December 17, 2025 — Scientific Publishing’s Double Bubble

The DISRUPTED SCIENCE Podcast · Dec 17, 2025 · 1h

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…