The “S” in OASIS. Automate the routine, hand-craft the story.
Principles
- Automate the routine. Event listings, job posts, weekly summaries: automated. Hand-craft goes into stories, impact narratives, tailored campaigns.
- Lead with the audience. Publish where they are, not where we wish they were.
- Privacy & inclusion are first-order constraints. Mastodon, Bluesky, MailerLite in. Twitter/X, MailChimp out.
- Expert voices over corporate voices. Amplify a member; don’t issue a Node statement.
- Names go on things. Contribution is always attributed.
People
| Resource | What they do |
|---|---|
| EI Communications team | Support for institutional press releases, materials and tools (e.g camera equipment) |
| Node Coordination Office | Majority of their time on facilitating, organising, and coordinating comms activities |
| Member-organisation staff | Considerable in-kind volunteered time across the consortium to disseminate information |
Channels
Three groupings: what we run, what we show up at, and one-to-one outreach.
Channels we run
Operational and broadcast channels ELIXIR-UK manages directly.
| Channel | Purpose | Primary audience |
|---|---|---|
| Website | Long-form, evergreen, SEO. Google Analytics tracked | All – discovery point |
| Weekly Brief (MailerLite) | Short-form signal: what’s coming, opportunities, calls. Subscriptions also auto-feed the relevant Google Group via script | Members, potential members, end-users |
| Monthly Brief (MailerLite) | Longer recap: highlights from the month, impact stories, deeper articles | Members, potential members, end-users |
| ELIXIR-UK Slack workspace | Operational and community conversation | Active members |
| Google Calendar (business workspace) | Meeting invites for clubs, working groups, All Hands | Members + subscribed non-members |
| Google Groups | Auto-populated from MailerLite – used to send Calendar invites and topic-specific mail | Subscribers per club / working group |
| Steering Committee mailing list | Important updates, private meetings | Steering Committee |
| Management Committee mailing list | Important updates, private meetings | Management Committee |
| Institutional credibility | Funders, leaders | |
| Bluesky | Research-community migration target | Researchers |
| YouTube | Event recordings | Active members, end-users, other Nodes |
| Annual National All Hands | Direct, high-engagement community moment | All members + invited guests |
| Monthly club calls | Topic-specific community sessions | Subscribers per club |
Forums we show up at
Hub-level and shared spaces we don’t run but need to be visible in.
| Forum | What it is | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Programme TC | Monthly ELIXIR Node leads call. UK round at the start of the agenda | Surfacing UK updates to other Nodes and the Hub |
| ELIXIR Europe Slack | Hub-run Slack where much of the cross-Node work happens | Presence in cross-Node conversations |
| ELIXIR Europe All Hands | Annual Europe-wide meeting | Showcasing UK contributions, networking |
| ELIXIR Weekly Brief (Hub newsletter) | Sent every Monday to ELIXIR consortium members. Items submitted to info@elixir-europe.org |
Reaching the wider ELIXIR consortium |
| News on elixir-europe.org | Hub-edited news (one story every ~2 weeks). UK can submit; Hub retains editorial control | High-profile UK activity reaching the full ELIXIR audience |
One-to-one strategic outreach
Personal email to named contacts at organisations and consortia whose work touches ours. Maintained as relationships, not a broadcast list. Examples:
- UKRN (UK Reproducibility Network)
- DCC (Digital Curation Centre)
- Network+ projects
- UK EuroBioimaging
- Other UK and European research infrastructures
Channel principles
- Don’t cross-post the same content unchanged. Each channel gets the right version.
- Measure per-channel – see Evaluation.
- Retire channels that no longer serve. Twitter/X and MailChimp out; LinkedIn, Bluesky and MailerLite in.
- On social, we’re lax. Any mention of ELIXIR-UK by members, partners or community is a win. We don’t gate-keep what gets posted under the Node account – the bar is “is this on-brand and useful?”, not “is this important enough?”.
- Reuse the MailerLite templates. MailerLite holds ready-made templates for the Weekly Brief, Monthly Brief and other campaign types. Start from the template, don’t rebuild.
Content pillars × audience
A working matrix for designing content. Three goals × five career-stage / external segments. Use this when planning what to publish for whom.
| Students, PhD | Early career & core data staff | Senior researchers, data leads | External stakeholders | Funders | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belonging | Jobs, training offers via events page + newsletter automations | Specialised training, communities, Fellowships; profiles on site | Community leadership, project funding; profiles on site | – | – |
| Trust & prestige | Training provider, source of knowledge | Career development via Fellowship and groups | Project results, articles, publications | Project results, articles, publications | Impact reports, articles, impact dashboard |
| Engagement | Personal stories, career trajectories – blogs, social | Stories, quizzes, Slack, social recognitions | Stories, successes in meetings/projects | Collaborator events, resources | Policy influence, long-term impact – social, reports, media |
Empty cells are deliberate: external stakeholders and funders are audiences, not community – we don’t build belonging content for them.
How UK content reaches Hub channels
The ELIXIR Hub runs its own channels – the Weekly Brief, news on elixir-europe.org, the Hub social accounts. UK content reaches these via the Hub Communications Strategy v2.1 submission flow: items go to info@elixir-europe.org, the Hub retains editorial control. Programme TC, the ELIXIR Communications Group and the ELIXIR Europe Slack are the working forums where UK comms staff stay aligned with Hub plans.