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Dr. Sara L Middleton

@saralilplants.bsky.social

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Nov 17

Aloe there 👋🏽

Here is a starter pack with Black researchers, practitioners & orgs working with plants in the broadest sense (botany, forestry, plant ecology, crop science, herbaria, botanic gardens)

Hoping this will help set seed for a nurturing community!

Reply 🔽 to be added
go.bsky.app/7Gn2NCb

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · 22d

Plant mood: the emotionally withered looking black bean

Peeps waiting for an email/peer review/work from me thanks for your patience, there's a lot going on right now. I will respond when I can. I’m also taking time away from here for a bit. Like this perennial black bean, I will resurface again 🖤

A photo of a black bean (Lathyrus niger) with withered looking pods against a grassy backdrop.

Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Sep 5

Lovely assemblage of early carboniferous crinoids seen on the paving slabs in Leuven train station in Belgium 🤩

#FossilFriday

A dark grey paving slabs with a jumble of light grey fossil crinoid stems deposited at various orientations.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

DrZP @zarahpattison.bsky.social · Sep 4

🏞️𝐅𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡?
Our new study looked at fieldwork policies and risk assessments from 90 UK universities offering environmental science courses.
The results are eye-opening:
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Improving university policies and risk assessment to support inclusive fieldwork in environmental sciences

Among 90 UK higher education institutions, there was patchy mention of protected and other identity-related characteristics in fieldwork policy and risk assessments, and very limited consideration of....

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Maria Dance @mariadance.bsky.social · Sep 2

Publication alert 🚨 doi.org/10.1111/mec.... Our new study in Molecular Ecology shows dwarf birch genetic diversity has been shaped by shifting ice sheets and climate transitions over the last 2.6 million years. This history may hold clues to how tundra shrubs face today’s rapid climate change ❄️🌱🧬🌡️

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Geology Johnson @geologyjohnson.bsky.social · Aug 27

#InvertFest Neverita duplicata as requested by @joxter.bsky.social it was difficult to find a good picture of the live animal.
See pinned comment if you want to request a critter for the August Invert Fest

Digital painting of a beige and brown snail crawling on a sandy seabed with sea weed in the background.

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 27

Y'all tell me why I'm seeing toothpaste costing 24 great british pounds in the supermarkets!?

Prices are out of hand 😱

Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 27

Woooo go Vigdis 👏🏾

Alt text for quoted image: screen shot of the IPCC website showing the page for the seventh assessment report. The background shows a nighttime city scape of skyscrapers enveloped in cloud/smog.

Between the Fjords Research Group @btwnthefjords-uib.bsky.social · Aug 26

Our own Vigdis Vandvik will be Coordinating Lead Author on the upcoming seventh #IPCC report, co-leading the chapter on climate change, #biodiversity, #ecosystems and ecosystem services on land and in freshwater. A big, challenging, and very exciting task! @vvandvik.bsky.social

shorturl.at/07NJf

Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Dr Jill Whitelock @jillwhitelock.bsky.social · Aug 24

Devil’s-bit scabious and Common knapweed, Kilmory, Arran. #WildflowerHour

Mauve and purple flowers against an orange background.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

ROOT-SHOOT RCN @root-shoot.bsky.social · Aug 20

We are incredibly excited & proud: our first publication is out in eLIFE!
"Making conferences in the plant sciences more inclusive through community recommendations"
elifesciences.org/articles/106...
This project was a team effort involving contributors from seven professional societies. #PlantSci

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Making conferences in the plant sciences more inclusive through community recommendations

The ROOT & SHOOT project in the plant sciences has produced guidelines to help scientific societies organize conferences that are more inclusive and offer more supportive environments to all attendees...

elifesciences.org

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Aleksandra Lazić @alelazic.bsky.social · Aug 20

🌍 Glad to see our paper out!
How researchers in developing countries & other resource-constrained contexts (can) practice #OpenScience, with free tools, training, success stories, & more.

🔓 doi.org/10.1177/2515...
🛠 osf.io/gu7v4

More in this thread by @hcp4715.bsky.social 👇 #AcademicSky #PsychSky

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 20

Regular reminder to authors to please acknowledge and cite people who have contributed to your work. Yet again I find a paper that I collected data for and I’m not acknowledged. 🧪

Also see our recent paper that provides a toolkit for more just and equitable citation practices👇🏽

