“Chris Hartgerink, the founder of Liberate Science, discusses why and how they integrated ROR into the modular publishing platform ResearchEquals for author affiliations in user profiles and Crossref DOIs and explains why they live streamed all eight hours of the work….”
“We started running Twitter bots in 2017, when Liberate Science was only a side project. First we launched the PsyArxiv bot. Later, we launched bots for the MetaArxiv (2020) and EdArxiv (2021) preprint servers. Six years in, we are shutting down these Twitter bots. You may have already noticed they are no longer posting any new preprints since February 13th (previously 9th). There are several things that motivate us to stop the preprint bots’ operations. It includes the exodus from Twitter overall; it includes the recent announcement that Twitter API access is no longer free. It includes that the community has taken it upon itself to offer replacement bots on Mastodon.?? We offered preprint bots for free all these years, but that does not mean it was free to run this. We had to run a custom RSS feed service (based on Jeff Spies’ osfpreprints-feed; run on Glitch for $99/year). Automating a bot is free and easy if there is relatively little volume. Especially for PsyArxiv, the amount of preprints grew so rapidly that we had to upgrade our automation and costs went up to ~$600 per year (using Zapier). This is also why the 1,500 free post limit proves too uncertain in the long run….”
“There’s little reason to blindly trust organizations, especially in these times of mass inequality. We recognize that Liberate Science is new—we want to earn your trust as we work on projects like Hypergraph. Supporting memberships are about building community and building trust.
One way we aim to build trust is by reinforcing that we won’t sell out. Liberate Science is not owned by venture capitalists or other third-parties, and we want to keep it that way. Ownership will remain with the people working on Liberate Science.
To that end, we will sign contracts with each supporting member that puts in writing that we will not sell or give any shares to third-parties. The more people sign up for supporting memberships, the bigger the lock-in.
We don’t want to be the next Mendeley.
Another way we aim to build trust is by giving supporting members the tools to hold us accountable. As a supporting member, you get to be part of our Assemblies, where we share information about the business and where we’re headed. You can request information, get to share your voice, and be part of the journey to liberate science. We want to co-create with you, not create for you.
We don’t want to be the next Elsevier….”