This is the December 2025 issue of the monthly newsletter from the Rogue Scholar science blog archive. The newsletter reports on new blogs that have joined the platform, important technical updates in Rogue Scholar infrastructure, community updates, and other news relevant to Rogue Scholar users.

Blogs added to Rogue Scholar

Three blogs were added in November. Welcome! This brings the number of participating blogs to 190, and the number of archived posts to 48,099. Because of the holidays, Rogue Scholar currently has a backlog of new blog submissions that I hope to resolve within the next two weeks.

Data Diction

Data and the stories they tell us.
Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty, English.
https://data-diction.com/

Nicola Romanò

Of data analysis, biology and random other things.
Computer Science Applications, English.
https://www.nicolaromano.net/

Gleb Ebert

This is Gleb Ebert's personal website. You can learn about me and what I do here.
Genetics, English.
https://www.gl-eb.me/blog/

Technical Updates

The focus of the technical work in December was on consolidating Rogue Scholar Identity and Access Management (IAM), described in detail in a blog post on December 30. Rogue Scholar has launched a self-hosted Keycloak instance at auth.front-matter.de, and all users now have to authenticate via this instance. New accounts require an ORCID identifier, and login is supported via ORCID or one-time passwords sent to the user account email address. As part of the transition to the new service, all accounts receive a new internal user identifier once they login via Keycloak.

The submission form for new blogs has been updated to require an ORCID, and in the next few months Rogue Scholar will require an ORCID for the corresponding author of new blog posts – 33.8% of all blog posts currently include at least one ORCID.

Community Updates

As an incentive for paid Rogue Scholar membership, and in anticipation of Rogue Scholar becoming a German non-profit organization in 2026, Rogue Scholar started weekly newsletters with newly published blog posts in popular subject areas in December. This monthly newsletter is now also distributed via a new mailing list that all users can sign up for via the Rogue Scholar homepage.

Please use Slack, email, Mastodon, or Bluesky if you have any questions or comments.

Rogue Scholar is a scholarly infrastructure that is free for all authors and readers. You can support Rogue Scholar with a one-time or recurring donation or by becoming a sponsor.

References

  1. Fenner, M. (2025, December 30). Consolidating Rogue Scholar Authentication. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/5q274-3e235
  2. Fenner, M. (2025, December 8). Incentives for Rogue Scholar membership. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/n65p5-58463
  3. Fenner, M. (2025, November 3). Rogue Scholar is becoming a German Non-Profit Organization. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/rftfk-qv692