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Alastair Dunning

@alastairdunning.bsky.social
735 followers 418 following 190 posts

Head of Research Services, Delft Uni Library 🇳🇱 | Open Science 🔭 | Technology 💾 | Digital Culture and Humanities 🎨

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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Which Beatles' songs are most common in science? "The most frequently referenced song titles—‘The Long and Winding Road’, ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’—are themselves apt metaphors for the scientific process" doi.org/10.1371/jour... By Gabriel Budel et al
doi.org
How science gets by with a little help from the Beatles: Detecting cultural wordplay in scientific literature using large language models
The Beatles’ cultural influence reaches well beyond music into television, fashion, and global media. As we show, it reaches into scientific publishing too. This study documents how often Beatles song...
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Can Big Tech do FAIR Data? Data company Palantir has apparently struggled to make UK patient data interoperable and reusable availableonline.wordpress.com/2026/08/29/c...
availableonline.wordpress.com
Can Big Tech do FAIR data?
“The ultimate goal of FAIR is to optimise the reuse of data… However, data are often locked in silos, and even when they are accessible, they are often not interoperable because they us…
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The Waterslide of Abstract Art, availableonline.wordpress.com/2026/08/21/t...
availableonline.wordpress.com
The Waterside of Abstract Art
The Waterside of Abstract Art is a large wall affixed piece of art by Priscilla Fernandes. In the framework of a timeline between the development of leisure activities in the 20th century and the d…
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Reposted by Alastair Dunning
DANS @dans-knaw-nwo.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Do you know a researcher or research team that makes research data (and if apl. accompanying software) FAIR in an outstanding way? Nominations for the RDNL Dutch Data Prize 2026 are now open. Winners receive €3,500 to further improve the FAIRness of their research data. Nominate now: edu.nl/p6kex
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Simple binaries of open access vs closed paywall are useless. The case of Open Peer Review. availableonline.wordpress.com/2026/06/07/i...
availableonline.wordpress.com
It’s not just open vs closed.
Open access started with a simple premise: journal articles published online should be freely available to all. No paywalls, no barriers. A clear distinction between science being accessible to any…
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
What do Elsevier, Springer and other big publishers say about the use of licenced ebook in generative AI From ETH Zurich university (@ethz.ch) unlimited.ethz.ch/spaces/WWE/p... (in German, but translatable :)
unlimited.ethz.ch
Künstliche Intelligenz: Verwendung von lizenzierten Volltexten in generativen KI-Tools - Medien nutzen, bestellen - Confluence
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Bookmarking: gptzero.me "GPTZero detects AI content from ChatGPT, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, and checks writing quality to make every word worth reading." 99% accuracy (according to website)
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Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
THIRD SPACE: the people who work in research but not credited www.nature.com/articles/d41... I agree - my 2022 coauthored similar argument in Nature Careers "Time to re-think the divide between academic and support staff" www.nature.com/articles/d41... OA - repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/ob...
nature.com
How hidden contributions power modern research
The people who work behind the scenes to keep research moving say that there should be more recognition for their roles.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
There's much bogus hype about vibe coding; so it's good to read a cool headed analysis by Paul Taylor in @lrb.co.uk But he remains convinced: "it is possible​ that the first profession to be replaced by artificial intelligence will be that of computer programmer." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Paul Taylor · Diary: Ask Claude
Creating software using AI feels like pure metacognition: most of your time is spent worrying about whether you’ve...
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Reposted by Alastair Dunning
Daniel Bangert @danielbangert.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
📢 We're hiring! Join our team at @4turesearchdata.bsky.social to help make research more accessible, reusable, and impactful for science and society. We have two vacancies open: 👉 Data Curator 👉 Community and Partnerships Manager Apply by 1 June 2026! community.data.4tu.nl/2026/05/08/j...
community.data.4tu.nl
Join Our Team at 4TU.ResearchData
At 4TU.ResearchData, we work at the intersection of open science, FAIR data, research software, and digital research infrastructure. Together with researchers, universities, and international partn…
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Reposted by Alastair Dunning
Open Science NL @opensciencenl.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Are you working on open science and eager to share your work with the wider community, engage in dialogue, or spark new collaborations? Mark your calendar: the call for contributions to the 2026 Open Science Festival will open late May. 💡https://opensciencefestival.nl/pre-announcement-2026
National Open Science Festival, 14 October 2026, TU Delft
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
The organisations that make the best use of AI will be the organisations that take the most care of their data and information wp.me/p44ML-lP
wp.me
Which organisations will make the best use of AI?
