Guidelines for using the Research Blogging icon and site

October 26th, 2007 Administration 69 Comments
By Dave Munger

The “Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research” icons and the aggregator at ResearchBlogging.org are for anyone to use to indicate when they’re writing a thoughtful blog post about peer-reviewed research, not just a link to a news article or press release.

This post contains the detailed guidelines for using the icon and aggregator, based on weeks of discussion here at ResearchBlogging.org. If you have further recommendations for how they should be used, or you want to suggest modifications to these guidelines, be sure to let us know in the comments.

  1. The “Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research” icons are to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about peer-reviewed research.
  2. Similarly, when a blogger is registered with ResearchBlogging.org and uses our system to generate a citation for purposes of aggregation by our site, the citation is to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about the peer-reviewed research listed in the citation.
  3. While there is no hard-and-fast definition of “peer-review,” peer reviewed research should meet the following guidelines:
    • Reviewed by experts in field
    • Edited
    • Archived
    • Published with clearly stated publication standards
    • Viewed as trustworthy by experts in field
    • In the case of certain curated archives such as arXiv.org, the *intention* for research to be reviewed may be seen as an adequate proxy for peer review
  4. Posts using the icon or our citation code should offer a complete formal citation of the work(s) being discussed.
  5. The post author should have read and understood the entire work cited.
  6. The blog post should report accurately and thoughtfully on the research it presents.
  7. Where possible, the post should link to the original source and / or provide a DOI or other universal reference number.
  8. The post should contain original work by the post author — while some quoting of others is acceptable, the majority of the post should be the author’s own work.
  9. Users and readers may report potential abuse of the icons and aggregation system by flagging the post on our site. Reported abuses may be brought to the attention of readers and discussed publicly online.
  10. Repeated abuse of the icons or our aggregation system will result in removal from our aggregation system.

These guidelines have been created by the community of ResearchBlogging.org readers. They are subject to ongoing revision so as to maintain the spirit of good scholarship. Again, feel free to suggest modifications in the comments.

69 Responses to “Guidelines for using the Research Blogging icon and site”

  1. Ian Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 9:51 am

    Repeated abuse of the icons will result in removal of the privilege of using them.

    Is this enforceable?

    I think this statement — while laudable in principle — is just begging for trouble. There’s a vast population of internet users with a you-can’t-push-me-around chip on their shoulders, and most of those have only the vaguest idea of what “free speech” really means. If any of them hear about this they’ll take it as a “censorship” thing. If 20,000 whiny punks (or 20 whiny script-kiddies with 1000 blogs each) put the BPR3 icon on everything they write, what do you plan to do about it? If you don’t have a good answer, then don’t ask them to do it.

    About the only thing you have any control over is the link-back from the icon to the central web site. Do you have a mechanism that you could use to point abusive use of the icon to a different message (”This user has not registered the BPR3 icon with us”, “This user has consistently posted pseudoscience”, “This user has consistently abused the BPR3 icon”)?

  2. Dave Munger Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 10:13 am

    About the only thing you have any control over is the link-back from the icon to the central web site. Do you have a mechanism that you could use to point abusive use of the icon to a different message (”This user has not registered the BPR3 icon with us”, “This user has consistently posted pseudoscience”, “This user has consistently abused the BPR3 icon”)?

    Ultimately, you’re correct, of course. In our plan, icon abusers will not have their posts aggregated, so most of the benefit of using the icon will be lost. We’ll be hosting the icons here, so in principle we could prevent certain URLs from displaying the icon. In practice people could just copy and paste.

    Maybe we could say “Repeated abuse of the icons will result in removal from our aggregation system.”

  3. BrianR Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    Thanks for all your hard work putting this together…i’ve been following it semi-closely. I have a question (if it has already come up somewhere and been answered I apologize): Can, or should, we put the icon on our older posts? I have several posts where this icon would be appropriate but they are spread over the last several months.

    thanks!

  4. Dave Munger Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    You may put it up on older posts, but we’re not actively encouraging that because we think that when we have the aggregation system in place, people will want to enter their old posts there, so that they appear in our searchable database.

  5. MalteE Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 5:55 am

    May the icon be used in posts that criticize a peer-reviewed paper or published book? When you say that the blog should report “accurately and thoughtfully”, it seems to suggest a positive review or, a blog posting that is in support of the research within a given work.

  6. Dave Munger Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 6:46 am

    MalteE:

    No, there is no requirement that the posts be supportive of the work. “Accurately” in this case means that the post does not misrepresent what the the peer-reviewed work says. It doesn’t mean the blogger has to agree with the researchers’ conclusions.

