Academic Website Template

Academic Website Template is a Jekyll-based static site template for academic personal websites and research group pages, published by sbryngelson and used by 180+ academics. It takes your identity, links, and BibTeX entries as input and produces a deployable GitHub Pages site with a publications list, team pages, and news.

What is Academic Website Template?

Academic Website Template is a production-ready Jekyll website for academics and research groups. You fill in _config.yml, add BibTeX entries to assets/ref.bib, and edit YAML files for team members, news, talks, and teaching. It builds a static site deployable to GitHub Pages via an included GitHub Actions workflow.

Key Features

• Jekyll + Jekyll Scholar — publications are generated directly from assets/ref.bib, with automatic bolding of your name.
• BibTeX-driven buttons — fields like file, doi, arxiv, code, and abstract produce PDF, DOI, arXiv, Code, and expandable Abstract buttons.
• Modular SASS — organized into base/, components/, layouts/, and utilities/; selective Bootstrap 5.3.8 SCSS with no Bootstrap JavaScript or jQuery.
• Dark mode — navbar toggle that auto-detects system preference and persists across visits.
• Site-wide search — press Cmd+K or Ctrl+K to search all pages and posts indexed at build time.
• Dynamic favicon — an SVG is generated from your initials and accent color, with ICO and Apple touch icon rasterized at deploy time.
• No third-party requests — fonts and icons are self-hosted; the only external script is MathJax, loaded on opt-in pages.
• Data-file pages — team, alumni, news, awards, grants, talks, teaching, and software are edited as YAML, not HTML.
• Single dependency-free JS file — handles dark mode, search, toggles, scroll effects, and the copy BibTeX button.

Who is it for?

• Principal investigators running a lab that needs team and alumni pages, news, grants, and publications from one repository.
• Individual academics who want a personal site with publications rendered from a BibTeX file instead of hand-written Markdown entries.
• Research groups that prefer editing YAML lists for talks, teaching, and software rather than editing HTML templates.

What can you do with Academic Website Template?

• Publish a publications page: add BibTeX entries to assets/ref.bib and Jekyll Scholar generates a searchable list with year badges and per-paper links.
• Showcase a research group: list current members, alumni, and openings in YAML files that render as card grids.
• Add news and awards: maintain _data/news.yml and _data/awards.yml; the three most recent news items appear on the home page.
• Enable math on select pages: add math: true to a page's front matter to load MathJax 4 only there.

How does Academic Website Template work?

Click "Use this template" on GitHub and name the repository YOUR_USERNAME.github.io, then run bundle install. Run ./setup.sh to fill in your name, title, institution, and email, or ./setup.sh --clean to also strip demo content. Edit _config.yml in five numbered steps, add BibTeX entries, preview with bundle exec jekyll serve, and push. Set Settings > Pages > Source to GitHub Actions once for automatic deploys.

Alternatives

• academicpages — generates one Markdown file per publication and talk from a TSV or BibTeX file via Python scripts, and includes a talk map and portfolio section.
• al-folio — offers a CV page generated from RenderCV or JSON Resume, Jupyter notebooks, Altmetric and Dimensions badges, and Google Scholar citation counts.
• Minimal Mistakes — a general-purpose Jekyll theme installed as a gem with skins and comment systems, but no built-in publication list or team page.

FAQ

Is Academic Website Template free?

Yes. The template is released under the MIT license, so you can use, modify, and redistribute it. The repository has 391 stars and is used by 180+ academics and research groups.

Does it work with GitHub Pages?

Yes. The repository includes a GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/deploy.yml) that builds with Jekyll Scholar and deploys on every push to the source branch. You must enable Pages with Source set to GitHub Actions once in repository settings.

Do I need to know HTML to update publications?

No. Publications come from BibTeX entries in assets/ref.bib, and team members, news, talks, teaching, and software come from YAML files in _data/. Each YAML file has inline comments explaining every field.

Can I disable dark mode or change the accent color?

Yes. Set accent_color in _config.yml to change the theme color across links, buttons, highlights, and the favicon; light and dark variants are derived automatically. Set dark_mode: false to disable dark mode entirely.