🔗 osf.io/qjecy_v3

Conceptualization of the citational justice toolkit, organized around the
research cycle. In the top right quadrant of the cycle, we start with Planning, which includes the Ideas and Funding stages of research. This section contains two practices: citational politics training module and the Academic Wheel of Privilege, and one tool: the citational transparency browser extension. In the bottom right quadrant of the cycle, we have the Project, which includes Research and Journal Selection stages of research. This section contains one practice: diversify your reading. In the bottom left
quadrant of the cycle, we have the Paper, which includes Paper writing and Submission stages of research. This section contains three practices: citing R packages and other tools,
annotated citations lists and the citational diversity statement, and nine tools: Genderize, the Gray test, the citation audit survey, Mirya Holman’s pre-submission checklist, GBAT, the citational diversity codebook, a template for citing Indigenous peoples, the inwardness
metric and GCBI-alyzer. In the top left quadrant of the cycle, we have Publication, which includes the Peer Review and Publication stages of research. This section contains one practice, the Academic Wheel of Privilege.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · Aug 13

Science friends, life is difficult now, but please still try to peer review papers if you can.

I'm the editor handling a paper that just had it's 43rd person decline to review. We may have to reject it because no one is willing to review it, which sucks for the authors.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Krista Koeller @kristalerista.bsky.social · Aug 13

Do you want to go to grad school in #paleontology 🦖, #geology ⚒️, or #biology🧪?

Join the @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social Graduate School Application Prep Group! We’ll walk you through the application process in weekly workshops.

Sign up with this form! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Do you want to be a paleontologist? Join the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's Application Preparation Group! This series of free Zoom workshops will: Tell you how the field of paleontology works, guide you through the graduate school application process, connect you with other applicants, and give you feedback on your application. Anyone is welcome!

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 12

Yeah me neither 😔

Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 12

Open Science peeps, we need to have a conversation about the platforms we use in relation to socially responsible research given the sort of power dynamics and equity issues we see playing out.

See recent news about GitHub 👇🏽
www.theverge.com/news/757461/...

GitHub just got less independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation

GitHub will be part of Microsoft’s AI engineering team

www.theverge.com

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 8

This looks awesome, thanks for sharing!

Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Aug 5

I feel ya. It comes in waves for me the grief and rage. For me what helps is spending less time on social media and more time with community members working on various environmental-social justice projects. Also having hobbies that don't require a screen (e.g swimming, crocheting and jigsaw puzzles)

Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · Aug 2

“This paper unpacks the concept of citation politics and its role in sustaining epistemic hierarchies within scholarly communities.”

osf.io/qjecy_v2

Figure 1. Mechanisms of power and privilege operating in citational practice and their effects on six individuals with different intersecting identities.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Anne-Laure D 🌿 @aldpaleo.bsky.social · Aug 1

Happy #FossilFriday and #FernFriday ! This beautiful fossil leaf belongs to a #fern that was growing in what is now southern France during the late Carboniferous, about 300 million years ago 🌿⛏️
#paleobotany #fossil #botany

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Dr Madeleine Pownall @maddipow.bsky.social · Aug 1

I can never understand why efforts to improve peer review don’t learn from the decades of educational research about how to do good, robust, constructive assessment and feedback.

What would happen if we treated peer review as pedagogy?

New in @wonkhe.bsky.social

wonkhe.com/blogs/peer-r...

Peer review is broken, and pedagogical research has a fix

The lessons of decades of research into assessment and feedback haven’t tracked across into the practice of peer review. Madeleine Pownall wonders why not The lessons of decades of research into asses...

wonkhe.com

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Geology Johnson @geologyjohnson.bsky.social · Jul 29

Congratulations Dr Middleton. I'm very proud of bae. There were many hurdles during her PhD, but she beat them all. @saralilplants.bsky.social

A young Black woman in red and blue academic gown celebrating inferring of an old yellow brown ornate building.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

Dr. Hilary Rose Dawson @hilaryrosed.bsky.social · Jul 29

Appreciating this intersection between botany and pride in Palm Springs--pride for prickly plant people, perhaps? That would fit me.

#Botany2025 #PrideInSTEM

A concrete bench painted with rainbow stripes. On the end are painted several realistic cactus species in clay pots.

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Reposted by Dr. Sara L Middleton

The Palaeoverse Community @palaeoverse.bsky.social · Jul 28

Yesterday we led a workshop at @cpeg-cpb25.bsky.social on “Building open data science skills in paleobiology and ecology”. Huge thanks to everyone involved for making the workshop so successful and fun! 🤩

William Gearty presents some advanced topics when using GitHub

Lewis Jones discusses different approaches for dealing with missing data

Harriet Drage feeds back suggestions from the group, written on post-its, on the opportunities and difficulties of archiving data and code

A group picture of the workshop leaders and participants in front of a fresco at the University of Zurich

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Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Jul 28

So many cat croissants 🥹. I was expecting to see more black cats but most of the cats were ginger!

Dr. Sara L Middleton @saralilplants.bsky.social · Jul 28

Thanks for sharing!