The organisations that make the best use of AI will be the organisations that take the most care of their data and information. The contemporary blossoming of AI agents such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Cla…
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Doris Leading and Sudden Collapse availableonline.wordpress.com/2026/03/20/h...
availableonline.wordpress.com
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Doris Lessing, and Sudden Collapse
Hans-Ulrich Obrist is a very cheerful namedropper. En vogue artists and thinkers flow off the page of Ways of Curating (link) like so many blooms merrily plucked from the garden of ideas. He’…
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
A persuasive argument by Dave Hansen that libraries should not resort to old bad habits about restricting access to collections in the face of AI. Rather they need to work together www.authorsalliance.org/2026/03/16/l...
linkedin.com
Library and Archives 101: AI and the False Promise of Control
This is the first in a series of essays about the choices that knowledge institutions face as AI reshapes how their collections and resources are used. The people on various sides of these debates …
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
How to we ensure that science done with AI is reproducible? @4TU.ResearchData has two jobs at TU Delft on this topic FAIR for AI Project Coordinator - careers.tudelft.nl/job/Delft-FA... Software Engineer (Open Science / Open Source) - careers.tudelft.nl/job/Delft-So...
careers.tudelft.nl
FAIR for AI Project Coordinator
FAIR for AI Project Coordinator
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Does switching your mobile phone to grayscale help with reducing smartphone engagement? Yes, apparently. doi.org/10.1177/2050...
doi.org
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Introducing the ORI Monitoring Framework: a starting point for monitoring the Dutch Open Research Information landscape (and other countries!) by @msphelps.bsky.social and @mauricev.bsky.social communities.surf.nl/en/open-rese...
communities.surf.nl
Introducing the ORI Monitoring Framework: a starting point for monitoring the Dutch Open Research Information landscape
How complete, accurate and open is the research information we rely on every day? A new report from the PID-to-Portal project introduces the ORI Monitoring
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
The National Library of the Netherlands will be moving to a temporary location in The Hague for five years. After renovation, it aims to be back its original building near the main city station by 2033 www.kb.nl/nieuws/kb-na...
kb.nl
KB nationale bibliotheek tijdelijk naar Berlagehuis Den Haag
In 2029 verhuist de KB tijdelijk naar het Berlagehuis in Den Haag. Op de huidige plek bouwen wij dan een vernieuwd publieksgebouw.
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Reposted by Alastair Dunning
OpenAIRE @openaire.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Turn your browser into a powerful research workstation. With the #EOSCEUNode #InteractiveNotebooks service, you can write code (#Python, R), add notes, and create plots, all in one reproducible document. Built on #Jupyter for #OpenScience. 🔗 go.egi.eu/Vkk7Y #EOSC #OpenScience
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
tud-jb-os.github.io/book/blog/
tud-jb-os.github.io
Blog - The TUD guide to open publishing with JupyterBook
This is a manual for open publishing with JupyterBook (2) for Delft University of Technology.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
TU Delft Open publishes its 150th open book www.tudelft.nl/en/2026/libr...
tudelft.nl
Milestone for TU Delft OPEN Publishing with the publication of its 150th book
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
SharePoint itself acknowledges that the crazy URLs it generates 'bypass reason'
URL screenshot from Sharepoint
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Oldest rock art in the world discovered, c.67,800 year old stencil in Indonesia www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi - Nature
A hand stencil painted on a cave wall on a small island off the coast of Sulawesi more than 67,800 years ago suggests a very early occupation of Wallacea.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
University contracts with the publisher ACS (American Chemical Society) are proving tricky The Irish consortium could reach no agreement for a read and access deal. irel.ie/acs-readonly...
