We think Open Research has a big part to play in improving research cultures at our universities, so we were very interested in this piece, co-authored by Aberdeen's own Ben Tatler, on the REF PCE pause. A lot of food for thought

Welcome back! It's the start of a brand new term here at University of Aberdeen! What's your favourite part of a new term? Cracking open a brand new notebook? Meeting a whole new crop of students? A new year's Carve Your PhD entries to look forward to 😜 (abdn.site/phD ). It's all starting! 🍂 🍁 👩‍🎓 🎃

We are just days away from a new batch of Freshers arriving on campus, so for one final #BackToSchool post, we'd like to share this extremely comprehensive guide from colleagues in Canada on making your lectures and labs accessible for a wide variety of disabilities and differences.

Continuing our #BackToSchool series (Only six more days to Welcome Week!), we'd like to share this excellent guide from @ucdlibrary.bsky.social on using #OpenAccessBooks and #OERs in teaching libguides.ucd.ie/openaccess/e...

Only a few days left to apply for this funding! One grant supports historians of all stages engaging in Open Research

For today's #BackToSchool post, we're focused on PIs. For a lot of PGRs, the culture in their lab has the biggest impact on their experience of study and career trajectory. PIs who nurture a positive lab culture make a huge difference! Read more on how here: wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/9-341

Continuing our series of #BackToSchool resources: @forrt.bsky.social have many excellent resources on teaching and mentoring students in Open Research practices, including easy to incorporate materials, assessments, and lessons. Check some of them out here: forrt.org/adopting/

To start: Have you visited Portal yet? This new resources from the graduate school directs you to all sorts of resources and can be filtered by your career stage, role, or topic. Check out the Portal for PGR supervisors, for instance: abdn.site/PGRP

As summer winds down (even if it doesn't feel like it yet), we're looking forward to the start of a new term. Over the next month, we'll be sharing some resources to get prepared for a new term, resources for preparing courses and supervising PGRS or mentoring new researchers.

We're waving goodbye to the Tall Ships this morning, but we've enjoyed them while they were here. Did you know data from sailing races like this one can advance ocean and climate research in a number of ways? abdn.site/TSOR As always, contact us to learn more about sharing your data

Tall Ships Races are finally here starting tomorrow! When you're out at the festivities, don't forget to check out the amazing public engagement work our researchers! A list of events and activities can be found here abdn.site/TSR25

@aaas.org recently published a survey of Researcher's Understanding of Open Licenses, finding only half of researchers consider themselves familiar with open licenses abdn.site/OLSR Remember we're always happy to answer your licensing questions, and have an explainer on our website abdn.site/CC

If you use #DataVisualisation in your work, we'd really recommend reading this excellent guidance from the House of Commons Library on designing effective charts. It's freely accessible and reusable under the #OpenParlimentLicense so you can teach with it as well

One of our @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social lecturer's recently had an article in Nature, and published a research briefing to go along with. www.nature.com/articles/d41... These plain language summaries can help expand the impact of your research by making it understandable to a wider audience

Summer holidays are starting for kids in Aberdeen City schools🏄 If you want some ideas for fun, engaging activities you can do with your kids to get them interested in science and nature, @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social‬ has you covered:

Happy Canada Day to all our Canadian friends! As you can see from our Pure collaborators maps, UoA researcher love working with Canadian colleagues, and even have collaborators in the Yukon territory. Of course the small province we've collaborated with most is Nova Scotia 😉 abdn.elsevierpure.com

Pride month finishes after this weekend, but we're always proud to support LGBT+ researchers and research in Queer Studies! 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ If you're an LGBT+ researcher here are some networks you can join to support you in your career! 🧵

Today @sparcopen.bsky.social announced the theme for this year's Open Access Week! We've already got ideas cooking for this one! if you're a researcher, what are your biggest concerns when it comes to the ownership of your work? How do they impact your decision to publish open access?

We're excited to announce the publication of our second Open Access book funded with UKRI funding. Narrative Objects, by UoA authors Tatiana Argounova-Low and Alison K. Brown, explores how museum objects intersect with decolonisation and cultural revival doi.org/10.4324/9780...

Did you know our lovely repository, AURA, also contains whole books and chapters? It's not just for journal articles, you can find all sorts of scholarly writing and research on AURA. Here's some fun stats on our most popular books and chapters, and who reads them aura.abdn.ac.uk

Do you have an idea for an event, project, or other activity promoting open access in your area? Open Library of the Humanities has funding awards that can help make it possible. Apply today!

We're thrilled about this partnership and hope it will make it easier for our researchers to publish all their books (even textbooks!) open access!

Did you know that in addition to being Pride, June is also Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller History Month #GTRHM25? Our friends at the Elphinstone Institute have done a lot of work with the Traveller community of NE Scotland sent us their archive of Traveller storyteller Stanley Robinson abdn.site/GTRHM

Happy #PrideMonth from all of us at UoA Collections! Here's a pride flag made from images of our collection to celebrate! Find out where the colours come from in the thread below:

Happy Pride month! It's time to celebrate LGBT+ members of our communities, push for equal rights, and celebrate queer joy! Of course nothing makes us more joyful than openly access datasets with beautiful visualisations, so please check out Our World in Data's LGBT+ Rights section abdn.site/6QfhY

Do you work with data? Consider completing @figshare.com 's annual survey and help improve the state of data sharing in academic research! springernature.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

We are pleased to share that the University of Aberdeen has renewed their membership for @openingthefuture.bsky.social! Find out more and how to join the equitable #OA books initiative here: lup.openingthefuture.net @openresearchuoa.bsky.social @aberdeenunilib.bsky.social @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social

Happy World Goth Day! Remember there's nothing more counter-cultural than fighting for a more equitable and open scholarly publishing landscape. So here's a black cat in front of Slains Castle telling you to do your part for Open Research on our webpages! www.abdn.ac.uk/library/open...

