#open-journal-of-astrophysics — Public Fediverse posts

Editorial Opportunity at the Journal of Open Source Software

The Journal of Open Source Software – known to its friends as JOSS – is is a developer friendly, diamond open access journal for research software packages which has been running since 2016 and is enormously successful, publishing Open Source software across many fields of science. Its UR, joss.theoj.org, is a giveaway that it is a stablemate of astro.theoj.org, aka the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

The driving force behind JOSS, responsible for getting it off the ground at the very beginning, is Arfon Smith whom I’ve known since Nottingham days and it iis fair to say that without his considerable help, OJAp would never have started. Both journals started off as speculative ventures, and OJAp has taken a considerable time to establish itself, but JOSS took off very quickly indeed and has now published over 3,500 papers. There are numerous differences between the two journals but, like OJAp, all publications in JOSS are free to authors and readers.

Arfon has held the role of Editor-in-Chief at JOSS since 2016 but in a recent blog post he explains that he is stepping down from his role as Editor-in-Chief, although he will remain at JOSS. The call for a replacement is here. It’s an opportunity that will appeal to anyone interested in open-source research software and open-access publishing so if that’s you then please consider applying. It will be a substantial investment of time, probably about a day a week. I quote:

Candidates should have the capacity to commit the time this role requires. For those in institutional positions, we ask for a brief letter or statement from your employer or supervisor confirming support for this commitment. Independent researchers, consultants, or others without a traditional institutional affiliation should include a brief statement describing how they plan to allocate the time.

P.S. Today OJAp published its 100th paper of 2026 so far…

P.P.S. I’ll be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief at OJAp in a couple of years, when I retire, and we’ll be doing a similar search nearer the date.

An independent arXiv

I’m a bit late passing this news on, but a few weeks ago arXiv announced that from 1st July 2026 it will be establishing itself as an “independent nonprofit organization”. It has been hosted for many years by Cornell University. You can read here about the reasons for this and how it will work, and there is a lengthier article in Science magazine, but the quick summary is

This transition allows for faster technological development, greater organizational flexibility, expanded partnerships, and long-term financial sustainability. A platform built by scientists for scientists, the new arXiv will continue to serve researchers worldwide with the same dedication to free and open scientific discovery.

Such a move creates opportunities, but also carries risks. The sustainability of the new-look arXiv will depend on finding appropriate sources of income, for example. I wish arXiv well in this move. There’s an advertisement for the post of Chief Executive, if anyone fancies the job!

One possible future model for the Open Journal of Astrophysics is as a standalone non-profit organization of some sort, funded also by donations. Currently we are funded by the Library at Maynooth University, where I am based. Having made the decision not to charge fees of any kind, we lack any source of income other than the University. I am very grateful for that support, but we are run on a very tight budget. We keep costs to an absolute minimum, but are not free.

I have written before about what I think the future of Diamond Open Access could look 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.

Everything is working well right now at OJAp, but it is not reasonable that the expense of running a journal that serves the global astrophysics community should fall entirely on one small University in Ireland. It won’t be sustainable in the long run, either, if we continue to grow at the present rate. Compare us with the Diamond Open Access publisher SCIPOST, which has a long list of sponsors covering its costs; we have none. My only hope at the moment of turning OJAp into an independent organization is to win the lottery!

Another thing makes me nervous. Many modern universities, which are nominally non-profit institutions, are managed by people who care far more about revenue generation than about academic scholarship and research. I worry that someone upstairs might pressurize us to introduce charges to generate income by threatening to close us down.

I know that money is very tight in astrophysics these days but if you have access to any potential sources of funding – then please consider supporting OJAp!

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 07/02/2026

It’s Saturday once more so time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further six papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 24 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 472.

I will continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience) to encourage you to visit it. Mastodon is a really excellent service, and a more than adequate replacement for X/Twitter which nobody should be using; these announcement also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week is “The Impact of Star Formation and Feedback Recipes on the Stellar Mass and Interstellar Medium of High-Redshift Galaxies” by Harley Katz (U. Chicago, USA), Martin P. Rey (U. Oxford, UK), Corentin Cadiou (Lund U., Sweden) Taysun Kimm (Yonsei U., Korea) and Oscar Agertz (Lund). This paper was published on Monday 2nd February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It introduces MEGATRON, a new model for galaxy formation simulations, highlighting that feedback energy controls star formation at high redshift and highlighting the importance of the interstellar medium.

The overlay is here:

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

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116000695648050758

The second paper is “Photometric Redshifts in JWST Deep Fields: A Pixel-Based Alternative with DeepDISC” by Grant Merz (U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and 6 others, all based in the USA. This paper was published on Monday February 2nd 2026 in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. This paper explores the effectiveness of the DeepDISC machine learning algorithm in estimating photometric redshifts from near-infrared data, demonstrating its potential for larger image volumes and spectroscopic samples

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116000777572439111

Next, published on Wednesday 4th February in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Inferring Interstellar Medium Density, Temperature, and Metallicity from Turbulent H II Regions” by Larrance Xing (U. Chicago, USA), Nicholas Choustikov (U. Oxford, UK), Harley Katz (U. Chicago) and Alex J. Cameron (DAWN, Denmark). This paper argues that supersonic turbulenc affects the interpretation of H II region properties, potentially impacting inferred metallicity, ionization, and excitation from in nebular emission lines, motivating more extensive modelling.

