ResearchBlogging.org News

Soon after my two posts on science blog aggregation, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker contacted me asking for my input on a site they were thinking about creating.

The three of us had similar ideas: Now that many leading bloggers from ScienceBlogs have moved elsewhere, there’s no central place readers can go to find out what’s going on in science blogging. Anton and Bora realized that a basic hub for science blogging wouldn’t be difficult to create from existing tools: Wordpress software and a few key plugins. So, after a couple weeks’ discussion, we put together a first-stab at a science blog aggregator in a few days. You can find it here:

Scienceblogging.org

The site is really just an aggregator of aggregators. Everything you see on the front page is a feed from some other bundle of blogs. In a couple cases, we made our own bundles using Friendfeed. The site is flexible enough to add additional bundles as bloggers and publishers form new blogging communities. It’s not ideal — I think the ultimate science blog aggregator will allow users to view blog posts by topic, and perhaps have some way of identifying the best posts. But it’s flexible enough that with some input from the community, we might be able to shape it into something really special. Check it out, and let us know what you think.

We’re pleased to announce that ResearchBlogging.org now includes posts about peer-reviewed research in Polish. Polish is the sixth language supported by the site, following Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and English.

The site was designed with the flexibility to offer blog posts in any language, but the key to supporting a new language lies not in the software, but the humans behind it. Since most of the people blogging about peer-reviewed research are busy scientists themselves, it can be a challenge to locate qualified experts willing to help evaluate participating blogs to ensure that our standards are maintained, no matter the language of the blog post.

Fortunately, Polish-language bloggers January Weiner, Doskonale Szare, and Ewa Krawczyk have volunteered their valuable time and expertise and will serve as the first Polish-language editors of the site. These bloggers will lead the way in sharing their thoughts on peer-reviewed research, written in Polish.

Visitors to ResearchBlogging.org can specify which language or languages they prefer to read, and the site remembers their preferences from visit to visit (to select multiple languages, use Control-Click or Command-Click). There are also RSS feeds available in each language, and Twitter users can follow posts in each language as well (Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, German, English).

Here are the first Polish-language blogs to register for the site.

• Anomalia Klimatyczna
• Archeowieści
• Biokompost
• Blog chemiczny: Chemia organiczna – Synteza – Retrosynteza
• Blog de Bart
• Data Mining a la polonaise
• Doskonale Szare
• figulacha z makulachem
• LIść ledwie, na wietrze Mocy
• Mateusz Weblog
• Mikroby
• Modne Bzdury
• nic prostszego
• Pisane z labu
• Prognozy numeryczne GFS/WRF
• Remote sensing i ekologia
• Sporothrix

We encourage new bloggers to register. If you blog about peer reviewed research in Polish (or English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese or German), visit our registration page to sign up. If you know a blogger in one of those languages, let them know about our site and encourage them to join.

ResearchBlogging.org helps people locate and share academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research, instead of just news reports and press releases. Bloggers use the ResearchBlogging.org icon to identify their thoughtful posts about serious research, and those posts are collected in a database and displayed on a central site for easy reference.

Over 1,200 registered blogs publish dozens of posts about peer-reviewed research each day. That’s more content than the science section of any mainstream newspaper, and the posts collected are typically much longer and more detailed than a newspaper article. Even if you don’t have a blog, you can still use the site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.

We’re pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 Research Blogging Awards!

It’s a fantastic group of bloggers, and it’s been a tremendous experience narrowing the list from 400 nominees to 150 finalists to 21 winners. In the end, registered bloggers on ResearchBlogging.org decided on the winners, so the best bloggers about peer-reviewed research were selected by their own peers.

Congratulations to all of the winners and finalists — an exceptional group of blogs. If you’re a winner or a finalist, be sure to visit the awards page to pick up your badge. We’ll be in touch with the winners soon about how to collect their prizes.

