Paper Skygest is a personalized research feed that shows posts about papers from accounts in your following network.
Link to Paper Skygest: https://bsky.app/profile/paper-feed.bsky.social/feed/preprintdigest
Some threads explaining what it does and how it works: https://bsky.app/profile/paper-feed.bsky.social/post/3ljztdxos3s2p, https://bsky.app/profile/sjgreenwood.bsky.social/post/3ljztmsma2k2w, and https://bsky.app/profile/nkgarg.bsky.social/post/3lk25s5kuek2z.
We are computational researchers with a background in recommender system design, especially as it relates to things that matter beyond the “engagement optimized” feeds prevalent everywhere else on social media. Questions that interest us include how do we design recommender systems that show diverse content, are fair to posters, enable content discovery, and are personalizeable by users?
As academics, we are the first users of our feed and are invested in its success both as users and developers. We are also generally excited about Bluesky as an ecosystem and as enabling personalization and decentralized feed and labeler design.
Sophie Greenwood, PhD student, Computer Science, Cornell, sjgreenwood@cs.cornell.edu
Nikhil Garg, Assistant Professor, Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell, ngarg@cornell.edu
To reach both of us, also feel free to contact paper.feed.bluesky@gmail.com. If you have feedback (either positive or negative), please feel to also submit it here.
Q: Can I see how you’re filtering posts about papers? Are you open to feedback, for example, highlighting posts that were either erroneously included or missing?
A: Yes and Yes! Our data filter is available here. If there are posts that you think should belong in the Paper Skygest that do not currently appear (or vice versa), please let us know, either by DM or email or, better yet, open a pull request or issue directly on GitHub.
Q: Are you open to feature requests? What is on your agenda?
A: Yes! Our goal is to make discovering interesting research as seamless and enjoyable as possible on Bluesky. Some things we are working on are how to best add posts from beyond your following network (for example, posts from people followed by people you follow).
We plan to conduct research based on the Paper Skygest usage. The purpose of this research is to evaluate feed designs and improve academic experiences on Bluesky.
We do not anticipate any risks from participating in this research.
A benefit of this research is that insights may be used to improve Skygest recommendations for yourself and/or other users.
Feed designers receive almost nothing about you that is not available publicly. So this means that we can observe whether you publicly liked, replied, or reposted a post (but not whether you did so when on our feed or from some other feed); we can also see who you follow and your username. By Bluesky’s design, we cannot (even if we wanted to, which we do not!) do any of the following: edit posts, access your DMs, or know whether you actually saw a post, clicked on a link in the post, or interacted with it in any way that is not publicly viewable.
The one piece of data that we observe and store that is not publicly available is when you accessed our feed and what post ids we sent to Bluesky to show you; we store this information to help us improve the feed for the future and to study how feed design affects usage. This data is only accessible to our research group.
If you wish to delete your data or do not wish for your data to be used for research, please contact us. You will still be able to use the Skygest.
We will do our best to keep your participation in this research study confidential (usage of Skygest) to the extent permitted by law; however, it is possible that other people may need to review the research records and may find out about your participation in this study. For example, the following people/groups may check and copy records about this research:
We will never make individual-level data public – we will never release user-level feed access information. We may release organized datasets of already public information at the post level. For example, for research replicability purposes and for use by other researchers, we may release a list of post ids that are associated with research papers (but not raw text or post information); researchers would then have to query the Bluesky API for the publicly available content associated with those ids.
We may use the data for feed design and academic research purposes. For example, we are interested in studying how our feed affects consumption and production of scientific content – does the feed design affect how users interact with and cite papers that are posted about? We will only ever publish aggregate results, never individual-level findings.
By accessing Paper Skygest, you are consenting to participating in research. Again, if you wish to delete your data or do not wish for your data to be used for research, please contact us. You will still be able to use the Skygest.
If you have questions, please contact us at the email addresses listed above. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your rights as a subject in this study, you may contact the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for Human Participants at 607-255-6182 or access their website at https://researchservices.cornell.edu/offices/IRB. You may also report your concerns or complaints anonymously through Ethicspoint online at www.hotline.cornell.edu or by calling toll free at 1-866-293-3077. Ethicspoint is an independent organization that serves as a liaison between the University and the person bringing the complaint so that anonymity can be ensured.