irel.ie
ACS Read-Only Agreement for 2026 – IReL
IReL is a consortium of Irish research libraries, providing access to licensed e-resources, OA publishing agreements, and open science infrastructure.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Source: The Conversation search.app/m4yVU
search.app
The 5 stages of the ‘enshittification’ of academic publishing
Academic publishing now shows the same decline that has hit social media and online marketplaces.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
From 2018, but a good historical perspective over worries of 'the end of reading'. Reading has always taken many forms; we also need to be attent to the ways that we are actually reading more albright.wellesley.edu/about/blog/4...
albright.wellesley.edu
The End(s) of Reading | Albright Institute
Is reading finally dead?
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Museums, unsurprisingly, defend the authenticity of the objects in their collections But the Met in New York is using AI to imagine the great quantity of works that have been lost to time, "imagining a third thing between two known things." www.metmuseum.org/perspectives...
metmuseum.org
How Artificial Intelligence Sees Art History - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
For one group of artists and technologists, AI can help us view The Met’s collection in new—or possibly ancient—ways.
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Reposted by Alastair Dunning
Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Chat with Epstein Files chatwithepstein.com
chatwithepstein.com
ChatWithEpstein
AI-powered exploration of declassified Epstein documents and court records.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
@proton.me, a European alternative to US offerings from Google and Microsoft, has now added a spreadsheet option alongside the word processing tool It will take time to catch up with all the functionality that the established competitors offer, but it's a solid start proton.me/blog/sheets-...
proton.me
Introducing Proton Sheets: Secure spreadsheets for business | Proton
Proton Drive now includes Proton Sheets, giving you secure, encrypted spreadsheets for safer collaboration, organized data, and aligned teams.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
The @barcelonadori.bsky.social Barcelona Declaration has implications for research libraries: how they harvest, manage, share metadata, and in suppliers and infrastructures they engage with. A quick update on action from TU Delft Library library4research.tudl.tudelft.nl/2025/12/11/u...
library4research.tudl.tudelft.nl
Update on TU Delft Library and Barcelona Declaration – Library4Research
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Great snapshot of the lack of coherent thinking about Brexit from the UK's Daily Telegraph
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
"The underlying code and other parameters [are] freely available to scientists, and it quickly became possible for them to run the software themselves at scale." The success of Google's AI tool is partly due to being accessible to scientists around the world.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
This is an astonishing story. Journal 'Science of the Total Environment' published *10,000 articles a year* Many were bogus. Great summary of why our publication culture needs to be changed.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
With the proliferation of new AI tools, it's difficult to know how to evaluate tools for searching and reviewing scientific literature. Do generic tools (ChatGPT etc) outperform tool specifically based on scientific content? @aarontay.bsky.social is a very useful guide through this new jungle.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
Australian and New Zealand universities in battle of the century' with publisher Elsevier www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
rnz.co.nz
Universities in 'battle of the century' with journal publisher Elsevier
One New Zealand university told its staff all universities in New Zealand and Australia would "lose some degree of access" to the publisher's 1600 titles from the start of next year.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
US immigration officials are worried about the archiving of messages that might later be incriminating for them later on. But they still need to comply with Federal archiving laws And they're creating weird workarounds for this
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
"Training in academic skills will need to be fundamentally reconsidered in an era of AI." "Data analysis and literature synthesis, might need to take a back seat so that researchers can focus on critical evaluation of AI-generated code and analyses"
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
The chief executive of the British Library has resigned less than a year into her job The current strike by some staff has, I guess, a lot to with it www.pcs.org.uk/news-events/...