Thanks to our fantastic judges, to the bloggers who voted on the awards, and, most of all, to all the honorees for their exceptional work sharing peer-reviewed research with the world!

Click here to see the complete list of honorees!

Click here to listen to a podcast where Dave Munger and Seed Vice President for Global Partnerships Joy Moore discuss the awards.

We’re pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010 Research Blogging Awards.

Click here to see all the finalists

Our readers made over 400 nominations, which the judges painstakingly assessed to select 5 to 10 finalists in each of 19 categories (no award was given for “Best Blog — Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics”). Then a short list of the best overall blogs was created based on those ratings and individual nominations from the judges. The judges then discussed that list to decide on finalists for Research Blog of the Year, with its $1000 prize. Here is that list (in random order):

Research Blog of the Year Finalists

1. Supernova Condensate (RB page)
2. The Primate Diaries (RB page)
3. Exploding Galaxies and other Catastrophysics (RB page)
4. Neurophilosophy (RB page)
5. Neuroskeptic (RB page)
6. Not Exactly Rocket Science (RB page)
7. Skulls in the Stars (RB page)
8. Science-Based Medicine (RB page)
9. Christina’s LIS Rant (RB page)
10. Conservation Maven (RB page)

Originally the plan was to immedicaly open this field of finalists up to voting among registered ResearchBlogging.org users. However, after seeing the incredible breadth and depth of the blogs selected, we decided that it would be better to make the list available for one week, so voters would have a chance to take a closer look at each of the finalists before making their decisions. The list of finalists includes both links to the blog’s home page and its page on ResearchBlogging.org, so you can easily find their posts about peer-reviewed research.

So, one week from today, registered users will receive an email invitation from us to vote for the winners. If you’re registered with us, you may want to check your account to make sure your email address is up-to-date. If you’re not registered (and you blog about peer-reviewed research), you still have time to register so you can vote. Visit this page for more information.

We believe the list of finalists represents some of the best blogging being done on the internet today. The finalists should be honored to have been selected, and we’ve created a badge they can display on their blogs in recognition of this honor. Visit the Awards page for information on how to display the badge.

Voting for the winners will be open for one week from March 4 through March 11. The awards will be announced on March 23, 2010.

We’ve assembled a fantastic panel of judges for the Research Blogging awards. Here are brief biographies of each:

• Stacy Baker teaches biology at Staten Island Academy, using her class blog and other online tools to revolutionize high school biology teaching.
• Vaughan Bell is a clinical and research psychologist who is a regular contributor to the amazing Mind Hacks blog.
• David Bradley is a chemist by training and a freelance science writer based in Cambridge, England. He blogs at sciencebase.com and can be found on Twitter as @sciencebase.
• Marc Cadotte is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto who blogs at The EEB and Flow.
• David Dobbs is a science journalist whose work appears in The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine and blogs at Neuron Culture.
• Val Jones is a medical doctor who is CEO of Better Health, a site that certifies and collects medical blog posts.
• Dave Munger is a writer who serves as editor of ResearchBlogging.org and blogs at The Daily Monthly.
• Chad Orzel is Associate Professor of Physics at Union College, author of How to Teach Physics to your Dog and blogger at Uncertain Principles.
• Jennifer Ouellette is author of two books on physics as well as the founder of Cocktail Party Physics. She is director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange.
• Gavin Schmidt is a climatologist for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space studies and a founding member and blogger at Real Climate.

This astounding group of individuals (plus me) has graciously volunteered to narrow our list of nominated blogs down to 5–10 finalists in each category. Nominations close on February 11, and the finalists will be announced February 25. (There’s still time to nominate your blog! Click here.)

We’ll have separate judges for the non-English-language blogs, which I’ll list in a separate post.

In the past year, ResearchBlogging.org members have made over 5,000 blog posts about peer-reviewed research. That’s more science content than any major newspaper, often from experts in their fields. We think these outstanding bloggers deserve serious recognition for their time and effort.

