Galaxy Quest - a perfect movie, just a wonderful love letter to actors, sci-fi, Star Trek in particular, and to fandom - really deserves a proper physical release with decent extras. Think Weaver's right that releasing a R-rated cut would be fun, too.

An annual tradition: sharing, in no particular order, our 10 most-read Reader articles of the year. Together, they drew more than half a million reads. Huge congrats to all the authors!

‘I can’t forget the horror’: a young mother on giving birth twice during the Gaza war

Kudos to the @acm.org : "Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will be made open access." dl.acm.org/openaccess #CS #ComputerScience #OpenAccess #ScholComm

See MORE about Katina Rogers's forthcoming punctum book, UNEXPECTED FLOURISHING: Growth from Decay in the Mycelial University here: punctumbooks.com/titles/unexp...

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

On the last day before break our OA community gave to us: a wonderful community! Thanks to everyone who participates in this endeavour of trying to make the world of research dissemination more open, fair, equitable, and human-centered. It isn't always easy, but it's always better in community🥰

Predictably, publishers have made partnerships with AI companies to handle production. And even more predictably, it's not going well AT ALL. You can and should choose a publisher based on their operational ethics. @leverpress.bsky.social is platinum OA, library-funded, and we *do not* use AI.

Made up publications, citations that don’t exist in papers written with AI, potential damage to careers through false attribution. It is like watching a slow motion car crash. Continued use of citations in League Tables looks… inadvisable (insert alternative word of your choice)

It's a big milestone for free knowledge! 🎉 The Wikimedia Foundation spoke at the UN General Assembly Hall, representing Wikipedia’s volunteer community. We showed that the future of the internet and sustainable development depend on protecting public spaces online and the people who build them.

Today is International Migrants Day. ❤️ Browse our books on migration and get a taster of our publishing in War and Migration in our free Bristol University Press Digital collection. #InternationalMigrantsDay #MigrationMatters #HumanRights https://ow.ly/rN4a50XBiAR

Just wonderful news. The intentions of the EUDR are good, but it would never have worked for books. www.thebookseller.com/news/eu-parl...

Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)? Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"

A THREAD, which I am calling 'Some Of The Many Reasons Lichen And Moss Are Fucking Brilliant'. 1. They make public seating super comfy. bsky.app/profile/dj-a...

On the 3rd day before break the OA community gave to us: a brand new draft policy for open data from @ukri.org ! This policy will help support researchers making their data open and incorporating FAIR principles into their data management!

On the 4th day before break the OA community gave to us: the @ukri.org Open Access Fund for Books! This funding has dramatically improved many author's ability to publish their books open access. At UoA we've had 2 books and one chapter published through this funding!

Surges in Party Membership: The SNP and Scottish Greens after doi.org/10.4324/9780... Narrative Objects: Museums, the Sakha Summer Festival, and Cultural Revival in Siberia doi.org/10.4324/9780... On encountering and holding Reindeer in the Convivial North: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-...

On the 5th day before break the OA community gave to us: the launch of the @morphss.bsky.social project! MORPHSS is working to push forward open research in the humanities and social sciences by understanding the unique needs of that community, and we can't wait to see what they accomplish!

On the 2nd day before break the OA community gave to us: our new SciFree Journal Search Tool! This makes it much easier for authors to figure out which journals they can publish in at no cost, even if they don't have funding. Try it out now!

This is what a statesman and President writes

Digital content is never neutral with respect to different bodies & modes of reading, & attending to its form is essential to making scholarship genuinely open. READ more about punctum's new Accessibility Roadmap for making our books & website more accessible for all readers: tinyurl.com/yapbh9ej

We loved, loved, loved having this competition!! And especially loved the way that 1) you made it all open so we could copy you (and feel good about it) and 2) the way that @ljmudoctoral.bsky.social researchers embraced their pumpkin artistry!

On the 8th day before break, the Open Access community in 2025 gave to us: the launch of Open Journals Collective! 🎉 With the mission of expanding community funded open access journals @ojcollective.bsky.social is an important project for future of scholarly publishing www.openjournalscollective.org

For Day 9 we see: The Copim Compass! This comprehensive and continuously updated guide from our friends @copim.bsky.social provides resources for anyone wanting to get involved in Open Access book production be you a: author, publisher, editor, software designer or library abdn.site/vNQ3U

On the 6th day before break the OA community gave to us: the sheer joy of seeing our 'Carve your PhD contest spread to new institutions! We were thrilled to see all the contestants (and glorious champion) from @ljmuresearch.bsky.social and hope to see even more get in on the fun next year!

