massive Post Starburst Galaxies" by Zoe Harvey, Sahyadri Krishna, Vivienne Wild & Rita Tojeiro (U. St Andrews, UK) and Paul Hewett (U. Cambridge, UK)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147836

November 20, 2025, 9:02 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

And that concludes the update for this week. I will do another next Saturday.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 15/11/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for the usual update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. It has been quite a busy week. Since the last update we have published another seven papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 175, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 410.

First on the menu for this week is “Dynamical friction and measurements of the splashback radius in galaxy clusters” by Talia M. O’Shea (U. Wisconsin-Madison, USA), Josh Borrow & Stephanie O’Neil (U. Pennsylvania, USA) and Mark Vogelsberger (MIT, USA). Published on Tuesday 11th November in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, this one presents a study suggesting that dynamical friction does not play a major role in reducing the radius of the splashback feature in real data compared to numerical simulations.

The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here.

The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Dynamical friction and measurements of the splashback radius in galaxy clusters" by Talia M. O'Shea (U. Wisconsin-Madison, USA), Josh Borrow & Stephanie O'Neil (U. Pennsylvania, USA) and Mark Vogelsberger (MIT, USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147125

November 11, 2025, 8:36 am 3 boosts 1 favorites

 

The second paper of the week is “Microlensing of lensed supernovae Zwicky & iPTF16geu: constraints on the lens galaxy mass slope and dark compact object fraction” by Nikki Arendse (Stockholm University, Sweden) and and international cast of 11 others based in Sweden, UK and France. This one was published on 11th November 2025 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It is about combining observations of two supernovae, iPTF16geu and SN Zwicky, with microlensing magnification maps to probe the properties of the lens galaxy.

The overlay is here:

 

You can find the official version of this one on arXiv here. The federated announcement on Mastodon is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Microlensing of lensed supernovae Zwicky & iPTF16geu: constraints on the lens galaxy mass slope and dark compact object fraction" by Nikki Arendse (Stockholm University, Sweden) and 11 others based in Sweden, UK and France

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147126

November 11, 2025, 8:53 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

 

Next one up is “Neutrino Constraints on Black Hole Formation in M31” by Yudai Sawa (U. Tokyo, Japan) and 11 others all based in Japan. This was published on Tuesday 11th November in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. It presents a calculation of the neutrino emission expected from the collapse of massive stars and its use in constraining black hole formation using neutrino detectors.

 

The overlay is here:

You can find the official accepted version on arXiv here. The fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Neutrino Constraints on Black Hole Formation in M31" by Yudai Sawa (U. Tokyo, Japan) and 11 others all based in Japan

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147127

November 11, 2025, 9:04 am 0 boosts 1 favorites

The fourth paper this week is “Redshift Drift in Relativistic N-Body Simulations” by Alexander Oestreicher (U. Southern Denmark, DK), Chris Clarkson (QMUL, UK), Julian Adamek (U. Zürich, CH) and Sofie Marie Koksbang (U. Southern Denmark, DK). This one was published on Wednesday 12th November in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics. It presents numerical calculations of the cosmological redshift drift effect for comparison with future surveys.

The overlay is here:

 

 

You can find the official published version on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement follows:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Redshift Drift in Relativistic N-Body Simulations" by Alexander Oestreicher (U. Southern Denmark, DK), Chris Clarkson (QMUL, UK), Julian Adamek (U. Zürich, CH) and Sofie Marie Koksbang (U. Southern Denmark, DK)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147178

November 12, 2025, 8:35 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

 

The fifth paper for this week is “Attributing the point symmetric structure of core-collapse supernova remnant N132D to the jittering jets explosion mechanism” by Noam Soker (Technion, Haifa, Israel). This one, published on Wednesday November 12th in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, presents a discussion of the morphology of a supernova remnant and possible explanation for it in terms of the explosion mechanism.