The overlay is here:

The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116011384659092223

The fourth paper this week, also published on Wednesday 4th February, but in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, is “A Systematic Search for Big Dippers in ASAS-SN” by B. JoHantgen, D. M. Rowan, R. Forés-Toribio, C. S. Kochanek, & K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State University, USA), B. J. Shappee (U. Hawaii, USA), Subo Dong (Peking University), J. L. Prieto Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and Todd A. Thompson (Ohio State). This study identifies 4 new dipper stars and 15 long-period eclipsing binary candidates using ASAS-SN light curves and multi-wavelength data, categorizing them based on their characteristics.

Here is the overlay:

The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116011460612040834

Fifth, and next to last this week we have “Unveiling the drivers of the Baryon Cycles with Interpretable Multi-step Machine Learning and Simulations” by Mst Shamima Khanom, Benjamin W. Keller and Javier Ignacio Saavedra Moreno (U. Memphis, USA). This paper was published on Thursday 5th February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This study uses machine learning methods to understand how galaxies lose or retain baryons, highlighting the relationship between baryon fraction and various galactic measurements.

The overlay is here:

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

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116016883984380622

Finally for this week we have “The Bispectrum of Intrinsic Alignments: II. Precision Comparison Against Dark Matter Simulations” by Thomas Bakx (Utrecht U., Netherlands), Toshiki Kurita (MPA Garching, Germany), Alexander Eggemeier (U. Bonn, Germany), Nora Elisa Chisari (Utrecht) and Zvonimir Vlah (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia). This paper was accepted in December, but publication got delayed by the Christmas effect so was published on February 6th 2026, in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. This study uses N-body simulations to accurately measure three-dimensional bispectra of halo intrinsic alignments and dark matter overdensities, providing a method to determine higher order shape bias parameters.

The overlay is here:

You can find the published version of the article here, and the Mastodon announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116022562915557971

And that concludes this week’s update. I will do another next Saturday.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 18/10/2025

It’s time once again for the usual Saturday update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published six  more papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 156, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 391.

I’d like 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) so this week I’ll include links to each announcement there.

The first paper to report is “Shot noise in clustering power spectra” by Nicolas Tessore (University College London, UK) and Alex Hall (University of Edinburgh, UK). This was published in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics on Tuesday October 14th 2025. This presents a discussion of the effects of ‘shot noise’, an additive contribution due to degenerate pairs of points, in angular galaxy clustering power spectra. Here is a screen grab of the overlay:

You can find the officially accepted version of the paper here. The Mastodon announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@[email protected]

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Shot noise in clustering power spectra" by Nicolas Tessore (University College London, UK) and Alex Hall (University of Edinburgh, UK)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.145919

Next one up is “The Giant Arc – Filament or Figment?” by Till Sawala and Meri Teeriaho (University of Helsinki, Finland). This paper discusses the abundance of large arc-like structures formed in the standard cosmological model, with reference to the “Giant Arc” identified in MgII absorption systems. It was published on Wednesday October 15th in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics. The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@[email protected]

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Giant Arc – Filament or Figment?" by Till Sawala and Meri Teeriaho (University of Helsinki, Finland)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.145931

The third paper this week,  published on Monday 6th October, is “Detecting wide binaries using machine learning algorithms” by Amoy Ashesh, Harsimran Kaur and Sandeep Aashish (Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, India). This was published on Friday 17th October (yesterday) in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It presents a method for detecting wide binary systems in Gaia data using machine learning algorithms.

The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here. The announcement on Mastodon is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@[email protected]

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Detecting wide binaries using machine learning algorithms" by Amoy Ashesh, Harsimran Kaur and Sandeep Aashish (Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, India)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.146027

The last one this week is “Learned harmonic mean estimation of the Bayesian evidence with normalizing flows” by Alicja Polanska & Matthew A. Price (University College London, UK), Davide Piras (Université de Genève, CH), Alessio Spurio Mancini (Royal Holloway, London, UK) and Jason D. McEwen (University College London). This one was also published on Friday 17th October, but in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; it presents a new method for estimating Bayesian evidence for use in model comparison, illustrated with a cosmological example.

The corresponding overlay is here:

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

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@[email protected]

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Learned harmonic mean estimation of the Bayesian evidence with normalizing flows" by Alicja Polanska & Matthew A. Price (University College London, UK), Davide Piras (Université de Genève, CH), Alessio Spurio Mancini (Royal Holloway, London, UK) and Jason D. McEwen (University College London)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.146026

That concludes the papers for this week. With two weeks to go I think we might reach the 400 total by the end of October.