Fake DOI-like strings are increasingly common. Learn how to check whether a DOI is valid, how prefixes work, and more. https://tinyurl.com/599yk8yv #metadata #research #funders #librarians #community

Dear Marco Rubio: Times New Roman & other serif fonts did not originate in ancient Rome: did you forget about the invention of the printing press in the 1500s? Times New Roman dates to 1931, gives a nod to Renaissance Italian typography & is BRITISH & MODERN. 🤡🤡🤡 tinyurl.com/57brn595

I wish a notice like this wasn't necessary. www.icrc.org/en/article/i...

Kitsune no Yomeiri: The day that foxes have their wedding ceremony Sanbaine: A sudden evening storm that occurs so quickly, one has no time to make even three bundles of rice 20 Japanese Words for Rain: thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/20-japanese-...

I spend so much time verifying everything now from art to cited sources to photos to historical references to citations to quotes to legal and medical information that it's really hard to fathom how much work AI has collectively added to the world, not reduced

The memory of the mass femicide at Polytechnique is still painful. Today marks the 36th anniversary of the Montreal massacre, where 14 women — students at Université de Montréal’s École Polytechnique — lost their lives in a mass shooting motivated by misogyny. #December6

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

Flytipping is bad (even if a dinosaur does it) www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

What's behind door No.2 of the The EightyPercentMental advent calendar? ❄️🌲⛄🎁🧑🏿‍🎄 A little self-compassion. Emotions are neither good nor bad. They're just... you know... there.

Yesterday we celebrated the official launch of our final print-only book, The Seven Incorporated Trades of Aberdeen, in their historic Trinity Hall. This epic work charts the history of the 7 Trades, and Aberdeen itself, from Medieval origins to present. Pick up a copy here abdn.site/7Trade

The staff at Trinity Hall were kind enough to provide us with some better images from the launch. Our wonderful authors Dr. Alex Sutherland and Graeme Nichol are in the back with current Deacon Convenor of the 7 Incorporated Trades, Ian Mackintosh, and Lord Provost of Aberdeen David Cameron in front

🎁This year’s top gift for researchers: A tool that tells UoA researchers exactly which journals they can publish OA in through our institutional publisher agreements. SciFree Journal Search—saving time and APCs www.abdn.ac.uk/library/open...

Did you know? In the Victorian era, Ignaz Semmelweis, a physician, discovered that the simple act of washing one’s hands could save women from dying in childbirth. He worked in the maternity ward, where mothers were dying of childbed fever at horrifying rates. #Victorian #history

Every case study like this should be balanced by one such as a 15-year-old with suicidal ideation unable to receive any help because CAMHS has been cut to virtual non-existence.

Reading letters from the Princess Liselotte of Palantine, the German sister-in-law of Louis XIV, and it's wild because she had this super informal writing style that almost sounds like modern texts Like at one point she goes "wish to god my son didn't love holding chunks of bread like a peasant"

This raises a very real question about how we talk about AI. To call this slop is to downplay the fact that it was published in an esteemed journal. We used to call such things fraud, but this suggests the publisher is innocent. AI has changed the terms of debate. We urgently need new norms.

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

I have and it’s going to be available to download soon.

Follow if you agree!

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women, a day of education, activism, mourning, and solidarity with other survivors. 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical or sexuaI violence from an intimate partner, today and all days we must work to help change this

Oops. Ooooooooooooops. I do hope that nobody has been given or denied a job/promotion based on their SpringerNature citation counts in the past 15 years. arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01675 h/t @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social

If you are in Scotland, come see me talk about digital interpretation work at NMAAHC! Also, come see if my looks have changed from this, my first ever headshot (circa...9 years ago?) or if the portrait in my attic is doing its job

Former Finnish PM Sanna Marin put it bluntly: “To end the conflict, Russia must leave Ukrainian territory.” Just one point. Nothing more to discuss.

This—on my former university, department, and advisor—is harrowing but required reading for all social psychologists. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...