The overlay is here:

 

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Attributing the point symmetric structure of core-collapse supernova remnant N132D to the jittering jets explosion mechanism" by Noam Soker (Technion, Haifa, Israel)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147183

November 12, 2025, 8:46 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The sixth paper to report this week is “Witnessing downsizing in the making: quiescent and breathing galaxies at the dawn of the Universe” by Emiliano Merlin (Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy) and an international cast of 20 others based in Italy, Germany, UK, USA, Switzerland, Spain and China. This one was published on Friday November 14th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here. The fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Witnessing downsizing in the making: quiescent and breathing galaxies at the dawn of the Universe" by Emiliano Merlin (Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy) and 20 others based in Italy, Germany, UK, USA, Switzerland, Spain and China

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147267

November 14, 2025, 8:38 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

And finally (for this week) we have “Beyond No No Tension: JWST z > 10 Galaxies Push Simulations to the Limit” by Joe McCaffrey (NUI Maynooth, Ireland), Samantha Hardin & John Wise (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and John Regan (Maynooth). This one was also published on Friday 14th November, in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies. It asks the question whether newly-discovered high redshift galaxies are consistent with simulations of galaxy formation. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially acceopted version on arXiv here. The fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Beyond No No Tension: JWST z > 10 Galaxies Push Simulations to the Limit" by Joe McCaffrey (NUI Maynooth, Ireland), Samantha Hardin & John Wise (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and John Regan (Maynooth)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147278

November 14, 2025, 9:02 am 2 boosts 0 favorites

And that concludes the update for this week. There will be another next Saturday.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 08/11/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for the usual update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published another five papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 168, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 403.

The first paper this week is “Maximizing Ariel’s Survey Leverage for Population-Level Studies of Exoplanets” by Nicolas B. Cowan and Ben Coull-Neveu (McGill University, Canada). This article was published in the folder Earth and Planetary Astrophysics on Tuesday 4th November 2025; it discusses various different schemes to select the mission reference sample for a notional three year transit spectroscopy survey with the European Space Agency’s Ariel mission

The overlay is here:

 

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here.

The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Maximizing Ariel’s Survey Leverage for Population-Level Studies of Exoplanets" by Nicolas B. Cowan and Ben Coull-Neveu (McGill University, Canada)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146656

November 4, 2025, 5:08 pm 1 boosts 3 favorites

 

The second paper of the week is “A substellar flyby that shaped the orbits of the giant planets” by Garett Brown (U. Toronto at Scarborough, Canada), Renu Malhotra (U. Arizona, USA) and Hanno Rein (U. Toronto at Scarborough, Canada). This article was published on Wednesday 5th November 2025, also in the folder Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. It argues that an ancient close encounter with a substellar object offers a plausible explanation for the origin of the moderate eccentricities and inclinations of the giant planets.

The overlay is here:

You can find the official version of this one on arXiv here. The federated announcement on Mastodon is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A substellar flyby that shaped the orbits of the giant planets" by Garett Brown (U. Toronto at Scarborough, Canada), Renu Malhotra (U. Arizona, USA) and Hanno Rein (U. Toronto at Scarborough, Canada)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146688

November 5, 2025, 8:34 am 3 boosts 3 favorites

Next one up is “The Potential Impact of Primordial Black Holes on Exoplanet Systems” by Garett Brown (U. Toronto at Scarborough), Linda He (Harvard U., USA),  and James Unwin (U. Illinois Chicago, USA). This one was also published on Wednesday 5th November 2025, but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This one is an exploration of the possibility that primordial black holes (PBHs) in our Galaxy, might impact the orbits of exoplanets. The overlay is here:

You can find the official accepted version on arXiv here. The fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Potential Impact of Primordial Black Holes on Exoplanet Systems" by Garett Brown (U. Toronto at Scarborough), Linda He (Harvard U., USA), James Unwin (U. Illinois Chicago, USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146689

November 5, 2025, 8:49 am 3 boosts 1 favorites

The fourth paper to report is “The Unhurried Universe: A Continued Search for Long Term Variability in ASAS-SN” by Sydney Petz, C. S. Kochanek & K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State U., USA), Benjamin J. Shappee (U. Hawaii, USA), Subo Dong (Peking University, China), J. L. Prieto (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and Todd A. Thompson (Ohio State U., USA). This one was also published on Wednesday November 5th 2025, but in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics.  It describes the discovery and investigation of slowly-varying sources in the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-AN) leading to the identification of 200 new variable stars. The overlay is here:

 

You can find the official published version on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement follows:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Unhurried Universe: A Continued Search for Long Term Variability in ASAS-SN" by Sydney Petz, C. S. Kochanek & K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State U., USA), Benjamin J. Shappee (U. Hawaii, USA), Subo Dong (Peking University, China), J. L. Prieto (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and Todd A. Thompson (Ohio State U., USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146690

November 5, 2025, 9:08 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The fifth and final paper for this week is “Measuring the splashback feature: Dependence on halo properties and history” by Qiaorong S. Yu (Oxford U., UK) and 9 others based in the UK and USA. This was published on Friday 7th November 2025 in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. It discusses how the properties of “splashback” features in halo profiles relate to the halo’s assembly history (e.g. mass accretion rate and most recent merger time). The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Measuring the splashback feature: Dependence on halo properties and history" by Qiaorong S. Yu (Oxford U., UK) and 9 others based in the UK and USA.