Seed Media Group’s Research Blogging Awards honor the bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research in every field of scholarship.

Any blog that discusses peer-reviewed research is eligible for nomination, and the winners will be determined by votes from their peers in the Research Blogging community. All finalists will be highlighted on ResearchBlogging.org, and winners will receive cash prizes totaling $2000, with the Research Blog of the year taking home $1000.

Here’s how the awards will be chosen:

1. Nominations: Anyone can nominate blogs (including their own) to be considered for the awards. Nominations close February 11, 2010.
2. Finalists: A panel of expert judges will select 5 to 10 finalists in each category. Finalists will be announced February 25, 2010.
3. Voting: Only registered users of ResearchBlogging.org may vote for the winners. Voting will be open from February 25 to March 11, 2010.
4. Awards: The awards will be announced on March 23, 2010. Winners will be selected from the following categories:
   • Research Blog of the Year $1,000
   • Blog Post of the Year $50
   • Research Twitterer of the Year $50
   • Best New Blog (launched in 2009) $50
   • Best Expert-Level blog $50
   • Best Lay-Level blog $50
   • Funniest Blog $50
   • Best Blog — Spanish-Language $50
   • Best Blog — German-Language $50
   • Best Blog — Portuguese-Language $50
   • Best Blog — Chinese-Language $50
   • Best Blog — Biology $50
   • Best Blog — Chemistry, Physics, or Astronomy $50
   • Best Blog — Clinical Research $50
   • Best Blog — Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics $50
   • Best Blog — Conservation or Geosciences $50
   • Best Blog — Health $50
   • Best Blog — Psychology $50
   • Best Blog — Philosophy, Research, or Scholarship $50
   • Best Blog — Neuroscience $50
   • Best Blog — Social Sciences or Anthropology $50

Nominations are open now. Click here to nominate your favorites.

Today, I’m leading a workshop at the Science Online 2010 conference entitled Blogging 102. The idea behind the session is that many people have been blogging or working online for years. We’ll be discussing new tools and techniques that can help them bring their blogs to the next level. We’ve had some preliminary discussion about the workshop here, but I wanted to use this post as a rough outline for the workshop. Even if you can’t attend the physical workshop, the links here (and discussion in the comments) may help you improve your own blog.

Content tools

• Poll Daddy — Free, stable polling site.
• YouTube — Yes, you’ve all heard of it, and it can be useful for displaying crude video. But there are some limitations to this site — it’s not very good for displaying rapid, slide-show type video. I’d love to hear of alternatives.
• Odeo Player — Handy for streaming an MP3 on your own site.
• Survey Monkey — This is the best-designed site I’ve found for free online surveys, if you have fewer than 100 respondents. You can also pay for unlimited responses.

Recommended by commenters but not used by me:

• http://www.slideshare.net On this website, you can upload slides and share them with a big online community.
• Apture Wordpress plugin for embedding content using a variety of different media
• A tool for adding FriendFeed content to your blog

Analysis tools

• Google Analytics. Comprehensive tool for analyzing site traffic. Not quite real-time, though.
• Sitemeter. Less comprehensive than Google, but gives real-time information. Especially useful for learning where your traffic is coming from.
• FeedBurner Good way to see who’s subscribing to your RSS feeds. You can also use it to syndicate your posts to Twitter.
• Backtype. Find out who’s tweeting about your posts, or linking to you in comments. Nice, new service. It also offers a WordPress plugin that allows you to embed twitter comments in a post’s comment thread (link is an example of it working)

Improving content
Improving content can be the subject of an entire workshop, and indeed, I’ve led such workshops in the past. But here are some links to blog posts with tips. We’ll collect additional suggestions at the workshop.