    I’m wondering if there’s a better way to phrase that guideline to make that point more clearly.

  7. Guido Núñez Mujica Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 8:06 am

    Is it possible to blog about doctoral theses which have not been published as papers yet?

    I am asking because I am planning to blog about some thesis that I am using right now to develop mine, point some of their good results and practices and point also what you should NOT do when writing a metabolic model, based on the troubles that I am finding, and I think that the spirit of the icon is there, even if a thesis is not a paper yet.

  8. Steve Matheson Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    Dave, you wrote:

    You may put it up on older posts, but we’re not actively encouraging that because we think that when we have the aggregation system in place, people will want to enter their old posts there, so that they appear in our searchable database.

    I don’t follow this. What is the benefit of NOT using the icon on already-existing posts?

  9. Dave Munger Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    Steve:

    You may put it on older posts, absolutely. We just don’t want you to be disappointed that you have to do more work in a few weeks when we put our aggregation system in place.

    We will have a super-slick way to participate in aggregation, but it requires a couple additional steps beyond copying and pasting the code into a post.

  10. Martín Pereyra Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    What an interesting project! I have some questions:

    1) Is the icon exclusively for recently published research, or I can use the icon for “old” (vgr., 5 year old) papers?

    2) Can I use the icon in posts written in languages other than English? What have you planned for other languages? I don’t post neither regularly nor extensively on peer-reviewed research, but it would be nice to know about it…

  11. Dave Munger Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Martin,

    There is no age limit on the papers you choose, as long as they are peer-reviewed.

    Right now we have no plans for handling languages other than English. Maybe we should get started! I’ve seen links from Italian and now Spanish language blogs.

    From your perspective, would it be better if Spanish blogs had their own separate site or were incorporated into the main site?

  12. Martín Pereyra Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    Thank you!

    IMHO, at this phase a language tag for the aggregator and/or icons with a language indicator could be enough, and each language may have its own feed. Translations of the Guidelines and other basic information would be convenient. I see no need for different sites; probably only for languages with a lot of activity.

    Meanwhile, let’s see if I can spread the word…

  13. Dan Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 10:02 pm

    7. The post should contain original work by the post author – while some quoting of others is acceptable, the majority of the post should be the author’s own work.

    By ‘original work,’ you mean ‘original writing,’ right? Or do you mean our own data?

    (Probably just a dumb question, but I do associate the word ‘work’ with ‘data’ and not ‘writing.’)

  14. » Some random titbits » business|bytes|genes|molecules Says:
    October 31st, 2007 at 12:12 am

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  15. Rachel Says:
    October 31st, 2007 at 7:53 am

    This is interesting, and I plan to start using it on my blog. Would the icon be appropriate for posts reviewing published books, as someone else mentioned, and for review items such as Cochrane reviews or AHRQ evidence reports?

  16. Dave Munger Says:
    October 31st, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Rachel,

    I think books are going to depend on the discipline. Many books published by mainstream publishers are *not* peer-reviewed. But in some disciplines (including many fields in the humanities), books are considered the gold standard of publishing. In some areas of the sciences, books are viewed as less reliable sources than journals.

    I’m not familiar with the review items you mention. Are they peer-reviewed? Can anyone else comment on that?

  17. Rachel Says:
    October 31st, 2007 at 4:33 pm

    Dave,
    Thanks for your reply. Cochrane reviews and AHRQ evidence report address topics in medicine – they are attempts to look at all of the existing evidence on a point of care, and make a recommendation based on the available research. So, they’re not the primary research themselves, but attempt to integrate all of that data into a general recommendation for medical care. I hate to be pedantic, but I sometimes blog about new ones when they come out if they’re of interest.
    /librarian nerd questions

  18. Dave Munger Says:
    November 1st, 2007 at 5:07 am

    It’s an interesting question, Rachel. I’d say lit reviews should be considered “peer reviewed” if in fact they are peer reviewed.

    The Cochrane collaboration, based on what I could find from their site, is a borderline case. The reviews do allow feedback from readers, but are they peer-reviewed before they get to that point? The site isn’t clear. They’re clearly based on research, and they have clear standards for citing their sources and so on.

    AHRQ seems similar except that it’s a government agency and doesn’t appear to have slick feedback options.