#arXiv240505969v3 #arXiv250511072v2 #arXiv250619942v3 #arXiv250703749v2 #BayesInference #BayesianModelComparison #CosmologyAndNonGalacticAstrophysics #DiamondOpenAccess #DiamondOpenAccessPublishing #GAIA #GaiaDR3 #galaxyClustering #GiantArc #InstrumentationAndMethodsForAstrophysics #largeScaleStructureOfTheUniverse #Mastodon #MgIIAbsorptionSystems #normalizingFlows #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #ShotNoise #WideBinaries

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 04/10/2025

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for a summary of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published five more papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 146, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 381. At this rate Volume 8 will contain around 190 by the end of 2025.

Anyway, here are this week’s papers, starting with three published on Monday 29th September 2025.

The first paper is “Cosmic Multipoles in Galaxy Surveys II: Comparing Different Methods in Assessing the Cosmic Dipole” by Vasudev Mittal, Oliver T. Oayda and Geraint F. Lewis (U. Sydney, Australia). This is in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. It presents a comparison of methods for determining the number count dipole from cosmological surveys with a discussion of the implications for the known discordance with the CMB diple.

The overlay is here:

You can make this larger by clicking on it.  The officially accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.

The second paper this week, also published on Monday 29th September, is “SDSS-C4 3028: the Nearest Blue Galaxy Cluster Devoid of an Intracluster Medium” by Shweta Jain (University of Kentucky, USA) and 11 others based in the USA, Australia and Korea. This describes a galaxy cluster with an unusually high fraction (about 63%) of star-forming galaxies which may be a result of ram pressure stripping; the article is in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The corresponding overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here.

The third one this week, published on also published on Monday 29th September but in the folder Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, is “Comparing the Architectures of Multiplanet Systems from Kepler, K2, and TESS Data” by Robert L Royer and Jason H. Steffen (University of Nevada, USA).  This paper explores the trends seen in exoplanet survey data, including Kepler, TESS, and K2 including many planetary systems with multiple planets.

The overlay is here:

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

The next one up is “Seeding Cores: A Pathway for Nuclear Star Clusters from Bound Star Clusters in the First Billion Years” by Fred Angelo Batan Garcia (Columbia University, USA), Massimo Ricotti (University of Maryland, USA) and Kazuyuki Sugimura (Hokkaido University, Japan). This paper was published on Thursday 2nd October in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This is about modelling the formation of Nuclear Star Clusters using cosmological radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, with discussion of the implications for seeding supermassive black holes and the little red dots seen by JWST.

The corresponding overlay is here:

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

The fifth and last one for this week, published on Friday 3rd October 2025, is “Efficient semi-analytic modelling of Pop III star formation from Cosmic Dawn to Reionization” by Sahil Hegde and Steven R. Furlanetto (University of Californi Los Angeles, USA).  This is also in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies. It uses a self-consistent analytic model to trace the formation of the first stars from their birth through the first billion years of the universe’s history. complementing semi-analytic and computational methods.

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

That concludes the report for this week. I’ll post another update next Saturday.

#arXiv250308779v2 #arXiv250620654v3 #arXiv250719581v2 #arXiv250920651v1 #arXiv250922523v1 #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #cosmicDipoles #CosmologyAndNonGalacticAstrophysics #DiamondOpenAccess #EarthAndPlanetaryAstrophysics #GalaxyCluster #galaxyFormation #galaxySurveys #JWST #Kepler #LittleRedDots #MultiplanetSystems #nuclearStarClusters #OpenAccessPublishing #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #PopulationIIIStars #ramPressureStripping #SDSSC42028 #semiAnalyticGalaxyFormation #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 06/09/2025

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for a summary of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published two new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 127, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 362. It’s been another relatively slow week, not least because of the Labor (sic) Day holiday in the USA on Monday which, among other things, meant there was no arXiv update on Tuesday.

Anyway, the first paper to report this week is “An analytical model for the dispersion measure of Fast Radio Burst host galaxies” by Robert Reischke, Michael Kovač & Andrina Nicola (U. Bonn, Germany), Steffen Hagstotz (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München) and Aurel Schneider (U. Zurich, Switzlerland). This is a theoretical study of the dispersion measures (DMs) intrinsic to host galaxies of Fast Radio Burst (FRB) sources to enable separation of that from the line-of-sight DM. This one was published on Monday 1st September 2025 in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics.

The overlay is here:

You can make this larger by clicking on it.  The officially accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.

The second paper this week, published on Wednesday 3rd Sepember in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, is “Complex spectral variability and hints of a luminous companion in the Be star + black hole binary candidate ALS 8814” by Kareem El-Badry (Caltech, USA), Matthias Fabry (Villanova U., USA), Hugues Sana (KU Leuven, Belgium), Tomer Shenar (Tel Aviv U., Israel) and Rhys Seeburger (MPA Heidelberg, Germany).

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here.

And that’s all the papers for this week. It’s still a bit slow as we emerge from the summer vacations, we have a lot of papers in the pipeline that I expect to emerge pretty soon.