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146824

November 7, 2025, 9:12 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

That’s all the papers for this week. I’ll do another report next Saturday.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 25/10/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2025 by telescoper

It may be a Bank Holiday weekend here in Ireland, but it’s still time for the usual Saturday update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics (although a bit later in the day than usual). Since the last update we have published another five papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 161, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 396.

This week’s update  is rather unusual because there are four papers in a series (or, more precisely, mathematically speaking, a sequence) all published on the same day (Wednesday October 22nd 2025), in the same folder (Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics), with the same first author (Dhayaa Anbajagane of the University of Chicago), with long author lists and many co-authors in common. These papers all relate to the DECADE cosmic shear project. Instead of doing them one by one, therefore, I’ve decided to put all four overlays together and provide links to all the papers afterwards. As I’m trying to encourage people to follow our feed on the Fediverse via Mastodon (where I announce papers as they are published, including the all-important DOI),  I’ll include links to each announcement there too.

  1. The DECADE cosmic shear project I: A new weak lensing shape catalog of 107 million galaxies“, accepted version on arXiv here.
  2. The DECADE cosmic shear project II: photometric redshift calibration of the source galaxy sample“, accepted version on arXiv here.
  3. The DECADE cosmic shear project III: validation of analysis pipeline using spatially inhomogeneous data“, accepted version on arXiv here.
  4. The DECADE cosmic shear project IV: cosmological constraints from 107 million galaxies across 5,400 deg2 of the sky“, accepted version on arXiv here.

The fediverse announcements follow:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The DECADE cosmic shear project I: A new weak lensing shape catalog of 107 million galaxies" by Dhayaa Anbajagane (University of Chicago, USA) et al. (54 authors)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146158

October 22, 2025, 12:42 pm 2 boosts 0 favorites

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The DECADE cosmic shear project II: photometric redshift calibration of the source galaxy sample" by Dhayaa Anbajagane (University of Chicago, USA) et al. (53 authors)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146159

October 22, 2025, 1:07 pm 2 boosts 0 favorites

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The DECADE cosmic shear project III: validation of analysis pipeline using spatially inhomogeneous data" by Dhayaa Anbajagane (University of Chicago, USA) et al. (53 authors)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146160

October 22, 2025, 1:57 pm 1 boosts 0 favorites

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The DECADE cosmic shear project IV: cosmological constraints from 107 million galaxies across 5,400 deg^2 of the sky" by Dhayaa Anbajagane (University of Chicago, USA) et al. (75 authors)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146161

October 22, 2025, 2:47 pm 1 boosts 0 favorites

 

The fifth and final paper for this week is “Clustering of DESI galaxies split by thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect” by Michael Rashkovetskyi of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or CfA for short, and 48 others. This one was published on Wednesday 23rd October in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics. This paper explores how the clustering properties of galaxies mapped by the Dark energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) relate to the local thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich emission mapped by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Clustering of DESI galaxies split by thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect" by Michael Rashkovetskyi (Cfa Harvard-Smithsonian, USA) et al. (49 authors)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.146033

October 23, 2025, 8:28 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

 

That concludes the papers for this week. With one week to go and our total at 396, I still think we might reach the 400 total by the end of October.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 09/08/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 9, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday morning so, once again, it’s time for an update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published four new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 114, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 349.

The 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.

The first paper to report is “Caught in the Act of Quenching? – A Population of Post-Starburst Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies” by Loraine Sandoval Ascencio & M. C. Cooper (UC Irvine), Dennis Zaritsky, Richard Donnerstein & Donghyeon J. Khim (U. Arizona) and Devontae C. Baxter (UC San Diego). This paper was puvblished on Monday 4th August and is in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies. It discusses a sample of Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies (UDGs) found to be post-starburst galaxies through spectroscopic analysis analysis of candidates selected from the Systematically Measuring Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies (SMUDGes) program.

The overlay is here:

 

 

The officially-accepted version can be found on arXiv here.

