A call for collaborators to experiment with AT Protocol for open research.

Step 1. Find collaborators.

Here we go... 🤞

Yesterday, I posted a thread to my Bluesky account.

In it, I reach out to a few key figures I’ve discovery and connected with through the platform.

My goal was to find collaborators to experiment with AT Protocol and explore new ways for researchers to publish, share, and collaborate directly on the platform.

tl;dr

You can read the full thread above, but in brief, I believe AT Protocol offers a genuinely exciting foundation for the future of scholarly communication and research communities.

The core elements are already in place. Open standards ensure transparency and long-term accessibility, allowing research outputs to remain compatible across systems. Data interoperability makes it possible to connect tools, repositories, and datasets without platform lock-in. Collaboration tools enable open exchange between researchers while maintaining clear attribution. Individual ownership through personal data servers (PDS) gives users full control over their content and identity forever.

Verifiable identities tie authors to their work across platforms, enabling persistent attribution and reputation. Shared lexicons can define publication contexts (publishers, journals, preprints...), new and existing document formats (abstracts, papers, proceedings), even peer reviews themselves, so research artefacts can be discovered, cited, and built upon consistently. Labelers and moderation lists help surface credible work and uphold research integrity. Feeds and Lists provide a way to disseminate findings, and discover new developments, and make new connections in real time.

Publishing in this way could enable researchers to share work transparently and collaboratively—without fear of being scooped or losing rights—while strengthening careers and communities.

Excitement, plus a little trepidation

I always feel a bit conflicted about making posts like this in public—especially when tagging (spamming) folks who have far more experience in these areas than I do.

It's never fun exposing myself to the potential for tumbleweeds, but I’m genuinely drawn to the possibility. And actually the response was pretty positive.

I spent the past 5 years working on a VC-funded platform that aimed to revolutionise academic publishing. Looking back, I can see it was destined to fail because the core driver of that work was to preserve the status quo and extract value for shareholders.

(I'm not against profit, it must come as a reward for a meaningful change for the better)

The upside was spending time with authors, editors, reviewers, integrity investigators, librarians, and funders—learning about their goals and frustrations. Coming from outside academia gave me a different vantage point: I felt I could see the forest for the trees.

The early responses suggest I’m not alone in this thinking. That’s really encouraging—it gives me both confidence and motivation to take this further.

Finding the small ATProto Science community was definitely the most exciting outcome of the day.

ATProto Science

ATProto Science is about using ATProto for science applications, such as publishing, curation, data sharing or social discourse around research.

Now, if I could make one wish 🧞 it's for a little funding to focus on this work properly. Baby steps!

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