Blogging research September 13, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science , trackback
You may have noticed the appearance of this little icon on my blog in recent weeks. I though I’d write a quick post to explain! Last month I found out about, and signed up with, ResearchBlogging.org. ResearchBlogging is a site that aggregates blog posts on academic research. When I want to write about a paper, I can use the site to generate a citation in html format that I can include in my post. ResearchBlogging then picks up these citations in blogs that are registered to the service, and collates them according to subject. Once a week or so, editors pick highlights from different subject categorie and publish them on the site’s own news blog.
The idea is to show what scientists themselves are interested in and talking about, rather than PR people. This way, maybe even the good science that isn’t necessarily media-friendly or not backed up by a strong media team, can still get the attention it deserves.
Incidentally, the guidelines state that the blog author should be reporting on their own work in their references posts, rather than just other people’s. It doesn’t seem to apply to many of the listed posts in the astronomy section which talk about other people’s research – as do mine. Does that matter? Hmm… Leave me a comment if you have an opinion.
Some of the other astronomy blogs registered with ResearchBlogging are We are all in the gutter…., Angry Astronomer, Supernova condensate and Optics Confidential.
Comments»
I hadn’t noticed that bit about research blogging requiring that folk only blog about their own stuff. Looking at the typical output on there very few other people have too.
Personally, while blogging about my own research would be easier (background reading already done) it could make it seem more important than it actually is to the reader. Hence it’s probably safer to steer clear. Additionally blogging gives me an excuse to read up on stuff I’ve no idea about.
In the comments on the guidelines page, someone asked that same questions. It seems like “original work” also means “original writing”. So you have to actually write something about the research in your own words, not just copy/paste from it into a blog post. That makes more sense.
[...] talk I highlighted a number of them. Researchblogging, which I subscribe to and have talked about before, is a service that aggregates online content from blogs about peer-reviewed scientific research, [...]