• Jack of Kent just had a nice blog post on the topic: What Is Good Blogging?
• I wrote a blog post about writing a few years back that I think is still relevant: How to report scientific research to a general audience
• I offer more tips on content in this post

Connecting with social networks
Networks like Twitter and Facebook could be becoming the most important way people learn about blog posts. But content itself is still largely produced on blogs, which give users the most control over their content. I’m still a newbie when it comes to integrating blog content with social networks, but I’d love to have a discussion about how best to do this. Possible topics:

• Facebook pages, groups, and getting blog content there (here’s an example of an excellent fan page)
• Using Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed (and more?) together
• Creating mobile-friendly blogs

Beyond the workshop
I’m hoping this post will become a living space where the workshop can continue long beyond Science Online 2010. Feel free to share your own insights in the comments. In the future, I’ll try to revise this post to synthesize our collective insights.

With over 800,000 journal articles published in 2008 alone, it’s impossible even for experts to read all the peer-reviewed research published in their fields. So how do they choose which articles to read? How do non-experts decide which articles are the most important? Until recently, there really wasn’t an effective way to assess the importance of a given journal article. While Thomson Reuters’ Impact Factor purports to measure the impact of an entire journal, this measure alone can’t say how important a particular article published in a journal is. Most of the articles published even in the most well-regarded journals don’t have especially dramatic impacts.

A new movement is afoot to improve on this system, and ResearchBlogging.org is proud to be a part of it. Instead of assigning ratings to entire journals, “article-level metrics” strives to assess the importance of each individual article published. The highly respected journal publisher PLoS began its article-level metrics initiative with several basic tools in March of 2009. But as PLoS ONE publisher Peter Binfield explained in a recent presentation, their plan included rolling out several more advanced features over the course of the year. Today marks the launch of one such tool, a partnership with ResearchBlogging.org to identify—nearly in real time—well-considered blog posts written about their articles.

ResearchBlogging.org now has over 900 registered bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research in five different languages. Visitors can find blog posts about research by searching for topics that interest them, or by searching for a particular journal article. The relationship with PLoS allows people reading the original articles on the PLoS site to link directly to blog posts about the article.

Every PLoS article has a “metrics” tab offering several different measures designed to help readers assess its impact. Readers can see how many times the article has been viewed, comments made directly on the article, and a user-generated star-rating. Now for the first time they will also see links to posts in blogs registered and approved by ResearchBlogging.org. Since the site carefully vets every blog and rejects both blogs and individual posts that don’t meet its guidelines, these posts represent the best commentary the internet has to offer about peer-reviewed research, often from experts in the field. This offers an important early means of assessing the impact of an article. While PLoS also counts the number of citations of an article by other peer-reviewed articles, these typically take a minimum of several months to get published, while blog posts about articles often appear within a week of publication—and even on the date of publication, since PLoS offers bloggers the opportunity to see pre-release versions of its articles.

Blogs offer another benefit over some other article-level metrics. As Cameron Neylon and Shirley Wu noted in an article in PLoS Biology, experts may be reluctant to offer comments directly on journal articles, because they often don’t receive academic credit for their remarks. Blog posts on ResearchBlogging.org are eligible to be selected as the Blog Pick of the Month at PLoS ONE, and notable posts are recognized daily with Editor’s Selections on ResearchBlogging.org—all accomplishments that can look impressive on an academic curriculum vitae. ResearchBlogging.org now indexes over 8,000 blog posts, including over 700 citations of PLoS articles, so these incentives appear to be working.

For more information about this new way to assess the impact of journal articles, check out this one-minute demonstration on the PLoS website. There is also a full explanation of article-level metrics on PLoS here.

To register your blog with ResearchBlogging.org and participate in this program, click here.

Neylon, C., & Wu, S. (2009). Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact PLoS Biology, 7 (11) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000242

For nearly a year, ResearchBlogging.org posts have been shared via a widget on ScienceBlogs.com, directing over 150,000 visitors to our member blogs’ posts. Now nearly all of our registered users can place a customized version of the widget like this one on their own blogs (Not registered yet? If you blog about peer-reviewed research, sign up here). We’re thrilled to offer this exciting feature that many of our bloggers have asked for.