#arXiv241117682v2 #arXiv250901545v1 #BeStar #BlackHoleBinary #CosmologyAndNonGalacticAstrophysics #DiamondOpenAccess #DiamondOpenAccessPublishing #DispersionMeasures #fastRadioBursts #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #SolarAndStellarAstrophysics #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 30/08/2025

Once again it’s time for a summary of the week’s new papers 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 125, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 360.

The first paper to report this week is “Large-scale surveys of the quasar proximity effect” by Rupert Croft, Patrick Shaw & Ann-Marsha Alexis (Carnegie Mellon University; CMU), Nianyi Chen (Princeton), Yihao Zhou & Tiziana Di Matteo (CMU), Simeon Bird (UC Riverside), Patrick Lachance (CMU), and Yueying Ni (Harvard). This paper was published on Monday 25th August in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics. It presents a CDM-based halo model of the quasar proximity effect, tested on quasar Lyman-alpha spectra from the ASTRID cosmological simulation, including self-consistent formation of quasar black holes and the intergalactic medium.

The overlay is here:

You can make this larger by clicking on it, as you can with all the overlays below. The officially accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.

The second paper this week, also published on Monday 25th August, but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Redshift evolution of Lyman continuum escape fraction after JWST” by Andrea Ferrara (Pisa), M. Giavalisco (UMass Amherst), L. Pentericci (Rome), E. Vanzella (Bologna), A. Calabrò (Rome) and M. Llerena (Rome). This paper is about the Attenuation-Free Model (AFM) for galaxies, in which radiation-driven outflows develop once the galaxy specific star formation rate exceeds a certain level, which is tested on data with positive results. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here.

The third and final paper this week is “Primordial black holes in cosmological simulations: growth prospects for supermassive black holes” by Lewis R Prole, John A Regan, Daxal Mehta & Peter Coles (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and Pratika Dayal (Groningen, NL). This one was published in Astrophysics of Galaxies folder on Thursday 28th August 2025. You can read more about this paper here: basically it studies the growth of primordial black holes in the early Universe using numerical simulations, with implications for the subsequent formation of massive black holes.

The overlay is here:

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

And that’s all the papers for this week. It’s still a bit slow as we emerge from the summer vacations, but I expect things will start to pick up from now on.

#arXiv250403848v2 #arXiv250510619v2 #arXiv250611233v2 #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #AttenuationFreeModel #CosmologyAndNonGalacticAstrophysics #DiamondOpenAccess #DiamondOpenAccessPublishing #JWST #LymanContinuum #massiveBlackHoles #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #primordialBlackHoles #ProximityEffect #quasars #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

EAS 2025 in Cork

Tomorrow I’ll be travelling to the fine city of Cork, where I shall be for most of next week, attending the 2025 Annual Meeting of the European Astronomical Society I was planing to travel today, but I have some things to attend to at home tomorrow morning so I won’t get to Cork until late afternoon.

The EAS Annual Meeting is a very large meeting with well over a thousand participants expected. It is held each year in a different European city but, according to tradition, never a capital. Last year it was in Padova (Italy) and the year before that in Kraków (Poland).

I usually enjoy smaller-scale meetings and workshops over these mega-conferences, but I’m looking forward to this one. There will be a strong Maynooth contingent there but I also hope to see some old friends from elsewhere, as well as catching up on some exciting science results.

Talking of science, I am on the Scientific Organizing Committee for this meeting. The programme is very large and diverse and there were a few headaches on the way, but nothing compared to the logistical challenges facing the local organizers; they will probably reach peak stress levels ahead of the opening of the meeting, but I’m sure everything will go well. The Irish National Astronomy Meeting (INAM) was actually held in Cork in 2023. Although a much smaller meeting than EAS, the experience of running that will probably have helped the organizers.

I’m not actually giving a talk at EAS but I will be participating in a panel discussion in a special session on The Future of Scientific Publishing: Strategies and Challenges for Astronomy on Tuesday 24th June. When I saw the initial announcement for this special session, I was was concerned that it would be entirely dominated by representatives of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and their publisher EDP Sciences. The first session (9.00 to 10.30) titled “SCIENCE PUBLISHING TODAY AND TOMORROW” is still like that, but the panel discussion in the second session (13.15 to 14.45) “SCIENCE PUBLISHING: A COMMUNITY’S VIEW” is a bit more balanced than that, with a representatives of NASA/ADS and the European Southern Observatory (among others). If I’m given an opportunity to get a word in, I’ll be arguing that traditional journals are unnecessary and obsolete.

#Cork #EAS2025 #EuropeanAstronomicalSociety #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 14/06/2025

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 two new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 71, and the total so far published by OJAp  is now up to 306.

The two 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 “Analysis of optical spectroscopy and photometry of the type I X-ray bursting system UW CrB2” by Mark Kennedy (University College Cork, Ireland) and 21 others based in Ireland, UK, USA, Finland, Netherlands and Australia. This one was published on Tuesday June 10th in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena.  This describes optical photometry and spectroscopy of the low-mass X-ray binary UW Coronae Borealis taken over 2 years

The overlay is here:

You can read the final accepted version on arXiv here.