pcs.org.uk
British Library chief executive quits midway through PCS strike
The British Library has been thrown into further turmoil midway through a two-week PCS strike with the resignation of its chief executive Rebecca Lawrence.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
"We need to be bolder: It is our duty to ensure library collections remain open to the public in a form that empowers 21st-century readers. If our intellectual heritage gets enclosed in proprietary tools, we will find ourselves making the same bad bargain we made with scientific publishers"
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative The court will move its internal work environment to Open Desk, a German-developed open source software www.euractiv.com/news/interna...
euractiv.com
International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative | Euractiv
The court will move its internal work environment to Open Desk, a German-developed open source software
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Ophelia has been a popular meme cultural history for a long time it seems www.europeana.eu/en/search?pa... #swifties
europeana.eu
Ophelia - Search
Europeana
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Job: Senior Software Engineer for Open Science - with a focus on our research data repository careers.tudelft.nl/job/Delft-Se...
careers.tudelft.nl
Senior Software Engineer (Open Source, 4TU.ResearchData)
Senior Software Engineer (Open Source, 4TU.ResearchData)
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
Guidance, training and tools for writing research software in the sciences (specifically natural and engineering sciences) Funding by @nwonieuws.bsky.social as part of its Thematic Digital Competence Centres ss-nes.github.io
ss-nes.github.io
SS-NES landing page - SS-NES landing page
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Online Event: Integrating Repositories into the broader Open Science Landscape Thursday 30th October, 4pm
ibi.hu-berlin.de
Virtual Networking Forum: Integration of Institutional Open Access Repositories into the broader Open Science Landscape
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
How much are you spending on collections and publishing? Here's a breakdown of TU Delft's projected collections and publication costs for 2026. (Roughly 7.6m Euros in total) (Thanks to Louise Otting for collating figures)
library-collections.tudl.tudelft.nl
TU Delft Collections and Publishing Costs for 2026 - TU Delft Library collections
Below is collections and publishing budget for TU Delft in 2026 (subject to final approval as part of the overall library budget). The total budget for collections and publishing is €7,615,000, the…
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
What is Ricgraph? Ricgraph, also known as Research in context graph, enables the exploration of researchers, teams, their results, collaborations, skills, projects, and the relations between these items. www.ricgraph.eu/what-is-ricg... Developed by Rik Janssen from University of Utrecht
ricgraph.eu
What is Ricgraph? – Website Ricgraph - Research in context graph
Ricgraph (Research in context graph) enables the exploration of researchers, teams, their results, collaborations, skills, projects, and the relations between these items.
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
DH Benelux will take place in beautiful Maastricht in early June 2026 The call for papers is now open 2026.dhbenelux.org/call-for-pap...
2026.dhbenelux.org
Call for Papers 2026 - DH Benelux 2026
2026 CALL FOR PAPERS SUBMISSIONS, TOPICS & IMPORTANT DATES Storytelling is fundamental to human experience; stories help us make sense of the world, preserve and narrate our heritage, construct identi...
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Great to see Barcelona Declaration team tackling openness of publication metadata Lack of clarity in this area has really hampered efficient sharing and discovery
oa2020.org
Barcelona Declaration and OA2020 Launch Joint Task Force on Negotiating Openness of Publication Metadata – OA2020
We are excited to announce the launch of a Joint Task Force on Negotiating Openness of Publication Metadata, established in partnership between the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information…
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Advocacy Kit for Open Science And EU project (Skills4EOSC) has created an Advocacy Kit to empowers users to promote Open Science skills to policymakers and funders to help foster steady policy support.
skills4eosc.eu
Advocacy Kit
Skills4EOSC ‘Skills for the European Open Science commons: creating a training ecosystem for Open and FAIR science’ is funded by the European Commission Horizon Europe programme (GA 101058527)
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Alastair Dunning @alastairdunning.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
@4turesearchdata.bsky.social are piloting Codecheck ✅ This helps verify that the code behind research outputs runs and successfully reproduces the key results from the related publication. data.4tu.nl/info/about-y...
data.4tu.nl
4TU.ResearchData
4TU.ResearchData is an international data repository for science, engineering and design. We offer research dataset curation, sharing, long-term access and preservation services to anyone, anywhere. O...
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