All entries for Thursday 16 November 2023

November 16, 2023

Exchanges – Now Available on Bluesky

Writing about web page https://bsky.app/profile/exchangesjournal.bsky.social

For some years now, well actually since I took over running the journal in early 2018, we've had a fairly active Twitter/X account. We use this quite heavily to promote calls for papers and other news from the journal, and I'm pleased to say we have built up a good following. It’s unlikely you missed in recent news coverage how much Twitter/X's new owner has rather...reduced the site in many people's eyes, and there's an increased possibility these days that everything will eventually disappear behind a paywall.

Now, given the open access principles that Exchanges was founded and runs on, this really wouldn't be something we'd be too keen to remain associated. Which is why I've been hoping for some months to start running a new microblogging account on the 'Founded by Former Twitter Chiefs' Bluesky platform. This is still in its early days, and has a slowly growing community. Unlike Mastodon, which seems to have strongly attracted the more tech-savvy user community, Bluesky seems to be a place where more and more academics are hanging out. Hence, getting an account here as an alternative to Twitter/X seemed a no-brainer.

Problem being, you only can get an account currently with an invite code via a lengthy waiting list, or alternatively via a friend/colleague already on the platform providing an invite code. Luckily, I got a personal account on there a month ago, and with my first provided invite code this week, I welcomed @ExchangesJournal.bsky.social into the digital world.[1]

For the time being I'll be running the Twitter/X and Bluesky accounts in parallel, but I suspect as Bluesky grows and Twitter/X (probably) tailspins, I'll be favouring the latter option all the more.

So, if you're on Bluesky - come and follow us for all your regular updates on the journal and social chat about publishing. Of course, if you're not on there, you can still, for now, follow us over on Twitter/X!

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Endnotes

[1] or just plain old @ExchangesJournal, to give the short version of our new handle.