Each year International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8th March. This year’s theme is “collective individualism – how our individual actions, conversations, behaviours and mind-sets can have an impact on our larger society.” Women are still underrepresented in STEM for a variety of complex reasons, some of which are interconnected, including unsupportive work environments and […]

Would you like to spread the word about your latest paper? Do you feel that there isn’t enough information available online about your particular area of research? Do you have an engaging video or activity that you’d like to share with the wider world? Or do you simply feel passionate about science communication and making […]

Pakistan is the home of some of the world’s leading ecological regions due to immense variation in its wide latitude, spread from gigantic mountain peaks of Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Western Himalayas to the coasts of Arabian Sea, which contributes to the overall biodiversity of the country. Unwise economic policies have widened inequalities, and forced […]

For Joe Friday, it was enough to ask for “just the facts, ma’am.”* But do the facts help science communication?

What do you think of when you think of plants?

A community repository of plant illustrations

It is our great pleasure to welcome Dr Ian Street to our editorial team. Ian will be taking on the role of our first ever Resources Editor. What is a Resources Editor, I hear you ask – let me explain. At AoBBlog, we like books. We also like book reviews, which are an integral part of many scientific […]

Mike Jackson, former Chief Editor of Annals of Botany and AoB PLANTS has taken a look back at the past 125 of Annals of Botany, and found some tips for the future along the way.

Name: Baniwi (Banana Kiwi) plant Scientific name: N/A Known for: Fooling millions and millions of people Record broken: Going viral on the internet At AoBBlog, we like graphs and data. Therefore, I decided to approach our ‘Record-Breaking Plants’ week slightly different, by trying to find out which plant generated the highest interest online this year. Google […]

As the year draws to a close, we have been working hard behind the scenes to make AoBBlog ready for 2017. The biggest changes have been fuelled by our vision to revamp the negative perception of scientific blogging and social media in the academic community. Engaging in online pastimes still has the stigma attached of wasting […]

Career paths are a mysterious thing. As they rarely are linear, it helps to pick up miscellaneous transferable skills on the way, and spot new opportunities as they arise. We hope to feature many different career paths for plant scientists on the blog. If you have an interesting story to tell, or know someone who inspires you, please drop us a […]

Hands up if you have ever ‘speed-read’ a scientific paper just by looking at the figures. Don’t feel guilty, it’s your brain’s fault. Images appeal to us, as we are drawn to bright colours, and we process information faster when it is presented in a picture. More and more journals are asking for graphical abstracts. Presentations with diagrams are […]