We're very pleased to announce that we are renewing our @openingthefuture.bsky.social supporter membership for @livunipress.bsky.social in the modern language series for Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Studies! Supporting the shift to alternative funding for OA! lup.openingthefuture.net/about/

There's only a few hours left in the 2024-2025 term! (Not that we're counting down), so wishing everyone some much needed rest and, if the forecast is to be believed, the very real possibility of fun in the sun. See you on the beach!

We're pleased to announce the release of the latest issue of the Journal of Scottish Thought, available #OpenAccess at jst.aberdeenunipress.org/issue/37/info/ This issue focuses on the Scottish Presbyterian minister and thinker, and American Founding Father, John Witherspoon

It's Global Accessibility Awareness Day, making it a good time to reflect on what you can do to improve accessibility in your digital presence. An easy first step is to make sure you're using alt text in your posts. Here's a great guide to get you started: webaim.org/techniques/a... #GAAD

It's #NationalLimerickDay, so we've written a verse about open access (some rhymes are a little more slant): There once were some scholars exploited they wrote and they edited for no pence They thought to themselves why should we work like hell Just so publishers can get richer than Croesus?

It's Maternal Mental Health Week from 5-11 May and the @mmhalliance.bsky.social has just launched an Information Centre for parents on maternal mental health maternalmentalhealthalliance.org/about-matern... #MMHW2025 This is a great resource and example of good #ScienceCommunication

Are you working on a book and wondering about publishing it Open Access? Check out this new resource from Copim to learn more about how. Sections 2 & 3 are especially valuable for authors and researchers

Exams start tomorrow, so we want to wish all our students (and invigilators!) best of luck! If you're stressed, check out a recent podcast from our wellbeing team on combating exam stress, or head over to the wellness corner on floor 2 of SDRL for more tips

It's #WorldImmunisationWeek, a celebration of one of humanity's greatest achievements One example: recent research contributed to by UoA researchers shows that there have been no cases of cervical cancer or it's precursors among women in Scotland vaccinated against HPV Read more here abdn.site/Yr4ee

Tomorrow at sunset the 8-day Jewish festival of Passover begins, so we'd like to wish a Happy Passover/Chag Pesach Sameach to all who are celebrating! Check out the NYPL's excellent online exhibition on Passover: abdn.site/pso A wonderful and diverse collection and great example of #OpenCulture

It's #NationalUnicornDay! Searching our repository yielded a fascinating #OpenAccess article about how mystical creatures, including unicorns, are used to create #ScotlandTheBrand as a tourism commodity: abdn.elsevierpure.com/en/publicati...

There are more and more excellent, high quality scholarly books being published Open Access every day, but how can you find them and use them in your teaching and research? Join us for our next ExplORe session to learn more about using OA books. Sign up on Coursebooking abdn.site/OAbook

We love to see our authors publishing great work with our friends at @openlibhums.bsky.social ! Creating a more open scholarly publishing landscape with #DiamondOA

Today is #WorldAutismAwarenessDay, so we want to share some resources for autistic researchers and those supervising potentially neurodivergent researchers. Check out this great #OpenAccess guide by @helogan.bsky.social to make your research group more inclusive doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Exciting news #openaccess

Great to see our team mates Francesca Soldati and @varinajr.bsky.social sharing their work this week in what looks like a dazzlingly sunny Brighton 😎#UKSG2025

Turns out @scholtom.bsky.social is an influencer ... in slide design Following his presentation at last year's event, #cats #pets featuring heavily in the #UKSG2025 presentation about #rightsretention at @aberdeenunilib.bsky.social

Apologies, this should have been sent out this Sunday evening. We stand by the sentiment, and wish you a happy Eid, we just don't want anyone to be horribly misinformed about the date of Eid (which will start either the 30th or 31st depending on the sighting of the crescent moon)

Eid Mubarak, to those celebrating! Whether it begins tonight to tomorrow, we wish you a joyous holiday, and hope you had a meaningful Ramadan!

I spy our own @lesleyjmacrae.bsky.social in the second row! Lesley co-presented a workshop on Librarians as Researchers yesterday, and we hope she and University Librarian @simonjbains.bsky.social are having a great time at #RLUK25!

Are you a student looking to publish for the first time, or do you support students and would like a good reference to start them off with? Read our open research guide to Undergraduate publishing, now on the blog! abdn.site/qaXwk

The Open Access requirements for the REF 2029 are finally here! Come along to our ExplORe Session next week on Wednesday, 26 March at 2PM on Teams to learn everything you'll need to know to make sure your work is REF-eligible. Sign up on Course booking through the link below abdn.site/REF29