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Somewhat legendary science and culture blog 3 Quarks Daily has just announced the 3rd instalment of its science blogging prize. This year’s competition will be judged by physicist and writer Lisa Randall, which is awesome, and I hope to see some good physics writing given the nod.
All details are here, and you have until 31 May, 11:59 pm EST, to nominate your favourite online science writing in the comments of that same post.
A lot of great things in life are free, like summer rain, kittens and, as it turns out, great writing on the internet. Lots of excellent writers spend time and effort writing about whatever subject they’re passionate about on websites they maintain for themselves, or as part of a network, with very little or no financial reward. They may not do it for money (I don’t), but if their content is better than what is produced in the mainstream media, which we mostly pay for, then why shouldn’t bloggers receive some pennies for their efforts? Last week, science writer-blogger Ed Yong announced he’d start showing his support for the some of his favourite bloggers:
I read these pieces in amazement that their writers should stick them up for free, when so many others pen far lesser works for a salary. Clearly, the writers are happy to provide free content and they get various advantages out of it. But I absolutely believe that good writers should be paid for good work. I read these pieces and think, “That took a lot of effort. It’s a shame they didn’t get paid for that. I’d pay good money for that.”
And then, last week, I thought, “Hey, why don’t I pay good money for that?”
Once a month Ed will pick his favourite pieces of writing of the month, and make a small token donation (starting at £3) to their writers. What a cool initiative! He’s also installed a Paypal button on his blog to allow others to contribute to the tip jar – whatever gets contributed will be split among the writers of the month. If you would like to show your support, go pay a visit.
Image: theothermattm
In the last week or so I’ve been reading some blog posts that were written in the aftermath of the Science Online conference that just took place in the US last week. Lots of interesting topics were covered all centred around the themes of science communication, research and the web, and the state of the blogosphere. One particular panel session has gathered a number of interesting blog posts – it was called “Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name”, led by Sheril Kirschenbaum, Anne Jefferson, Joanne Manaster, Maryn McKenna and Kathryn Clancy. You can read some good coverage here, here and here.
The panelists and participants discussed some of the problems that women face when they have a public web presence, like this one. They open themselves up to criticism that can feel gendered or sexist on their blogs, and may have their commitment to hard science questioned in their jobs. One interesting comment that all the posts discussing this panel have highlighted, is that women bloggers do less self-promotion than men.
I sometimes get requests to retweet posts, and I usually oblige – but it’s true that I’ve only ever had such requests from men. I’ve never asked anyone specifically to retweet or promote any of my posts either. Commenting is another thing: this blog doesn’t get a large number of comments on the whole, but when I checked, I found very few (single digits!) comments by women that I didn’t have some sort of strong real-life connection with already. That’s a little odd. I suppose to judge the significance of that, I should know the gender ratio of the people who actually read this blog. Can you tell me?
[polldaddy poll=4458553]
[Note: I'll keep the poll open until 10 pm on Friday 4 Feb - in case you need time to think about it.]
Amidst the perennial discussion of how to get more women into scientific careers and keep them there, it hadn’t occurred to me that female science bloggers may also be in a minority.
A few days ago, Jenny Rohn posted a graph on her blog, showing the male to female ratio of several science blog networks: the well-established Discover and relative newcomers The Guardian, Wired and PLoS. She didn’t actually make any statement about gender balance or proportionality of representation – that was me – but an interesting discussion followed in the comments. Self-proclaimed “armchair activist” Martin Robbins started a hashtag, kickstarted the hive overmind, and collated a list of women science bloggers over at his new perch in The Guardian.
So that’s how my name ended up in my favourite newspaper. Hurrah.
It’s a really nice initiative to get more attention to us women who write about science. Female role models have been cited as an important factor in getting and keeping more women in science careers, and in that respect increasing the visibility of working female scientists is a great idea.
And yet, and yet. I don’t think singling women out is particularly constructive way to approach a gender balance issue – a gender balance issue that, in this case, we don’t even know for sure exists.
Last week I attended the 2010 instalment of Science Online London, which was held over 2 days at the British Library. Both days were packed with interesting discussions covering lots of topics, loosely bound by the general ideas of science and the internet. One topic that caught my attention in a number of sessions, and that I’d been giving some thought before the conference, was the different pros and cons of online versus offline activities.
I enjoy having an active online persona immensely, and since I started blogging and tweeting I’ve gained a lot of experience, knowledge and perspective. But recently I’ve found myself wondering: what are the limitations of being active online? What can a blog, however fantastic or prolific the writing, not achieve? And I tried to have some discussion about this at the conference.
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