    Maybe the point is to go back to the guidelines. We’re not sure they’re peer reviewed. They do have standards, they’re edited, and archived. Do experts see these as trustworthy sources? My guess is yes — so we’re meeting 4 of 5 guidelines. For now I’d lean to the side of including them — but we can always reassess in the future.

  19. Research Blogging Icon « Bioinfo Blog! Says:
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  21. Danny Chrastina Says:
    December 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am

    What if it’s a pseudoscience paper which has been peer-reviewed by other pseudoscientists? I’m thinking of the reviews I’ve written of papers published in Homeopathy or J. Alt. Complement. Med. which point out their glaring misuse of quantum mechanical ideas.

  22. Dave Munger Says:
    December 27th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    That’s a great question, Danny. This is where a project like BPR3 can really get interesting. I think it’s an issue we should put up for a larger debate. I’ll try to write a post about it later this week.

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  25. Kaj Sotala Says:
    January 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    I have a question – what qualifies as “research”? Most of the time, this is obvious, but what about stuff in philosophy journals?

    For instance, let’s say a prestigious, peer-reviewed ethics journal publishes two articles:

    * One that takes a commonly held line of thinking about ethics, formulates it as a formal logical framework, and shows that combining a certain opinion about ethics with the framework creates a contradiction. (For instance, Voices From Another World: Must We Respect the Interests of People Who Do Not, and Will Never, Exist?, published in Ethics.)

    * One that ponders a current ethical dilemma (for instance, genetic screening) by presenting different ethical reasons for opposing and supporting a certain course of action, and presenting scenarios which appeal to the emotions of the readers (for instance, reprinting the opinion writing of a disabled person who’s led a good life and wouldn’t have wanted her parents to abort her).

    The first one should probably qualify as research – if it doesn’t, then most of the stuff in math journals doesn’t, either. But what about the other one? On the other hand, it’s more of an opinion piece than research, but on the other hand, it does compile together different opinions and the reasoning behind them, it’s published in a peer-reviewed journal, and it may cite previous articles that have addressed the question (though not necessarily)?

  26. Happy Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 6:51 am

    Do i have to register with your Blog in order to use the icon and get the postings aggregated here?
    I ask, because the register-form doesn’t seem to work properly. My browser (FF, latest 2.x version) always returns an nearly-empty page upon sending the filled-in form, and i still cannot log-in.

  27. Dave Munger Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Happy,

    You did successfully submit the form, but unfortunately, since your blog is not in English, we can’t support it on ResearchBlogging.org at this time. I’ll be posting here soon about the possibility of supporting non-English-language blogs in the future.

  28. More Discovery Institute Shenanigans « Impolite Conversation Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 7:54 am

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  29. Miles Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Casey Luskin claims he’s going to respond to this thread. I’m curious to know how should an organization dedicated to promoting psuedoscience (intelligent design creationism) like the Discovery Institute participate here when their governing goals include:

    1) To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies

    2) To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God

    More here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

    Is there a way that they can adopt legitimate scientific practices even though their objective is to replace science with theistic understandings?

    I’m curious how this is going to pan out.

    Miles

  30. Miles Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Perhaps Mr Luskin could explain these quotes and how they relate to the goals of the BPR3:

    “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.”

    “This isn’t really, and never has been a debate about science. Its about religion and philosophy.”

    “The objective (of the wedge strategy) is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to ‘the truth’ of the Bible and then ‘the question of sin’ and finally ‘introduced to Jesus.’

  31. Hardin Scholarly Communication News » Blog Archive » Harvesting and Organizing OA Blog Discussions of Peer-reviewed Research - The University of Iowa Libraries Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

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  32. Hank Roberts Says:
    February 17th, 2008 at 1:29 am

    I just hope you’ve trademarked or copyrighted the logo and name of the group, or do so right away. It’s not hard. It’ll save grief later to get it right.

  33. Anne-Marie Says:
    February 28th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    I have tried to register but still cannot figure out how to access the code for the icons, and my account profile will not save changes (it will not let me add my url, etc). Any tips?

  34. Dave Munger Says:
    February 29th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Anne-Marie, You’ll need to send me an email (dsmunger — @ — gmail — . — com). I’m having trouble identifying which account is yours. Please give your account login name in your email.

  35. Nimravid Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    I’m thinking about signing up some of my blog articles, but I want to be sure what types of entries are appropriate. Some of my posts cover an article, but don’t usually go into technical details (I’ll say “they found this” but not “they found this by Western blot”) because I’m trying to keep my blog accessible by the educated layperson. How deep should a discussion be? Secondly, some of my posts are mostly related to one article, but also bring in findings from several other articles. Should posts be restricted to one source, or can they use several providing one is core and is covered in enough detail?

