Why scientists are flocking to Substack

Like many epidemiologists throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Katelyn Jetelina turned to social media to assist preserve individuals knowledgeable. It was the spring of 2020, and Jetelina, then on the College of Texas Well being Science Middle at Houston, often posted content material on viral transmission and vaccines to her Fb and Instagram pages. That’s, till she was hacked.

In February 2021, a gaggle of anti-vaccine activists discovered a method into each accounts, utilizing her platform to submit and promote a special rhetoric. They even requested her followers to add their COVID-19 vaccination playing cards for an opportunity to win US$1,000, in a bid to realize private data. It was at this level that Jetelina determined she needed to make a change. “It was heartbreaking to me: I had misplaced all of my content material, and the entire blood, sweat and tears I had put into it,” she recalled. “I made a decision to maneuver on to a platform the place I had an entire lot extra possession.”

Scientists are falling sufferer to deepfake AI video scams — right here’s tips on how to combat again

The obvious alternative for her was Substack, an impartial writing and e-mailing platform. It’s lauded for its e-newsletter options — sending posts into the inboxes of subscribers — however content material can be out there on the location, as with a typical weblog. One characteristic she particularly favored, given her previous experiences, was that her information was transferable: if you happen to resolve to depart, or have to depart, you’ll be able to take an inventory of subscriber e-mails with you. On 8 February 2021, Jetelina began placing extra vitality into her Substack publication, which she calls Your Native Epidemiologist.

Though she ultimately regained management of her social-media accounts, and her workforce nonetheless posts infographics and movies there, Jetelina says Substack allows her to attach with followers another way. As she explains it, the e-mail e-newsletter platform is extra conducive to longer-form and more-nuanced discussions, which aren’t all the time attainable on different types of social media. Readers subscribe to her particularly, and content material goes on to their inbox, fostering extra intimate and close-knit interactions. She says she’s come to know the readers effectively. “I can now have a two-way relationship with the viewers, partaking with them via the remark and chat sections.”

Over the previous few years, the e-newsletter has garnered a powerful following and now has greater than 400,000 subscribers. What was as soon as a one-woman present is now run by a workforce of copy editors, social-media creators, administrative assistants and different contributors. It’s additionally now Jetelina’s foremost job, she says. And because the pandemic public-health emergency has “pale into the rear-view mirror”, her content material has needed to change. Jetelina now goals to point out the group that public well being goes past a pandemic and infectious ailments, and writes about subjects akin to reproductive well being, gun violence and psychological well being. “I’m actually making an attempt to concentrate on tips on how to equip individuals with the instruments to dwell an evidence-based life,” she says.

Based in 2017, Substack is supposed to present a platform to impartial writers, and gives a method for them to monetize their work via paywalls and donations. It’s grown quickly and now has tens of thousands and thousands of subscribers, and greater than 5 million paid subscribers. The platform additionally raised $100 million to increase operations, giving the corporate a worth of $1.1 billion. And it’s not solely for scientists: many different lecturers, in addition to journalists and even novelists, have constructed up a group on the platform.

“Substack is dwelling to a rising variety of revered lecturers and researchers who use the platform to share evidence-based work immediately with the general public,” a spokesperson informed Nature. “For a lot of, it’s a method to attain individuals extra shortly and overtly, whereas nonetheless sustaining depth and rigour.”

Not each scientist has a following as giant as that of Your Native Epidemiologist, which at present ranks primary on the record of paid science newsletters on Substacks. However different lecturers and scientists throughout varied disciplines have gravitated in direction of the platform as a method to promote analysis and join with the general public.

Governments are banning children from social media: will that shield them from hurt?

Nonetheless, the location has its drawbacks. It might probably take some time to construct a following, and making a revenue could be exhausting work. Not solely that, however most of the platform’s high science and health-politics newsletters promote anti-vaccine ideology or pseudoscience. “It’s the wild, wild west being on Substack, however proper now this is identical on any type of social-media platform,” says Jetelina. (A Substack spokesperson mentioned that it could be inaccurate to characterize “a majority” of the highest science writers as anti-vax.)

Stacking up

Substack and different subscription-based content material providers — akin to Ghost, Mailchimp, Patreon, Beehiiv and Medium — market themselves as being more practical at reaching individuals than are standard social media. That is partially backed by advertising and marketing information. In keeping with Mailchimp, a US e-mail advertising and marketing platform, about 35% of customers open e-mails from corporations within the training and coaching sector; for different industries, the proportion is 30–40%. In a current thread on Substack, writers shared the charges at which their subscribers opened their newsletters, and the proportions ranged from 30% to 70%.

Kimberly Nicholas, a sustainability researcher at Lund College, Sweden, whose Substack publication We Can Repair It approaches the local weather disaster “with information, emotions, and motion”, says her e-mail newsletters are clicked on and opened greater than her social-media posts.

The location additionally helps to foster an surroundings of group engagement. For Jonathan Tonkin, an ecologist on the College of Canterbury in New Zealand, the social-media platform X “was a extremely useful gizmo for scientists to speak with different scientists, however when it comes to reaching the general public it wasn’t occurring, to be trustworthy”. Tonkin now authors a Substack publication known as Predirections. “It’s good, I feel, for reaching people who find themselves fascinated by science and usually are not scientists,” he says.

In keeping with Similarweb, a traffic-analytics web site, Substack’s viewers is fairly evenly break up between women and men. It skews a bit in direction of youthful readers: the biggest group consists of these aged 25–34. Customers additionally are typically primarily based in the US, with with about 62% of visitors coming from there in July 2025.

“Scientific topics are nuanced, and making an attempt to distill that into 140 characters would not work very effectively, or leaves individuals confused,” provides Hannah Ritchie, an information scientist on the College of Oxford, UK. Ritchie’s Substack publication, Sustainability by Numbers, appears to be like at potential routes to sustainability via an evidence-based lens. Placing collectively an e-mail, she says, “offers scientists a bit extra room to explain the nuances”.

Then there’s the potential for monetization. Many of the scientists Nature spoke to emphasised that their content material is free, however the web site offers writers the power to arrange paywalls. In keeping with Jetelina, 7% of her subscribers pay for her content material. Though the platform takes a reduce, she’s been in a position to generate sufficient income to give up her full-time job and focus primarily on the e-newsletter. (Jetelina didn’t wish to share her earnings with Nature, however in 2022, the month-to-month journal Vainness Honest reported that she made about $300,000 within the publication’s first 9 months).

Scientists additionally spotlight that Substack presents extra freedom than do different modes of publishing science — in journals, for instance, or via visitor contributions to on-line publications such The Dialog. As Ritchie explains, there’s typically a prolonged editorial course of in these more-formal programs, and writers could be constrained by the necessities of the publication. “The timeline is massively prolonged in comparison with what you are able to do on Substack, the place you’ll be able to have your individual viewers: you’ll be able to say what you need, once you wish to say it.”