I’m on a public mailing list that was initially set up for delegates of the OSI2016 conference. In a recent email to that list, I pointed out that we can never know whether or not publishers are double-dipping (accepting APCs and subscriptions for the same content) unless they are totally transparent about their finances — and nothing in their history makes it likely that that’s ever going to happen.

I mentioned on Twitter that I’d left a comment on the Scholarly Kitchen that had been blocked in moderation, and several people asked what the comment was.

Here is a vertebra that Matt and I saw on our recent travels through Utah: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-13531 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13531” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/05/25/an-sv-pow-challenge-what-is-this-vertebra/img_2530/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img_2530.jpg” orig-size=“4000,3000” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"3.5","credit":"","camera":"Canon PowerShot

It’s very doubtful that Franz J. Ingelfinger ever intended the rule named in his honour to prevent online preprints — after all, such things didn’t exist when he introduced his no-prior-publication policy at the New England Journal of Medicine in 1969, or even at the time of his death in 1980. Yet the rule lingers on in corrupt form.

In a recent blog-post, Kevin Smith tells it like it is: legacy publishers are tightening their grip in an attempt to control scholarly communications. “The same five or six major publishers who dominate the market for scholarly journals are engaged in a race to capture the terms of and platforms for scholarly sharing”, says Smith.

Another day, another puff-piece from academic publishers about how awesome they are. This time, the Publisher’s Association somehow suckered the Guardian into giving them a credible-looking platform for their party political broadcast, Think academic publishers are greedy? Do your research . I have to give the PA credit for coming up with about the most patronising title possible. Yes, I did my research. Guess what?

As regular readers will know, Matt and I have recently spent ten glorious days travelling the dinosaur museums of Utah, in a once-in-a-lifetime event that we have been calling the Sauropocalypse. In that time, we visited seven different museums and — this is the truth — had an absolutely fantastic time in all of them. One of the big reasons is of course the quality of their collections and galleries.

UPDATE 19 May 2016 I belatedly realized that I caused some confusion in the original version of this post.

Go home Eremotherium laurillardi, you are drunk.

Seriously, Megatherium americanum, do you even lift?

[Previously on SV-POW!] And now: {.aligncenter .size-large .wp-image-13434 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13434” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/05/13/when-evolution-just-gives-up-part-2/img_3746/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img_3746.jpg” orig-size=“4000,3000” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"3.5","credit":"","camera":"Canon PowerShot