Guidelines for using the Research Blogging icon and site
October 26th, 2007 Administration 3,300 CommentsThe “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.
- The “Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research” icons are to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about peer-reviewed research.
- 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.
- 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
- Posts using the icon or our citation code should offer a complete formal citation of the work(s) being discussed.
- The post author should have read and understood the entire work cited.
- The blog post should report accurately and thoughtfully on the research it presents.
- Where possible, the post should link to the original source and / or provide a DOI or other universal reference number.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