Next one up, published on Tuesday 5th August, in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, is “Damping Wing-Like Features in the Spectra of High Redshift Quasars: a Challenge for Fully-Coupled Simulations” by Nick Gnedin & Hanjue Zhu (University of Chicago, USA).  This paper presents a discussion of the difficulties that cosmological radiation transfer codes have in accounting for the existence of “neutral islands” in the universe at relatively low redshifts.

The overlay is here:

 

 

You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on arXiv here.

The third paper of the week is “Spectroscopic Analysis of Pictor II: a very low metallicity ultra-faint dwarf galaxy bound to the Large Magellanic Cloud” by Andrew Pace (U. Virginia, USA) and 32 others based in the USA, UK, Canada, Chile and Spain. This one was also published on Tuesday 5th August but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It describes Magellan/IMACS and Magellan/MIKE spectroscopy of the ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxy Pictor II, which is located only 12 kpc from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

The overlay is here:

 

The final version is on arXiv here.

The fourth, and final, paper of the week, also published on Thursday 7th August, is “ASASSN-24fw: An 8-month long, 4.1 mag, optically achromatic and polarized dimming event” by Raquel Forés-Toribio (Ohio State University) and 22 others based in the USA, Austria, Chile and Australia. It is published in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, and it presents an observational study of an unusual dimming event likely to have been caused by eclipsing of a binary system by a dusty disk.

Here is the overlay:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here.

And that’s all the papers for this week. I’ll do another update next Saturday.

P.S. For those of you who missed the post I did earlier in the week, I have been looking at the accounts for the Open Journal of Astrophysics and can confirm that the cost to us per paper is less than $30 and will reduce with scale. We expect to publish around 180 papers in 2025 for which the total cost incurred by OJAp will be around $5000. Obviously if we increase by a factor, say, ten then that amount would become significant so we are taking steps to secure additional funding in the event that happens.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 19/07/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday morning again, so it’s time again for an update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published six new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 98, and the total so far published by OJAp  up to 333. I expect we’ll pass the century for this year sometime next week.

The 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.

The first paper to report is “Reconstructing Galaxy Cluster Mass Maps using Score-based Generative Modeling” by Alan Hsu (Harvard), Matthew Ho (CMU), Joyce Lin (U. Wisconsin-Madison), Carleen Markey (CMU), Michelle Ntampaka (STScI), Hy Trac (CMU) & Barnabás Póczos (CMU), all based in the USA. This paper was published on 14th July 2025 in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics. It presents a diffusion-based generativbe AI model for reconstructing density profiles for galaxy clusters from observational data.

The overlay is here:

The officially-accepted version can be found on arXiv here.

The second and third papers are related. They were both published on 14th July in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics.

The first of the pair is “J-PLUS: Tomographic analysis of galaxy angular density and redshift fluctuations in Data Release 3. Constraints on photo-z errors, linear bias, and peculiar velocities” by Carlos Hernández-Monteagudo (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) and 21 others. This presents an analysis of the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS) in redshift slices with a discussion of prospects for extracting cosmological information. The overlay is here:

 

You can find the final version of the manuscript on arXiv here.

The second of this pair is “The J-PLUS collaboration. Additive versus multiplicative systematics in surveys of the large scale structure of the Universe” by Carlos Hernández-Monteagudo (IAC) and 21 others (the same authors as the previous paper).  This paper presents an analysis of systematic effects in the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS), and a new model for handling such errors in this and other cosmological surveys. The overlay for this paper is here:

You can find the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.

The fourth paper this week is “Why Machine Learning Models Systematically Underestimate Extreme Values” by Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State University). This one was published on July 16th in the folder marked Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics.  This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding and addressing a bias that suppresses the dynamic range of variables in applications of machine learning to astronomical data analysis. Here is the overlay:

You can find the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.

The penultimate article for this week is “Bridging Machine Learning and Cosmological Simulations: Using Neural Operators to emulate Chemical Evolution” by Pelle van de Bor, John Brennan & John A. Regan (Maynooth University) and Jonathan Mackey (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), all based in Ireland. This paper uses machine learning, in the form of neural operators, to emulate the Grackle method of solving non-equilibrium chemistry equations in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and was published on 16th July also in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The overlay is here:

The final, accepted version of the paper is on arXiv here.

