Scientists blog for many reasons. Some of these reasons are highly personal, other reasons are purely professional. For most of us it’s a mix of the two. But despite all of the scientific blogging going on there’s actually very little been written in the scientific literature about the advantages of blogging for the professional scientist. As a step towards remedying that situation a group of co-authors and myself have today published a paper entitled “Bringing ecology blogging into the scientific fold: measuring reach and impact of science community blogs“. It’s published in the open access journal Royal Society Open Science. Just follow that link and you will be able to read it for free.
I’m rather proud of this paper as it’s a collaboration between active ecological bloggers, most of whom don’t know each other personally. However we share an interest in blogging and in the belief that blogging is a legitimate scientific medium for communication of ideas, data, and professional advice. That is, blogging for the science community rather than (just) for science communication to the general public.
One of the most pleasing things about this paper is that it received two of the best reviews any of us have ever had in our careers. The reviewers were incredibly supportive and complimentary, and asked for virtually no changes. That’s hugely gratifying and suggests to us that we are saying something important; let’s hope the readership likes it as much!
The co-authors, their Twitter handles and links to their blogs are below. If you click through you’ll see that we have posted coordinated pieces on our blogs about our own reflections on the collaboration and what the paper means to us.
Manu Saunders (@ManuSaunders) Ecology Is Not A Dirty Word
Simon Leather (@EntoProf) Don’t Forget the Roundabouts
Jeff Ollerton (@JeffOllerton) Jeff Ollerton’s Biodiversity Blog
Steve Heard (@StephenBHeard) Scientist Sees Squirrel
Meghan Duffy (@duffy_ma) Dynamic Ecology
Margaret Kosmala (@margaretkosmala) Ecology Bits
Terry McGlynn (@hormiga) & Amy Parachnowitsch (@EvoEcoAmy) Small Pond Science
Prof. Jeff Ollerton - ecological scientist and author 
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Hi Jeff – it also opens the door to non-scientific people like me, who have an interest in learning more … perhaps only in a superficial way – but learning is learning. New blog posts can be emailed through, or one can add into a reader … I use Feedly … then I can read them when I have time. Also as I’ll be going overseas I can keep in touch by reading the blogs I’m interested in … so I think it’s a great idea – well done to you all – cheers Hilary
Thanks Hilary.
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