Show HN: Academic Bio – A simple static site generator for academic webpages(my.academic.bio)
my.academic.bio
Show HN: Academic Bio – A simple static site generator for academic webpages
http://my.academic.bio
12 comments
I like it. I would love it if it was possible to paste in my publications in APA or MLA format and have the service parse the details out rather than having to manually enter in the name of each author, year, volume number, etc. Thanks for this.
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For import: bibtex of course, as most bibliography managers can import/export bibtex, maybe also orcid, as it is becoming the standard "unique id" service for academia.
Also, you should consider allowing users to just input a DOI and fetch all the metadata yourself from BASE or CrossRef. With the DOI, using a service like https://oadoi.org/ or http://doai.io/ (they may merge to unite dev force in a not so distant future, but both domains will still work) would also allow to link directly to an accessible PDF of the publication.
I don't think supporting ResearchGate or services like that (academia.edu etc) directly would be a good thing. For interoperability, they should allow bibtex export. If they don't, why encourage them to continue locking-in their users?
Also, you should consider allowing users to just input a DOI and fetch all the metadata yourself from BASE or CrossRef. With the DOI, using a service like https://oadoi.org/ or http://doai.io/ (they may merge to unite dev force in a not so distant future, but both domains will still work) would also allow to link directly to an accessible PDF of the publication.
I don't think supporting ResearchGate or services like that (academia.edu etc) directly would be a good thing. For interoperability, they should allow bibtex export. If they don't, why encourage them to continue locking-in their users?
Looks nice!
I would suggest to enable import from ORCID. Seems to be the best initiative around to give a unique identifier to scientists.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0452-623X
I would suggest to enable import from ORCID. Seems to be the best initiative around to give a unique identifier to scientists.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0452-623X
Looks pretty great - why stop at academia? Many devs would love a quick, good looking resume or github page.
Because there is a new resume/GitHub static generator every week?? I know it's not a sole reason to ignore those purposes but he has much better chance appealing to a niche audience with such a common product.
I believe GP comment suggestion was to re-use the same code on a different domain/template for devs.
Time to make a static page generator generator!
I would second google scholar, with a way to edit imports. Will you add an option to export to PDF--it's nice to have a single source of truth. For example, I maintain my CV as a rst file which I then can use to either generate html or pdf...
Hi James, this is pretty neat. I think this website could be a big hit among all the graduate applicants since they all are looking for creating a personal academic website at the time of applications.
Is there an option to import a latex resume to create the website? That would be handy.
I just want to thank you for ShareLatex, I use it for all my academic documents, it's pretty awesome.
Is there an option to import a latex resume to create the website? That would be handy.
I just want to thank you for ShareLatex, I use it for all my academic documents, it's pretty awesome.
I'd probably import from google scholar, which allows export to BibTex, EndNote, RefMan and CSV.
Thank you for this. I have been wanting to build something like this for a long time, and never got around to do it, and you made it better than I would have done anyway.
As for the import, could you link it to Google Scholar profiles?
As for the import, could you link it to Google Scholar profiles?
In addition to already established aggregators such as AuthorID, OrcID, etc. I would say that the main two databases for people who don't have profiles are Scopus and the Web of Science.
Just out of curiosity, will it be free forever and you will pay for the hosting?
Do you plan to get some revenue from it somehow?
Also, do you plan to open source the whole project?
Also, do you plan to open source the whole project?
I plan to charge a small monthly (possibly yearly) fee to cover hosting, yes.
If there's demand for the front-end being open sourced, then yes. I suspect that the people who'd be willing to host the front-end would have an easier time just editing the Jekyll template YAML directly though, which is already open source: https://github.com/academicbio/academic-minima
If there's demand for the front-end being open sourced, then yes. I suspect that the people who'd be willing to host the front-end would have an easier time just editing the Jekyll template YAML directly though, which is already open source: https://github.com/academicbio/academic-minima
Another option would be to allow institutions (e.g., universities, labs) to subscribe to your service to offer it to their members under their own domain name with a custom template?
If you are able to interface with OAI-PMH to retrieve publication list for each author automatically from the university local repository (which they increasingly tend to have), I bet they would totally love that (as it would be an incentive for researchers to curate and update their publications list in the university repository).
Great idea. Being able to import publications from inspires would be great for the high-energy physics / math crowd.
Do you see this as competing with or complimenting ResearcherID?
I have to admit, I am normally not impressed by "Show HN"s from a practical viewpoint (most are technical demos, I think), but your page really stood out. I really like, that you keep it simple and allow to transfer the pages.
A feature request I would have if I published open-access papers (and that is fortunately more and more the case) would be to host them on your page.
Maybe that's already possible (i.e. adding static files), then I have nothing to complain. :)
A feature request I would have if I published open-access papers (and that is fortunately more and more the case) would be to host them on your page.
Maybe that's already possible (i.e. adding static files), then I have nothing to complain. :)
Open accessing papers should not be done (only) on personnal web pages. Those may disappear and are less discoverable (or at least, the world depends on Google Scholar to find such papers, which is a single point-of-failure if Google discontinues the service sole day).
