News from Rippling Ideas

We’ll be producing at least 3 blog posts a month - and would love guest contributors - alongside our podcasts and YouTube content. We’re also actively producing some infographics and guides, the first of which are included in this months newsletter!

Preprints & Open Science

Preprints in Motion

Latest activity from Rippling Ideas

• A brief overview of the open access rainbow

• Where to share preprint reviews

• Preprint peer review services

  • A table of the currently active preprint peer review services, focussed on the life sciences

Selected News Roundup

• New openRxiv CEO

  • This is very exciting news and I extend a huge congratulations to Tracy - openRxiv is in excellent hands and I really look forward to seeing things progress. Tracy will be appearing on the podcast very soon!

• Royal Society honors Inglis and Sever with Research Culture Award for transforming scientific communication

  • Huge congratulations to Richard & John, this is hugely deserved!

• Peer review is broken, and pedagogical research has a fix

  • I love the idea of being more scientific in our approach to peer review

• Natures decision to publish positive peer review reports only gives half the picture

• Royal Society adopts subscribe to open publishing model

• Announcing KCWorks for Institutions: a hosted repository that works for you

• Differences Between Nursing Studies Posted as Preprints on medRxiv or SSRN and Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals

  • This is the latest study to compare preprints to their peer reviewed versions. In keeping with previous work in multiple other fields, this demonstrates that preprints undergo limited changes when published. As I keep saying - preprints are as reliable as the peer review literature is!

• We’re Rebuilding OpenAlex While It’s Running — Here’s What’s Changing

• PLOS responds to PNAS study detailing the growth of peer review integrity issues

• AI content is tainting preprints: how moderators are fighting back

  • This is likely to become a growing issue but the numbers are very low - particularly compared to journal articles - for now. However, I disagree with Dr Corker “No one wants a world where the individual reader has to figure out whether something is legitimate scholarship“. We’ve been relying on problematic proxies (like journal names) for far too long instead of putting effort into helping individuals know if something is legitimate and reliable. I think we should be doing everything we can to help individual readers, including training them to identify good scholarship. To this end, we are planning a series of videos to help provide these skills - part of our commitment to real, meaningful, action. I also think that all preprint servers need basic screening processes in place and those without such screening may need to be considered as untrustworthy.

• Suspension of submissions to generalist preprint server hosted by OSF preprints

• The (Non)Academic Community Forming around Replications (h/t Mark Rubin)

  • I think Mark’s chosen quotes sum up my feelings very well. We must look inwards and be self critical, even if saying that doesn’t make me many friends. The goal of real change comes first, not specific institutions or personalities. We need to be evidence driven, less hyperbolic and more self critical.

• Subscribe-to-Open Is Doomed. Here’s Why

  • I don’t often agree with Scholarly Kitchen posts but I broadly do here. However, this does need a bit of balancing and there are potential paths forward for this model. In either case, it’s good to see experimentation!

Academic Culture

The Metascience Podcast

We’re currently seeking a co-host and any volunteers who’d like to get involved and help out. If that’s you, then get in touch. We have a funding proposal that we’re happy to share.

Latest activity from Rippling Ideas

• 15 steps to make your lab a better place for ECRs [Post] [Infographic]

• A scientists guide to getting started on BlueSky

  • Our first ever resource, created last year, got us off to a great start with 2000 downloads!

Selected News Roundup

• Research Culture Element of REF set to be Shrunk

  • A subsequent article explained this as a consequence of the current political climate. That makes this an even worse mistake, in my opinion.

• X’s altmetric hegemony ending, with BlueSky the clear alternative

• Recordings from MetaScience 2025 conference

  • This was a great conference and now some of the sessions that were recorded are available for viewing.

• Harvard University lays off fly database team

• Researchers suggest one-a-year publication limit

• Practical Guide for RPOs slide presentations

• Geographical diversity of peer reviewers shapes author success

  • Mainly including this so that I can highlight just how amazing PREreview is at trying to increase diversity and equity in preprint peer review. They’re genuinely leading the space.

• How authoritarian states co-opt academic modernisation and bibliometrics for control

• ORCID is yet to fulfil its potential

  • To me this highlights the importance of dedicating community building and advocacy efforts.

Trust in Research

Latest activity from Rippling Ideas

• 5 steps to move away from poor proxies [Post] [Infographic]

Selected News Roundup

• The Peer Review Crisis: how to fix a broken system 

  • I strongly believe that we need to incorporate reviewing activity (alongside a lot of the other “service” activities) into hiring & promotion. Paying reviewers is fraught with problems and will almost certainly lead to that cost being passed on to authors. But I also think we really need to move away from reviewing every single output and to redefine what reviewing is for and how else we can signal trust/quality.

• Peer reviewers altered their recommendation based on whether they were cited or wanted to be cited. A matched study of open peer review at four journals

• Metascience Is More Important Now Than Ever

• India to penalise universities with too many retractions

  • I’m very much with those who warn this will cause issues. Retractions are not inherently due to misconduct or bad behaviour and certainly shouldn’t be punished.

• The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly

• Does ResearchGate have a growing credibility problem?

• Global realignment

  • Great, if terrifying, post from Tony Alves

• Trump order aims to politicize decisions on federal science grants

  • This is spectacularly bad for science.

• RFK Jr in interview with scripps news trusting the experts is not science

  • It’s hard to believe that he is saying this so soon after the CDC shooting - where staff are blaming RFK Jr. 

• Vinay Prasad returns to the FDA

  • Also remarkably bad news for science. Quite the month.

• Journal let authors make undisclosed changes that masked stolen content in paper

Get involved

Join our tribe!

Please share this newsletter with those you know and recommend us as widely as possible to help us grow.

What’s coming up?

• The first of our AI best practice guidance for preprint review services as part of peer review week.

• Our first invited talk as a new organisation!

See you again next month!