The second paper is “The Impact of Feedback-driven Outflows on Bar Formation” by Martin D. Weinberg (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA). This paper uses a generalization of the Hamiltonian Mean-Field model to of the disruption of bar formation in galaxies by stellar feedback. It was published on Friday 13th June 2025 in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The overlay is here:

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

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

#arXiv240312138v2 #arXiv240806404v2 #Astrophysics #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #BarFormationInGalaxies #DiamondOpenAccess #HighEnergyAstrophysicalPhenomena #lowMassXRayBinary #OpenAccessPublishing #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #StellarFeedback #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics #UWCoronaeBorealis

Funding Diamond Open Access

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…

#DiamondOpenAccess #OJAp #OpenAccess #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #SciPost #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Qeios and the Nature of a Journal

Last week I encountered, for the first time, a website called Qeios.com. This is a platform that does peer review of preprints and then posts those approved with Open Access. It also issues a DOI for approved articles. Qeios is also a member of Crossref so presumably the metadata for these articles is deposited there too.

You might think this is the same as what the Open Journal of Astrophysics does, but it is a bit different. For one thing, it is not an arXiv overlay journal so the preprints actually appear on the Qeios platform, though I suppose there’s nothing to stop authors posting on arXiv either before or after Qeios. Since most astrophysicists find their research on arXiv, the overlay concept seems more efficient the Qeios one.

Anyway, my attention was drawn to Qeios by an astrophysicist who had been asked to review an article for Qeios that is already under consideration by OJAp. In our For Authors page there is this:

No paper should be submitted to The Open Journal of Astrophysics that is already published elsewhere or is being considered for publication by another journal.

This rule is adopted by many journals and has in the past led to authors being banned for breaking it. Apart from anything else it means that the community is not bombarded with multiple review requests for the same paper (as in the case above). There is an issue of research misconduct, the definition of which varies from one institution to another. For reference here is what it says in Maynooth University’s Research Integrity Policy statement:

Publication of multiplier papers based on the same set(s) or sub-set(s) of data is not acceptable, except where there is full cross-referencing within the papers. An author who submits substantially similar work to more than one publisher must disclose this to the publishers at the time of submission.

The document also specifically refers to “artificially proliferating publications” as an example of research misconduct. Authors whose papers do end up in multiple journals could thus find themselves in very hot water with their employers as a consequence.

Getting back to the specifics of Qeios and OJAp, however, there two questions about whether this rule applicable in this situation. One is that the preprint may have been submitted to Qeios after submission to OJAp, which means the rule as written is not violated. The other is whether Qeios counts as a “another journal” in the first place.

Instead of going into the definition of what a journal is, I’ll refer you to an old post of mine in which I wrote this:

I’d say that, at least in my discipline, traditional journals are simply no longer necessary for communicating scientific research. I find all the  papers I need to do my research on the arXiv and most of my colleagues do the same. We simply don’t need old-fashioned journals anymore.  Yet we keep paying for them. It’s time for those of us who believe that  we should spend as much of our funding as we can on research instead of throwing it away on expensive and outdated methods of publication to put an end to this absurd system. We academics need to get the academic publishing industry off our backs.

The point that I have made many times is that the only thing that journals do of any importance is to organize peer-review. The publishing side of the business is simply unnecessary. Journals do not add value to an article, they just add cost. The one thing they do – peer review – is not done by them but by members of the academic community.

There is a thread on Bluesky by Ethan Vishniac (Editor-in-Chief of the Astrophysical Journal) about Qeios. There are six parts so please bear with me if I include them all to show context:

https://bsky.app/profile/ethan-vishniac.bsky.social/post/3lco4s6bfq223

https://bsky.app/profile/ethan-vishniac.bsky.social/post/3lco4s6bllk23

https://bsky.app/profile/ethan-vishniac.bsky.social/post/3lco4s6bmks23

https://bsky.app/profile/ethan-vishniac.bsky.social/post/3lco4s6xjqc23

https://bsky.app/profile/ethan-vishniac.bsky.social/post/3lco4s6xkpk23

https://bsky.app/profile/ethan-vishniac.bsky.social/post/3lco4s6xlos23

This thread repeats much of what I’ve said already, but I’d like to draw your attention to the 4th of these messages, which contains

Qeios.com takes the position that they are not a journal, but a website that vets papers through peer review. The AAS journals (and as far as I know, all other professional journals) does not regard this as a meaningful distinction.

I’m not sure what a journal actually is, as I think it is an outmoded concept, but I agree with Ethan Vishniac that to all intents and purposes Qeios is a journal. On the other hand, this quote seems to me to contain a tacit acceptance that the only thing that defines a journal is that it vets papers by peer review, which is the point I made above.

#academicPublishing #arXiv #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #Qeios

The Future of Diamond Open Access in Astrophysics

The Open Journal of Astrophysics is now reasonably well established as a Diamond Open Access journal for the astrophysics community. We have published over a hundred articles so far this year at such a low cost that we can make our publications free to read and to publish. Thanks for all this is due to the volunteers on our Editorial Board, the excellent team at Maynooth University library, who have supported this project for 6 years, to the arXiv, as well of course to the authors who have chosen to publish with us.