The last article published this week is “Astronomical Cardiology: A Search For Heartbeat Stars Using Gaia and TESS” by Jowen Callahan, D. M. Rowan, C. S. Kochanek and K. Z. Stanek (all of Ohio State University, USA). This paper presents a study of a sample of 112 new spectroscopic binaries called hearbeat stars (because their light curves resemble electrocardiagrams). It was published on 16th July 2025 in the folder marked Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here.

And that’s all the papers for this week. I’ll do another update next Saturday.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics: 05/07/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday so, once again, it’s time for the weekly update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published three new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 85, and the total so far published by OJAp  up to 320.

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.

The first paper to report is “Stellar reddening map from DESI imaging and spectroscopy” by Rongpu Zhou (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA) and an international case of 56 others too numerous to mention individually. This paper was published on 1st July 2025 in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies. It describes maps of stellar reddening by Galactic dust inferred from observations obtained using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, and a comparison with previous such maps. The overlay is here:

You can find the final, accepted, version on arXiv here.

Next one up is “On inertial forces (indirect terms) in problems with a central body” by Aurélien Crida (Université Côte d’Azur, France) and 17 others – again too numerous to be listed individually – based in France, Italy, Germany, Mexico and the USA. This paper discusses the indirect terms that arise the Newtonian dynamics of multi-body systems dominated by a central massive body, upon which other bodies exert a gravitational pull, when the massive body is treated as the origin of the coordinate system. This one, also published on July 1st 2025, is in the folder marked Earth and Planetary Astrophysics.

The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here.

The last paper of this batch is “Stellar ejection velocities from the binary supernova scenario: A comparison across population synthesis codes” by Tom Wagg (U. Washington, USA), David D. Hendriks (U. Surrey, UK), Mathieu Renzo (U. Arizona, USA) and Katelyn Breivik (Carnegie Mellon U., USA). It was published on July 2nd 2025 in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics and it presents comparison of the ejection velocities of stars ejected from binary systems by supernova explosions predicted in three different population synthesis codes.

The overlay is here:

You can read the final accepted version on arXiv here.

That’s all the papers for this week. I’ll post another update next weekend.

Funding Diamond Open Access

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , , , on June 3, 2025 by telescoper

In case you weren’t aware, SciPost is a publishing infrastructure that provides Diamond Open Access to scientific papers. That means they are free to publish and free to read. They are funded by a consortium but are now struggling financially. They have recently circulated an open letter to the Community explaining their predicament and asking for help. I encourage you to read it and, if you can, to make a donation (or bully your institution to do so).

The open letter explains that SciPost is currently running at an average cost per paper of €500. That is much less than a typical APC for a mainstream journal but it is not a negligible cost. At the rate at which SciPost is publishing it amounts to about €1000 per day. SciPost currently attracts a significant level of sponsorship but it is not enough to support its current level of activity. Information on how to help SciPost can be found here. It is a worthy cause and deserves to be supported.

One area in which SciPost has not really taken of is Astronomy, where it has published very few papers. This may at be at least partly because of the Open Journal of Astrophysics (OJAp) which is also Diamond Open Access but runs in a very different and much cheaper way. A full breakdown of costs at OJAp is given here our annual running costs are about €5000 per year, which works out at less than €50 per paper (on average); that comprises a fixed component and a marginal cost of €10 per paper.

The main reasons for the large difference in running costs are: (i) SciPost maintains and runs its own platform; and (ii) it offers a copy-editing service. OJAp piggy-backs on arXiv (where most astrophysics research papers are found anyway) and expects authors to provide the final version of their own work. Neither organization pays referees or Editors. To enable it to run, SciPost employs about three staff full-time (2.9 FTE to be precise); OJAp has no employees and we keep our costs down by offering a ‘no-frills’ service. Instead of having a wide range of sponsors, we are entirely funded by Maynooth University. I am very grateful for that support, but we are run on a shoestring budget.

I have written before about what I think the future of Diamond Open Access could be like. I would like to see a range of Diamond Open Access journals offering a choice for authors and serving different sub-disciplines. Most universities nowadays have publishing operations so there could be network of federated journals, some based on arXiv and some based on other repositories and others with different models, such as SciPost. Perhaps institutions are worried about the expense but, as we have shown the actual cost, is far less than they are wasting on Article Processing Charges.

I don’t see other Diamond Open Access journals as competitors, but as allies with community-led ecosystem. I’d be more than happy to discuss how to start up such a journal on the OJAp model with anyone interested, and have already done so with some interested parties. As far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier! It is neither fair nor reasonable, however, that the expense of running a journal that serves the global astrophysics community should fall entirely on one small University in Ireland.

