Rick Anderson, the University Librarian at Brigham Young University (BYU), joins us today. Rick serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards and is a regular contributor to the Scholarly Kitchen. He has served as president of NASIG and SSP, groups that span from libraries to publishers

• Also, he and Kent are not related, even if people often misattribute things between them.

Late last year, Rick wrote a two-part contemplation (Part 1 and Part 2) of what the OA movement might have achieved and where things might reasonably go from here, emphasizing that a range of approaches might have to be embraced so we can focus on more central issues.

Rick has also written three books, including Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Our wide-ranging discussion touches on how libraries first inspired Rick, his career journey from BYU and back, and his role in shaping discussions around OA through analysis.

We finish with “Discoveries of the Week.”

• Joy’s Discovery of the Week: https://youtu.be/zOd01sLlDj4?si=L6cCE09o-K7c-g1A

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To close out 2025, we’ve decided to focus on a few related topics — incentives, norms, rules, and the customer you choose. Scientific and scholarly publishing has embraced misaligned incentives by making information producers the primary customers, causing the norms and rules of the game to warp and even break.

• What might happen if we reorient ourselves around information consumers?
• What norms might be more readily embraced?
• What rules might be reestablished?
• Would it be a better game?

A recent proposal in Nature from Jennifer Byrne, a cancer researcher at the University of Sydney, would require publishers to certify as ISO-9001 organizations, with her justifications fitting with our arguments quite well:

• “Organizations certified as ISO-9001-compliant must demonstrate operations that are customer-focused, committed to continual improvement and underpinned by systematic management approaches and evidence-based decision-making.”
• “Journals and publishers are currently incentivized to meet authors’ expectations — but ISO 9001 compliance means also prioritizing the needs of readers.”

Other links for the episode:

• Cloud Dancer Dogs: https://www.latimes.com/companion-animals/dogs/breeds/story/pantone-2026-cloud-dancer-white-dog-breeds
• “HardFork” interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/podcasts/hardfork-ai-science.html
• Tristan Harris interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-dilemma-with-tristan-harris/id1498802610?i=1000740817066

This also marks our 32nd episode since launching the “Disrupted Science” podcast in June — a surprising achievement as according to Riverside 44% of podcasts started don’t make it past three episodes, and only 8% make it past 10 episodes.

Maybe we’re just stubborn enough to make this work. We were stubborn enough to write a book, after all.

• We were also interviewed last week by Darrell Gunter for WSOU 98.5FM at Seton Hall.
• • Maybe we also like to talk . . .

We’ve had tremendous guests as we’ve gotten underway, and look forward to some of them returning next year in addition to some great new guests already being lined up.

We also have our final “Discoveries of the Week” and some book updates to share.

Thanks for listening, and for all your support.

Happy New Year!

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For a variety of reasons we explore in the podcast, the OA bubble is not arriving in the AI era as something as all-encompassing or healthy as imagined — in fact, it appears to be deflating and is certainly dirtier than expected. It also does not possess sufficient surface tension to repel elements of the AI bubble from mixing in — OA papers with OA citations and text are often found, and many more are suspected to exist throughout preprint servers, predatory publishers, and opportunistic Gold OA publishers.

The increasingly conjoined bubbles may share a fate in some manner, one we speculate about.

There are also some common business aspects — funding that dries up, circular financing operations, and bad actors aplenty.

Will both bubbles pop in spectacular fashion? Will they slowly deflate? Will one pop, leaving the other unharmed? Or are there another scenarios?

In any event, both bubbles appear incongruous with scientific discovery.

Where do we go from here?

We finish with our “Discoveries of the Week.”

• Article on the New York Times’ “Connections” game.

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