Today we’re quietly (and finally!) opening up Railfinder to the public! This is our beta version and - hopefully - the first step towards that one booking site for trains across Europe that we all dream of.

Lots of work has gone into this and equally lots still to do before reach that vision, but if you’d like to try what we’be built you can now just go to https://www.railfinder.eu and have a go!

Any and all feedback more than welcome 🙏

The first part of CommonsDB Feasibility Study—by @paulk, @CultureDoug, @Posth, @jpquintais, Kacper Szkalej, and Thomas Margon—anticipates launching the first public version of the registry after summer.

Download: https://openfuture.eu/publication/commonsdb-feasibility-study-building-the-future-of-digital-commons/

If you're one of my academic publishing folks: sadly, it's true. Due to a funder's unexpected decision to pull support, we've had to make the incredibly difficult decision to wind down PubPub over the next 18 months and regroup to figure out how to best serve our mission.

I'm sure I'll have more to say, but today I'm feeling both gratified and saddened by the overwhelmingly supportive responses to our announcement.

I urge you to learn from our mistakes: https://www.knowledgefutures.org/updates/2025-06-update/

Not Enough: Open Infrastructure Funding and the Future of Knowledge Futures https://www.knowledgefutures.org/updates/2025-06-update/

We’re thrilled to welcome Arcadia as a Founding Contributor to the IOI Fund for Network Adoption!
With Arcadia’s generous support, the Fund has now reached US$4.55 million — that's 75% of our initial target. This will go a long way toward accelerating the adoption and scaling of open research infrastructure across Africa, Latin America, and North America.

More on this collaboration in our blogpost: https://investinopen.org/blog/arcadia-joins-the-ioi-fund-for-network-adoption-as-a-founding-contributor/

AI copyediting: how Paperpal butchered my paper on AI-generated writing
This morning I received the copy-edited version of a paper I recently submitted to a journal. This is always cause for celebration, another step towards publication accomplished! But this time the …
https://jilltxt.net/ai-copyediting-how-paperpal-butchered-my-paper-on-ai-generated-writing/
#academic #ai #jill-rettberg #p-bksy #paperpal #tools

Probably the first time that I read the term "onionising" in the context of open infrastructures and #OpenAccess publishing

Why @copim goes Tor (spoiler: because of commercial platforms like Adobe, Microsoft or Amazon and their terrible digital #surveillance of academic practices) https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/copim-intellectual-privacy-and-open-access/release/1

#Datentracking #AkaPub

The fruits of following my curiosity yesterday - a little Sunday Study on citations.

https://tlohde.com/blog/2025/06/becoming-irrelevant/

Motivated by @sundogplanets 's post on citing old papers: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/114677909402696290

I haven't checked, because I wanted to do it anyway, but I'm sure someone out there has done this more thoroughly and properly.

#MetaScience #ResearchAboutResearch #citations #OpenAlex #Nature #science

@neuralreckoning @chartgerink

I always thought it was really cool that DOAJ recognized and included Verfassungsblog in its directory (up until 2025).

I do hope that @DOAJ can 'review' its policies in regard to law journals, quickly in time to reassess Verfassungsblog for 2026.

This exclusion reads like something Clarviate (Web of Science) would do tbh 🙃

I am disappointed to see the DOAJ* reject Verfassungsblog.

Verfassungsblog provides consistent, quality analyses that contribute to an incredibly important area of societal discussion. Rejecting them based on homogenized conceptions of peer review standards across fields, is not only disappointing – it is playing with fire.

We need discussions of constitutional and fundamental rights now more than ever. I call upon DOAJ to reconsider

*Directory of Open Access Journals

https://verfassungsblog.de/verfassungsblog-doaj-scholarly-standards/

Just a reminder that Netanyahu and Trump deliberately tore up a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear ambitions, the JCPA agreement which would have allowed Iran to pursue civilian nuclear projects under strict IAEI inspections, in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action

'Intellectual giant' Sir Geoff Palmer dies aged 85.

Sir Geoff Palmer became Scotland's first black professor in 1989

1989!!!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93lry1e6z5o

#Academia

The iNaturalist team provided an excellent update below the original announcement. I have a lot of trust that this will be done right. https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/113184-inaturalist-receives-grant-to-improve-species-suggestions

Big update: The Internet Archive has launched a new version of GifCities, the search engine for vintage GeoCities GIFs. It's now easier to explore the glitter, chaos, and charm of early web animation.

Search better. Share better. Blink more.

Learn more: https://blog.archive.org/2025/06/09/keep-on-gifin-a-new-version-of-gifcities-internet-archives-geocities-animated-gif-search-engine/

Vacancy "Open Access consultant in the European context (m/f/d)" at @tibhannover, working for and with the EULiST university alliance of @unihannover . 70%, pay scale E13, ~2 years.

Join our excellent publishing services team at TIB and get in touch with any questions you might have. (--> @sdellmann )

https://www.tib.eu/en/tib/careers-and-apprenticeships/vacancies/details/stellenausschreibung-nr-29-2025

#OpenAccess #UniversityAlliance

Read of the day:

Clark J, Zuccala E (2025) Gender pay gaps and inequity at science publishers. PLOS Glob Public Health 5(6): e0004673. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0004673

"Eight years ago Elsevier stood out among publishers, with a median pay gap in 2017 of 40.4% in favour of men over women in its UK business. The UK average that year was 18.4% and we called Elsevier’s gap – double the national average – unacceptable"

not enough seems to have changed 😠

#Elsevier #Publishing

the amusement from trying to use AI for low-stakes creativity continue...

Prompt: The four letters B O A I in an impressive way

Results generated: Not one contains those four letters asked for

🙃

Refurbished Thinkpads: The Future of Computing ™️

Meet the Blemmyes, mythical headless humanoids whose eyes, nose, and mouth are embedded in their breast. Explore illustrations of this chest-faced wonder across more than half a millennium in our latest post: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/blemmyes

@leaton01

this is possibly quite a weird/tangential side-point but...

I'm really glad you didn't lean in to the "black open access" terminology. I find it incredibly frustrating that it was ever coined. The phrase is a complete oxymoron - it's not open access. There are also better ways of accurately describing it right there e.g. "illicit access".

TL;DR the phrase "black open access" is dumb and should not be used.