    And can you add old posts? It looked like there was some uncertainty about that in October, is the new aggregation system up now?

  36. Dave Munger Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    Nimravid, can you post links to the type of post you were thinking about? It sounds like it will be fine, but it would be better if we could see exactly what you’re asking about (you can also email me at dsmunger — @ — gmail — . — com).

    Multiple citations are fine, but it’s best if you only actually use our citation generator to cite the articles you discuss in detail.

    We can’t add old posts now; that’s still being worked on and we hope to have that feature soon.

  37. Nimravid Says:
    March 14th, 2008 at 9:14 am

    Ok, I’ll give some examples.

    This one reviews the findings, but doesn’t discuss how the results were collected (character analysis sounds agonizingly painfully boring): http://nimravid.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/the-metazoan-tree-of-life-improved/ I think this one would count.

    This one reviews some findings, but doesn’t discuss the author’s main point (which is the pattern of character acquisition in mammal evolution) and instead seizes their phylogenetic tree and runs in a different direction: http://nimravid.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/extinct-mammal-groups/ I think it is a good post but would not count.

    This one uses six different sources, but the main point is centered on source 3 and covers it pretty thoroughly: http://nimravid.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/protostome-deuterostome/ I think this one would count.

    This one uses eight different sources and doesn’t really expound on any one of them: http://nimravid.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/nimravidae/ Again I like this post a lot but think it would not count.

    I have some others that are obviously applicable, like this one: http://nimravid.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/retrotransposition-chimeric-transcript-new-gene/ It covers one paper in good detail.

    Thanks for helping clarify!

    Looking forward to contributing, I signed up yesterday but have not had my account activated yet.

  38. Wobbler Says:
    April 12th, 2008 at 6:55 am

    # Dan Says:

    7. The post should contain original work by the post author

    By ‘original work,’ you mean ‘original writing,’ right? Or do you mean our own data?

    —————–

    Judging some of the blog posts with this icon, I can assume the answer is “original writing”? In that case, do you consider rewriting content in a cited article in your own words as “original writing”? And does it (formally) also apply to this: ‘the majority of the post should be the author’s own work’? Because I have seen quite a few blog posts where bloggers put the material of the cited article in a post but in rewritten/shortened in their own words. Does that constitute as “original work”?

  39. Dave Munger Says:
    April 12th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    I have seen quite a few blog posts where bloggers put the material of the cited article in a post but in rewritten/shortened in their own words. Does that constitute as “original work”?

    Yes, in my view, that’s original work — especially if the writing simplifies or clarifies the original.

    The reason I used the term “work” instead of writing is that I didn’t want to preclude other types of work, such as reanalysis of the data, preparing new figures or graphs, making videos or interactive demos, or even doing actual new research.

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  41. Valentin Says:
    September 23rd, 2008 at 6:18 am

    one thing the guideline (and the comments) leave open is the question of ’self-citation’. I for one made a habit out of putting my own papers on my blog (often as a pre-print, before the actual publication is available but after their acceptance) – would you say that including your “blogging on peer-reviewed research icon” on such a post would constitute a good use of the icon? borderline? or an abuse?

  42. Dave Munger Says:
    September 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 am

    As long as you’re adding something new to the discussion and not just self-quoting, then self-citation is fine.

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  48. Bruceleeeowe Says:
    August 15th, 2009 at 10:46 am

    I was just trying to import my older post. But somehow It’s not working. It says your post has been imported but not appear. Is it necessary to having citation? I don’t think my post is based on any article of arxiv or so but it is based on research. Please help.

  49. Dave Munger Says:
    August 15th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Yes, every post on appearing on researchblogging.org must cite peer-reviewed research.

  50. Dave Munger Says:
    August 21st, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    I updated this post to make it clearer that the guidelines apply both to the use of our icon and the citation codes and aggregation system provided by ResearchBlogging.org.

  51. Luke Says:
    November 8th, 2009 at 6:00 pm

    Kaj Sotala asked about whether “research” in philosophy in peer-reviewed journals counts. I would like to hear an answer on that. Anyone?

  52. Dave Munger Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 7:19 am

    Luke,

    Yes, peer-reviewed journal articles in any discipline qualify.