Although we have established a good base, we’re still much smaller than the mainstream journals publishing just a few percent of their output. There is no sign of a slowdown at OJAp. Indeed there are signs that pace will pick up. I heard last week, for example, that Oxford University Press (the publisher of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society) has decided to cancel the ‘Read-and-Publish’ agreement that allowed authors from Australian institutions to avoid APCs. I imagine we’ll get quite a few more submissions from Down Under thanks to that decision.

Nevertheless, we’ve a long way to go to catch up with the likes of A&A, MNRAS and ApJ in terms of numbers. If activity continues to grow then we will incur greater costs – our provider, Scholastica, charges us per paper. Those costs will still be smaller than regular journals, but I think it’s unfair that the expense of running a journal that serves the global astrophysics community should fall entirely on one small University in Ireland.

Expense is only one issue. I never envisaged that OJAp would be unique. It was more intended to be a proof of concept. 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. 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 rather think it’s not the money that is the issue, just the unimaginatively risk-averse thinking in what passes these days for university management.

There are two simple – but not mutually exclusive – possibilities.

One is that astrophysics institutions club together and donate funds not only to keep OJAp going, but also to allow us to invest in improvements. A donation equivalent to the cost of just one APC for a typical journal would help us enormously. We do actually get some donations already, but more would always be welcome. In the long run, an investment in Diamond Open Access would pay back many times in savings; OJAp has already saved the worldwide community over £500,000.

The other is that other members of the community follow the lead of OJAp and set up their own journals. I wouldn’t see others as much as competitors, more as allies with community-led federated system. In the light of the OUP decision mentioned above, why don’t Australian research institutions set up their own version of OJAp? I’d be happy to discuss how to start up such a journal with anyone interested.

If you would like to discuss either of these possibilities please use the comment box below or email me here.

P.S. There is another issue concerning the future of OJAp, which is that I will be retiring in a few years, but now isn’t the time to discuss that one!

#DiamondOpenAccess #journals #MNRAS #OpenAccess #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #OxfordUniversityPress #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

A day later than has been usual for such things, it’s now time for a quick update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This week we have published another batch of four papers which takes the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 81 and the total published altogether by OJAp up to 196. I think there may come a week in we publish papers on every day of that week, but it was not this week…

In chronological order, the four 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.

First one up is “Finding the unusual red giant remnants of cataclysmic variable mergers” by Nicholas Z. Rui and Jim Fuller of California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA. It presents a discussion of the possible photometric, astroseismological, and surface abundance signatures of red giants formed by mergers of cataclysmic variable stars. It was published on 23rd September 2024 and is in the folder marked Solar and Stellar Astrophysics.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay, which includes the abstract:

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

The second paper to announce, also published on 23rd September 2024, is “Notes on the Practical Application of Nested Sampling: MultiNest, (Non)convergence, and Rectification” by Alexander Dittmann (U. Maryland, USA). A critical analysis of the MultiNest algorithm together with suggestions for approving its applicability. It is in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics.

You can see the overlay here:

The accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.

The third paper, published on 24th September 2024 in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, is called  “Merger Precursor: Year-long Transients Preceding Mergers of Low-mass Stripped Stars with Compact Objects” and is by Daichi Tsuna, Samantha Wu & Jim Fuller (Caltech), Yize Dong (UCLA) and Anthony Piro (Carnegie Observatories), all based in the USA.

Here is the overlay

The final version accepted on arXiv is here.

Last in this batch is “Spectroscopic Observations of the GALEX Nearby Young Star Survey Sample. I. Nearby Moving Group Candidates” by Navya Nagananda (Rochester, NY, USA), Laura Vican (UCLA), Ben Zuckerman (UCLA), David Rodriguez (STScI), Alexander Binks (Tübingen, Germany) & Joel Kastner (Rochester). It describes investigations of the spectra of the GALNYSS sample of over 2000 young stars and the assignment of these stars into moving groups. It is is in the folder marked Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, and was published on 25th September 2024 with this overlay:

You can find the official accepted version on the arXiv here.

That’s all for now. I will post another update in a week.

https://telescoper.blog/2024/09/29/four-new-publications-at-the-open-journal-of-astrophysics-8/

#arXiv240414474v2 #arXiv240416928v2 #arXiv240612472v2 #arXiv240915579v1 #CataclysmicVariables #DiamondOpenAccess #GALEX #HighEnergyAstrophysicalPhenomena #InstrumentationAndMethodsForAstrophysics #Multinest #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #SolarAndStellarAstrophysics #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Once again, it’s time for a quick update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This week we have published another batch of four papers which takes the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 77 and the total published altogether by OJAp up to 192. Things are picking up again after the summer lull, and we’re moving towards a double century. If we keep up a steady average of four per week we’ll be at 200 per year.

In chronological order, the four 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.