By all means support SciPost (and get your institutions to do likewise), but please also consider supporting OJAp. We are currently covering our costs but have no funds to make enhancements (such as a much-needed new LaTex template). If you can afford to make a donation to SciPost, then perhaps you can afford to make a donation to OJAp proportionate to our lower running costs? For example, if you give €10K to SciPost, could you give us €1K too? That amount would keep SciPost running for a day and OJAp for many months…

The Global Cost of “Article Processing Charges”

Posted in Open Access with tags , , on January 27, 2025 by telescoper

There’s an article on arXiv with the title Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 and the following abstract

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 fully open access journals (gold) and in subscription journals to make individual articles open access (hybrid). There is currently no way to systematically track institutional, national or global expenses for open access publishing due to a lack of transparency in APC prices, what articles they are paid for, or who pays them. We therefore curated and used an open dataset of annual APC list prices from Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer Nature, and Wiley in combination with the number of open access articles from these publishers indexed by OpenAlex to estimate that, globally, a total of $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) were spent on APCs between 2019 and 2023. We estimate that in 2023 MDPI ($681.6 million), Elsevier ($582.8 million) and Springer Nature ($546.6 million) generated the most revenue with APCs. After adjusting for inflation, we also show that annual spending almost tripled from $910.3 million in 2019 to $2.538 billion in 2023, that hybrid exceed gold fees, and that the median APCs paid are higher than the median listed fees for both gold and hybrid. Our approach addresses major limitations in previous efforts to estimate APCs paid and offers much needed insight into an otherwise opaque aspect of the business of scholarly publishing. We call upon publishers to be more transparent about OA fees.

Haustein et al., arXiv:2407.16551

I must have missed when it was submitted last July, but it has recently been doing the rounds on BlueSky which is how I noticed it. Here is the salient figure:

The paper estimates that over $8 billion has been wasted on “Article Processing Charges” (APCs) in the 5-year period covered. I put “Article Processing Charges” in inverted commas because, as I have said on many occasions, these fees have nothing to do with the cost of processing an article. They are simply charges levied by publishers to increase their profits.

The last sentence of the abstract “We call upon publishers to be more transparent about OA fees” is nowhere near as forceful as it should be. These charges are a scam and academia should not be feeding these parasites. A tiny fraction of that $8 billion would be enough to set up repositories similar to arXiv for all academic disciplines which would make OA publishing free to authors.

Pay-to-Publish Academic Vanity Publishing

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , on December 22, 2024 by telescoper

I’m not very good at keeping New Year’s resolutions, which is why I tend not to make many. I have however decided to make one for 2025. In future I will refer to any form of publishing in which the authors pay a fee as the ‘Pay-to-Publish’ model. This is much more descriptive of the reality of this form of the academic journal racket than terms such as “Gold Open Access”.

Many academic journals have switched to ‘Pay-to-Publish’ mode to maintain profit margines in response to demands that research outputs should be made freely available to read. This usually involves the payment of an Article Processing Charge, which is typically a four-figure sum in euros, pounds or dollars for each article.

Apart from the obvious danger with this model that the pressure to increase income by publishing more and more papers will lower editorial standards., the term ‘Open Access’ is inappropriate because, although the papers are free for anyone to read, authors are excluded if they cannot pay the fee. It seems to me that APC-driven publishers are therefore indistinguishable from what is usually called the Vanity Press. According to the Wikipedia page I just linked to,

[Vanity Publication]… has been described as a scam,[2] though, as the book does get printed, it does not necessarily rise to the level of fraud.[4] 

I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether it is fraudulent to charge an “Article Processing Charge” has nothing to do with the real cost of processing an article. I couldn’t possibly comment on that. It is, however, beyond question that it is a scam. I’m not the only person to think this. It is, without doubt, unethical.

I would argue that academic vanity is one of the main reasons for the very perpetuation of a publishing system that is so palpably absurd. There is among many academics and, especially, managers an unjustified reliance on journal brand-name or even impact factor as a proxy for the quality of a paper. This is despite the fact that we can easily measure impact for individual articles so there’s no need to rely on such things.

In any case I do think that it would be quite reasonable to warn potential readers of an article that its authors paid to have it published. How would you react if you saw the statement ‘The authors of this article paid to have it published’ at the start of an article? At least it might make you think about the reliability of the accompanying hype.