    Dave

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  54. shufeng-zhang Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    Mr Dave Munger：

    Could you provide chinese consulting service？

    (请问，你们是否可以提供中文咨询服务，这样会方便中国用户。谢谢）

    shufeng-zhang

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  59. Jason Snyder Says:
    March 12th, 2010 at 3:38 pm

    Is there a place at researchblogging.org for posts that are like review articles? I.e. blog posts that discuss a field of research rather than individual papers? I’ve written a couple of these myself, and would love to share them here as they do cover peer reviewed research but am wary of listing 50 citations and DOIs etc rather than simply linking to the originals. Based on your response to Nimravid, above, I could just cite the ones that are discussed in more detail?

    here’s an example: http://bit.ly/timecourse

    What do you think?

  60. Jan Husdal Says:
    March 16th, 2010 at 9:57 am

    What about edited books? Each chapter is usually written by one or several scholars, and each chapter is usually peer-reviewed before finally accepted for the book. Does the book, or each chapter for that matter, qualify as peer-reviewed research that meets the guidelines?

  61. Dave Munger Says:
    March 18th, 2010 at 4:13 pm

    Jason,

    I’d say that post qualifies — you’re citing peer-reviewed research and discussing it thoughtfully.

    Jan,

    Edited books is more of a gray area. They’re not always peer-reviewed. I think citing individual chapters (if reviewed) makes more sense than entire books.

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  64. Bayle Shanks Says:
    April 18th, 2010 at 5:07 am

    Is this meant to include or exclude posts which are neither agreeing or disagreeing with the arguments made in a paper, but merely summarizing it and/or noting it as potentially interesting to others?

    If this sort of thing is meant to be included, then criterion #5 should be dropped, “The post author should have read and understood the entire work cited”. A summary or judgement of interestingness can be made without understanding every word in an article.

    Example #1: I have often blogged about neurobiology articles without reading every word in the Methods section, which can describe things such as what age mice were when they were killed, what sort of anesthetic was used when killing them, etc.

    Example #2: sometimes a statistical test is used that I haven’t heard of before; if I am just summarizing the article, I usually just assume that the test was appropriate and move on; technically, though, I cannot claim to understand the “entirety” of the article if it contains a word I don’t know the definition of.

    Example #3: Sometimes some part of the research is interesting to me and other parts are not. For example, perhaps an interesting new biological phenomenon is described, and then in another part of the paper progress in made towards identifying the molecular mechanisms involved; in this case the paper could, in theory, be logically separated into two separate papers. Some readers may be very interested in the phenomenon and not so interested in the molecular biology, and others may have the opposite interest. In this case, I would read the part interesting to me and summarize it in a blog post, and not read the other part.

    Perhaps the phase “thoughtfully discuss” is meant precisely to rule out blog posts which merely summarize and point to a paper, without adding to the lines of argument within it. But if it is meant to include such posts, then criterion #5 should be relaxed — perhaps to “The post author should have read and understood those parts of the work cited which are directly relevant to arguments made by the post author”.

  65. Bayle Shanks Says:
    April 18th, 2010 at 6:12 am

    (note: it’s possible for a post to be “just a summary” and yet to still meet the guidelines in http://researchblogging.org/news/?p=1189 ; for example, i once wrote the following blog post, which is a summary and yet which contained substantial original content and went beyond the title and abstract: http://neurodudes.com/2006/01/05/polychronization-computation-with-spikes/ )

  66. Dave Munger Says:
    April 18th, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Bayle,

    Yes, “just a summary” is fine, as long as you’re not simply repeating / directly quoting what’s in the abstract.

  67. Bayle Shanks Says:
    April 20th, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    thanks. what do you think of my criticism of criterion #5 in comment #64? i feel like many posters interpret this non-literally anyway and so label their blog posts “research blogging” even when they haven’t read and understood every single word of an article — but i am a relatively literal-minded person and i don’t want to lie and claim that i read/understood more than i did.

  68. Dave Munger Says:
    April 20th, 2010 at 5:09 pm

    Bayle,

    I don’t see a reason to remove the guideline. I see your point, but as we say at the outset, these are just guidelines, not hard and fast rules. The spirit of these guidelines is basically just “understand what you’re writing about.” No one can have a perfect understanding of all the science behind a study. Even the study authors may be referencing works they don’t fully understand. For example, experimental physicists don’t necessarily understand the theory that underlies their work. And we can’t create rules that anticipate every possible situation, which is why we say they are guidelines, open to interpretation.

  69. Bayle Shanks Says:
    April 20th, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    ok, thank you for the clarification

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