First one up is “Quasi-two-dimensionality of three-dimensional, magnetically dominated, decaying turbulence” by Shreya Dwivedi, Chandranathan Anandavijayan, and Pallavi Bhat of TIFR, Bangalore, India. The paper presents an analysis of numerical simulations of MHD turbulence using Minkowski Functionals, with implications for local anisotropies revealed therein. It was published on 9th September 2024 and is in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay, which includes the abstract:

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

The second paper to announce, also published on 9th September 2024, is “mochi_class: Modelling Optimisation to Compute Horndeski In class” by  Matteo Cataneo (Universität Bonn, Germany) and Emilio Bellini (SISSA, Trieste, Italy). This article presents a cosmological Einstein-Boltzmann solver adapted to work with Horndeski gravity, together with validation tests. It is in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics.

You can see the overlay here:

The accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here.

The third paper, published on 11th September 2024 in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, is by Jonathan Katz of Washington University, St Louis, USA. The title is “The Sources of Fast Radio Bursts” and it presents a discussion of the possible physical origin of Fast Radio Bursts, arguing that they fall into two distinct groups.

The final version accepted on arXiv is here.

Last in this batch, but by no means least, is “RMS asymmetry: a robust metric of galaxy shapes in images with varied depth and resolution” by Elizaveta Sazonova (U. Waterloo, Canada) with 15 other authors spread around the world (in Canada, USA, Australia, Italy, Chile, UK, Poland, Mexico, Germany, and Spain). This paper presents a method of quantifying distortion of galaxy images connected with mergers or other instabilities. It is in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies and was published on September 12th 2024 with this overlay:

You can find the official accepted version on the arXiv here.

That’s all for now. I will post another update in a week.

https://telescoper.blog/2024/09/14/four-new-publications-at-the-open-journal-of-astrophysics-7/

#arXiv220713241v4 #arXiv240101965v2 #arXiv240405792v2 #arXiv240711968v2 #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #CosmologyAndNonGalacticAstrophysics #EinsteinBoltzmannEquations #fastRadioBursts #galaxies #galaxyMergers #GalaxyShapes #HighEnergyAstrophysicalPhenomena #HorndeskiGravity #magnetohydrodynamics #MHD #MinkowskiFunctionals #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #PlasmaPhysics #plasmaTurbulence #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

A couple of months ago, I issued a call for new Editors of the Open Journal of Astrophysics. That was very successful and we added a number of new Editors. The complete list (of 20 members) follows:

Peter Coles* (Department of Theoretical Physics, Maynooth University, Ireland). Cosmology, astrophysics, statistics and methodology.

Thierry Appourchaux (CNRS, Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France). Space instrumentation, astroseismology, helioseismology, statistics and methodology.

Emory (Ted) Bunn (Department of Physics, University of Richmond, USA). Relativity, cosmology.

Walter Dehnen (Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, University of Heidelberg, Germany). Stellar dynamics, galaxy dynamics, galaxies, bars, Milky-Way dynamics, Gaia, numerical methods, N-body techniques, smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH).

Philipp Edelmann (Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA). Stellar astrophysics, hydrodynamics, high-performance computing, supernovae, internal waves, stellar evolution, numerical methods.

Pedro Ferreira (Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK). Large-scale structure, general relativity, cosmic microwave background, early universe, cosmology.

Andrew Jaffe (Department of Physics, Imperial College, London, UK). Astrophysics, statistics and methodology, cosmology.

Harley Katz (Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, USA). Galaxy formation and evolution, numerical simulations

Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer (School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia). Active galactic nuclei, polarimetry, atmospheres of planets, exoplanets, solar system planets.

Julien Larena (Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, Université de Montpellier, France). Cosmology, gravitation, lensing, large-scale structure, general relativity.

Manuela Magliocchetti (National Institute of Astrophysics, Rome, Italy). Cosmology, galaxies, active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Sean McGee (Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Birmingham, UK). Galaxy formation, galaxy clusters, galaxy surveys.

Manolis Plionis (Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece). Observational cosmology, extragalactic astrophysics, large-scale structure, active galactic nuclei.

Alkistis Pourtsidou (Higgs Centre & Institute for Astronomy, Edinburgh, UK). Cosmology, large-scale structure of the Universe, radio astronomy, galaxy surveys.

Justin Read (School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Surrey, UK). Dark matter, cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution, dwarf galaxies, milky way, galactic dynamics, galactic archaeology, computational modeling.

Hanno Rein (Department of Physics and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada). Numerical methods, in particular N-body codes and integration methods for planetary systems, planet formation, stochastic processes, planet migration, celestial mechanics, and Saturn’s rings.

Aleks Scholz (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of St Andrews, UK). Exoplanets, brown dwarfs, protoplanetary disks, stellar evolution, star formation.

Elena Sellentin (Sterrewacht Leiden, Leiden University, The Netherlands). Applied Mathematics, Cosmology, Statistics, Statistical Inference.

Elena Terlevich (Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, Puebla, Mexico). Stellar populations in galaxies, observational cosmology, violent star formation, element abundances, dynamics of stellar systems.

Bingbing Wang (Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research, University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA.) Particle astrophysics, MHD turbulence, cosmic rays acceleration, cosmic ray propagation in the Galaxy and heliosphere.

