Bluesky for scientists and academics

Paper threads, conference weeks, figures with alt text, and the feeds where your field reads. The best hour across three time zones is measured, not guessed.

Updated 30 September 2026

Why academics are on Bluesky

Because whole fields moved together and rebuilt what they had: custom feeds for a discipline, sometimes for a single subfield, built by researchers in it; starter packs of a department or a conference; and a feed that is chronological, so a paper posted on Tuesday is seen by the people who follow you on Tuesday. Nobody needs to game a ranking. Plain, specific posts about the work do well.

Setting up

• Your name as the handle, or your institution's domain if it offers handles: @yourname.university.ac.uk is a verified handle in itself.
• A bio that names the field, the institution and the current question, in words a colleague in a neighbouring field would recognise.
• A pinned post with the latest paper or preprint.
• The feeds for your field, and the starter packs for your subfield and your department. Ask into them; make one for a conference session or a reading group. The starter packs guide covers how.

What to post

The paper, as a thread: the finding in one line first, because a thread is found by its first post; then the question, the method in one post, the key figure with alt text, what it does not show, and the link to the preprint or the DOI. Write it as one long post and the Planner splits it where you put a line of three dashes, with the tags moved to the first post. The alt text on a figure matters more here than anywhere: describe the axes, the trend and the one thing the reader should see. "Line chart: reaction time falls with practice for both groups, faster for the trained group after day three" is alt text; "Figure 2" is not.

Between papers: the null result and why it is worth knowing; the question a student asked that you could not answer; the paper from another field that changed your mind; a photo from the field site or the bench with a line about what is going on. Posting the same paper again a month later, to the people who followed you since, is fine, and on a paid plan the Planner does that on its own, spaced out.

Conference weeks

A conference is a campaign: the talk's time and room the day before, the one-slide summary at the talk's hour, the poster with alt text, the thread afterwards for people who were not there, and the thank-yous. The Planner groups those, schedules them while you are in sessions, and reports on the week afterwards. The conference hashtag goes on the first post of each.

When to post, across time zones

A field's followers sit in several time zones, and the hour that reaches the most of them is not obvious. Each of your posts' first day is counted against the hour it went out, on your own clock, so the hour is measured from your own followers rather than assumed. A paper thread posted at nine in London may be doing its work at four in California, or not; the figures say. The best time to post guide explains the measurement.

Hashtags and feeds

One or two on the first post: the field's tag that its feeds read, and the conference tag during the week. Many field feeds are built on a tag or a keyword list, so a post without the tag is a post the feed does not carry. Updrift's hashtag table shows which of yours beat your usual. The hashtags guide covers how feeds pick them up.

Tracking free

For one account on the Free plan: followers by the hour, each post's first day, which paper thread brought the most followers and who reposted it, the top line of What works, and a link page on updrift.link for the lab, the papers and the preprints with a click count per link. A recap each morning. Nothing is posted or liked on your behalf on Free; it reads the figures and that is all. The writers' page covers the neighbouring craft of the thread.

What a paid plan adds

• Duo: the Planner with paper threads split properly, four figures with alt text per post, a conference as a campaign with a report, your best threads back on their own, and the Inbox answered in place.
• Studio: five accounts for a lab or a department, a Writer and an Approver for the lab account, and a term loaded from a CSV.
• Every paid plan is 7 days free with a card; Duo is £7 a month for two accounts and the Planner, Studio £12 for five and a team. All the plans.