Instead, open access papers should be hosted in open repositories, which are dedicated to the organization and the conservation of scientific documents. I'm of course talking about services that are supported by public institutions, like arXiv, HAL, Zenodo, etc. Not of those made by startups that may one day be bought by Evilseer (such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate).
Instead, open access papers should be hosted in open repositories, which are dedicated to the organization and the conservation of scientific documents. I'm of course talking about services that are supported by public institutions, like arXiv, HAL, Zenodo, etc. Not of those made by startups that may one day be bought by Evilseer (such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate).
That's awesome, I can Tweet this out for you. My lowly account has 1600 followers, but concentrated amongst academics. https://twitter.com/codonops
That would be amazing, thanks!
Bah every time I have a good idea it's taken :)
I recently went through the pain of setting up a simple static website for a math professor[1], and it really is depressing how polarized the options are considering you want the site to be easily editable by the party in question once it's all set up. Either monolithic Wordpress-like engines that are really hard to bend to your will for first-timers (even me, a developer), or FTPing static files to some shady host provider.
The solution I settled on was hosting everything on github.io[2] and teaching the person how to use the GitHub interface sort of like a file browser/editor so they can tweak little things without having to e-mail me.
Anyway my approach seemed to work out, but I would for sure have given this a try first if I knew about it. Congrats on getting it out there!
1. http://piotrkrasonmath.com/ 2. https://github.com/dougkoellmer/piotrkrasonmath.github.io
I recently went through the pain of setting up a simple static website for a math professor[1], and it really is depressing how polarized the options are considering you want the site to be easily editable by the party in question once it's all set up. Either monolithic Wordpress-like engines that are really hard to bend to your will for first-timers (even me, a developer), or FTPing static files to some shady host provider.
The solution I settled on was hosting everything on github.io[2] and teaching the person how to use the GitHub interface sort of like a file browser/editor so they can tweak little things without having to e-mail me.
Anyway my approach seemed to work out, but I would for sure have given this a try first if I knew about it. Congrats on getting it out there!
1. http://piotrkrasonmath.com/ 2. https://github.com/dougkoellmer/piotrkrasonmath.github.io
Just curious, did you check out Lektor? I haven't experience with it, but I think it is designed just for that kind of scenarios.
Yup that came up but it looked a little too complex to use for the person for whom I made the website. He can handle basic HTML tweaks but isn't really a techie. He also wanted to be able to update his website from any machine, including his iPad.
Great work! As a grad student I can definitely say it addresses a need :). For the publications, importing from bibtex might be a useful alternative, since all the fields are already there. It would save time compared to manually copy pasting each individual field and most researchers are familiar with it IMO.
This is great. I would love to have this.
But my univ gives me an 'OpenScholar' access... (http://theopenscholar.org/) it's like this weird cms that I can't seem to figure out. Here's a question if anyone has experience with OpenScholar: can I somehow insert HTML pages -- that this tool will generate, and screw the OpenScholar system... while using OpenScholar? (because my univ. won't let me simply upload HTML pages, it makes me do everything in OpenScholar)
But my univ gives me an 'OpenScholar' access... (http://theopenscholar.org/) it's like this weird cms that I can't seem to figure out. Here's a question if anyone has experience with OpenScholar: can I somehow insert HTML pages -- that this tool will generate, and screw the OpenScholar system... while using OpenScholar? (because my univ. won't let me simply upload HTML pages, it makes me do everything in OpenScholar)
The biggest problem I see with academic websites is that their publications are always out of date. Google scholar has always more recent publications listed. Do you have any plans to fix that? I think most academics have their faculty website profile and naybe a google scholar profile. I think your generator needs to be automated because otherwise it is just another site you have to update every tine you publish a new paper.
Most professors cease updating their websites post-tenure. :) I can pinpoint the date my former advisor got tenure based on the last publication on his website...
This looks good. http://jemdoc.jaboc.net/ comes to mind as one precursor that a number of academics have chosen, but it falls in the (marginally) more complicated categories of 'command line' and 'markup language'.
Pretty amazing, maybe you could let universities have their own domains and I think this would be a huge success!
Cool! I'm really hoping we can stop seeing academic web pages that look like they're trapped in the 90s.
I actually find these 90s style academic websites very charming.
I've wanted to do the dame thing for years because I'm always frustrated by colleagues or other academics with no online presence.
This is awesome. The resulting web pages are very nice, and the openness is (no lock-in) is really a good thing. Thanks for making this exists!
This is awesome. The resulting web pages are very nice, and the openness is (no lock-in) is really a good thing. Thanks for making this exists!
A good idea!
I want to keep it all open though so you still 'own' your website, with the option to host at academic.bio (simple s3 static site), download the compiled html/CSS to host yourself, or use the Jekyll theme directly (github.com/academicbio/academic-minima) depending on the level you're comfortable at.
Thoughts and feedback welcome!
PS the next step is allowing quick import of publications. Where would people like to import from? Bibtex? ResearchGate?