Apologies to anyone who volunteered but has not yet received a reply from me. I’ve been a bit preoccupied these last weeks! The call is still open, though. Here are the areas of arXiv covered by the journal:

1. astro-ph.GA – Astrophysics of Galaxies. Phenomena pertaining to galaxies or the Milky Way. Star clusters, HII regions and planetary nebulae, the interstellar medium, atomic and molecular clouds, dust. Stellar populations. Galactic structure, formation, dynamics. Galactic nuclei, bulges, disks, halo. Active Galactic Nuclei, supermassive black holes, quasars. Gravitational lens systems. The Milky Way and its contents
2. astro-ph.CO – Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. Phenomenology of early universe, cosmic microwave background, cosmological parameters, primordial element abundances, extragalactic distance scale, large-scale structure of the universe. Groups, superclusters, voids, intergalactic medium. Particle astrophysics: dark energy, dark matter, baryogenesis, leptogenesis, inflationary models, reheating, monopoles, WIMPs, cosmic strings, primordial black holes, cosmological gravitational radiation
3. astro-ph.EP – Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. Interplanetary medium, planetary physics, planetary astrobiology, extrasolar planets, comets, asteroids, meteorites. Structure and formation of the solar system
4. astro-ph.HE – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. Cosmic ray production, acceleration, propagation, detection. Gamma ray astronomy and bursts, X-rays, charged particles, supernovae and other explosive phenomena, stellar remnants and accretion systems, jets, microquasars, neutron stars, pulsars, black holes
5. astro-ph.IM – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. Detector and telescope design, experiment proposals. Laboratory Astrophysics. Methods for data analysis, statistical methods. Software, database design
6. astro-ph.SR – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. White dwarfs, brown dwarfs, cataclysmic variables. Star formation and protostellar systems, stellar astrobiology, binary and multiple systems of stars, stellar evolution and structure, coronas. Central stars of planetary nebulae. Helioseismology, solar neutrinos, production and detection of gravitational radiation from stellar systems.

We are looking for experienced scientists in any of these areas, and it would indeed be useful to have people who can cover a range of subjects (as some of our existing editors do), but there I think we’re still a bit short on High-Energy Astrophysics, Solar and Stellar Physics, and Galactic Astrophysics. I’d also like to see a better gender balance so applications from female scientists are particularly welcomed, as are astrophysicists from geographical areas not currently covered. The Open Journal of Astrophysics is intended to be a global enterprise!

Please follow the instructions here if you would like to volunteer!

https://telescoper.blog/2024/09/06/the-editorial-board-of-the-open-journal-of-astrophysics/

#DiamondOpenAccess #EditorialBoard #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics

I think it’s time to provide an update on the (lack of) progress getting The Open Journal of Astrophysics properly indexed in Scopus (which markets itself as a purveyor of “metrics you can trust”).

You might recall back in June that I reported that OJAp had been included in the index, but unfortunately the Scopus team messed up very badly by omitting about one-third of our papers and most of our citations. Here’s what they did:

In the column marked Documents 2020-23  you will see the number 67. In fact we published 99 articles between 2020 and 2023, not 67. This is easily established here. The number 67 relates to the period 2022-23 only. Accidentally or deliberately, Scopus has omitted a third of our papers from its database. But the error doesn’t end there. Papers published in OJAp between 2020 and 2023 have actually been cited 959 times, not 137. If you restrict the count to papers published in 2022-23 there are 526 citations. It’s no wonder that OJAp has such a low CiteScore, and consequently appears so far down the rankings, when the citation information is so woefully inaccurate. “Metrics you can trust?” My arse!

If you want accurate bibliometric information about the papers published in the two years that Scopus has chosen to ignore you can look here.

I sent this information to Scopus on 15th June, soon after noticing the error, but I then got shunted around. I eventually got a reply on 23rd August, acknowledging the mistake and including this:

I want to assure you that your request has been promptly forwarded to our technical team for the addition of the paper to our database. While we strive to resolve this as swiftly as possible, please be aware that this correction process may take up to four weeks to be completed. 

I think they’re using some definition of “promptly” with which I am unfamiliar. I’m not optimistic that they will actually correct it in four weeks, either, since it took 5 months to get the initial 67 papers indexed.

This all merely demonstrates the folly that so many institutions place so much trust in Scopus. Based on my interactions with them, I wouldn’t trust them with anything at all. Unfortunately the powers that be have decided that Scopus listing is such a reliable indicator of quality that any article not published in a Scopus journal is worthless. Knowing that it has a monopoly, Scopus has no incentive to put any effort into its own quality assurance. It can peddle any error-ridden tripe to its subscribers, most of them paying for the product with taxpayers’ money.

(I might add that if OJAp were a commercial journal, then the willful publication of demonstrably false information about it would be actionable as it is potentially damaging to business. )

Presumably at the instigation of senior management, IT services at Maynooth University are still banning access to this blog from campus. It would make far more sense for them to ban Scopus.

https://telescoper.blog/2024/09/05/scopus-should-be-banned/

#censorship #MaynoothUniversity #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #SCOPUS