As a blogger, you can specify which category of posts you’d like to display: Just “Neuroscience” and “Psychology,” everything on our site, or any other combination you can think of. Even if you haven’t had a chance to write something recently, your readers will still find something new every time they visit your blog.

How to set up your widget

• Login to your ResearchBlogging.org account, edit your blog settings, and click “Enable widget” at the top of the page.
• Scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see an area labeled “widget settings.” Select the tags you want (make sure you don’t select from the “tags” section for your blog itself). You can pick whichever categories you’d like to show up in your widget on your blog.
• Copy the code from the “embed HTML” box.
• Save the changes (you can change these categories at any time and your blog will automatically be updated).
• Login to your blog and paste the widget settings in your sidebar. Here are some tips for how to do this on Blogger and Wordpress.org blogs.
  • WORDPRESS
    For most Wordpress blogs, you’ll need to use the “text” widget. Just copy the code from ResearchBlogging.org, then login to your blog and click on “widgets” under “appearance.” Click on a text widget to add, click on Edit, and paste your code in. Save the changes. Note: WordPress.com policy does not allow widgets like ours on their free blogs. You can use the widget on the downloadable version from WordPress.org that you host using your own ISP
  • BLOGGER.COM
    Login to Blogger.com and click on “Layout”. (if you’re already logged in and viewing your blog, you’ll need to click on “customize” first) Then click on “Add a Gadget” and click on “HTML/JavaScript”. Paste the code in the box and click on Save.

Frequently asked questions:

1. Can I use the widget on any blog?
We’ve tested the widget on many platforms, including Movable Type, Blogger, and WordPress. However, due to Wordpress.com policy prohibiting external advertising, it won’t work on free WordPress.com blogs (we haven’t tested it, but it may work on some paid “professional” packages). If you host your own Wordpress blog on your own ISP (which you download from wordpress.org rather than wordpress.com), it should work fine.

2. What are the benefits of using the widget?
The widget offers a customized stream of posts on the topics you specify, so readers visiting your blog will always find something new. In addition, your posts appear on the widget on other ResearchBlogging.org users’ blogs, so your headlines have the potential to be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers.

3. Will there be ads on the widget?
There is a small space for advertising at the bottom of the widget. Right now it’s just a placeholder, but eventually these ads will be customized to the content on your blog, much like Google ads. We hope these ads will ultimately cover most of the administrative costs of ResearchBlogging.org. We have no plans for additional ads on ResearchBlogging.org.

4. Can I change the categories that are displayed on my widget?
Yes, you can change the categories at any time on your “Edit blog settings” page. There is no need to re-insert the code on your blog; the new categories will be displayed automatically.

5. Can I specify the language of posts on the widget?
Currently the widget only displays English-language posts. We plan to offer a language setting in the future.

6. Can I place the widget anywhere? Can I share the code with my friends?
Currently the widget is only offered to registered bloggers with ResearchBlogging.org. (If you blog about peer-reviewed research, you can register here)

If you have any problems with or questions about the widget, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments, or send us an email at admin@researchblogging.org.

We’ve been close followers of the progress of AcaWiki here at ResearchBlogging.org. Now their site has been formally launched, and it looks fantastic, with dozens of articles summarizing peer-reviewed research reports, all released to the public with a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Many of the posts appearing on ResearchBlogging.org qualify to appear on the site since they discuss peer-reviewed research (although AcaWiki is looking specifically for summaries and literature reviews). If you’ve written a post you’d like to add to AcaWiki, you can login to their site and add the post yourself, or you can apply the Creative Commons Attribution license to your post and add the Creative Commons tag to your citations. That will allow AcaWiki’s editors to easily locate your post and add it to their site.

Below is the text of the AcaWiki press release announcing their site launch:
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