Matthew Collins
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matthewcollins.bsky.social
Matthew Collins
@matthewcollins.bsky.social
5K followers 5.1K following 600 posts

Archaeology, University of Cambridge | The Globe, University of Copenhagen
Ancient Proteins | Medieval Manuscripts | Proteomics and AI | 🇺🇦

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Matthew Collins, is a professor at the University of Copenhagen, formerly as a Niels Bohr professor, and also holds a McDonald Chair in Palaeoproteomics at the University of Cambridge. .. more

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matthewcollins.bsky.social
Matthew Collins @matthewcollins.bsky.social · 26d
There is fun to be had in *not* reviewing a manuscript.

@pciarchaeology.bsky.social @cos.io #openaccess
Thank you for your invitation to review a manuscript. While I value the scholarly community's efforts to disseminate research, I have growing concerns about the publishing model many commercial publishers, including Springer Nature, employ. In my view, the current system heavily relies on taxpayer-funded research, often conducted at public institutions, yet places the resulting work behind expensive paywalls. This practice limits access for scientists and the general public in the Global South, who often cannot afford subscription fees or open-access charges. To put this in perspective, Springer Nature's most recent financial results (for the fiscal year ending December 2025) show total revenue of €1,926.4 million, adjusted operating profit of €543.6 million, and net income of €356 million. The Research division, which includes its journals, generated €1,517.2 million of that revenue. Shareholders received dividends of approximately €25.9 million, a significant increase from the previous year. These figures show that the current model is highly profitable, but much of that profit goes to investor returns rather than making research accessible to the global scientific community. I have worked unpaid for you in the past, but this unpaid labour, combined with publicly funded research, generates enormous profits for a publishing industry that gives back relatively little to the public or to scientists in under-resourced regions. I do not believe this is fair or sustainable. I therefore have become a champion of Diamond Open Access and an editor at PCI.