Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? forum: topic
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Benefits of blogging?
Eva Amsen
Tuesday, 17 February 2009 21:33 UTC
I’m currently preparing a talk for the upcoming Allen Press seminar (April 2nd) for which I’ve been asked to speak about obstacles for scientists in adopting science 2.0 technologies (e.g. blogs)
I’ve collected a huge list of links that I’m currently using to sort out my thoughts. It’s here in chronological order (the first one I added is now at the top, so you can kind of follow my line of thought. Just reverse sort it to see the most recent one I added at the top)
I’ve also asked a question on my blog that I would really want to address in the talk. I got some feedback there already, but wouldn’t mind more. The question is: What are the benefits for scientists to start a blog? Not the benefits for the community at large, but immediate benefits for the researchers themselves.
Knowing that I’ll be playing devil’s advocate, try to persuade me that blogging is important and relevant to individual scientists, and beneficial to their career.
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Jean-Claude, yes, I’m sure the list equally applies to blogging. My main concern with it was that most of the points raised did not require FriendFeed, but could equally well have been done on a forum or on a blog. For example, the References Wanted room has fewer members than a Google group I found on Molecular Biology that essentially does the same thing. If those forum-like discussions are the selling point of FriendFeed, well, it’s not new, it’s just another place to spread out to, and more to keep track of. It’s supposed to be beneficial for its aggregating capacities (all your stuff in one place) but that wasn’t on the list at all. The one thing I found convincing on that list was the conference liveblogging, especially because in the subsequent paper the authors emphasized that only a small group of conference participants took part in the online discussion (so acknowledging the limitations). But the site isn’t meant for liveblogging, and isn’t archived in a useful way if you want to go back and look a conference report.
Anyway, that’s an aside. I probably will mention FriendFeed in the talk, but not in so much detail.
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I would be cautious about publicising “references wanted” type initiatives as advantages of blogging or other online platforms – given that they are set up to circumvent people suscribing to journals or paying to read the articles.
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OK, I just wrote the post and the slides are now on slideshare in the NN group as well as related to my new profile (another logon and password!)
Eva, I’ll be interested in how your talk goes because I’ve now been invited to give another talk on science blogging in a couple of months!
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Anonymous
@Maya: The way you put things, seems like scientist is the busiest job in the world. Do you know how to balance things? Where did you find time to comment here?
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I am not a scientist – PhD student. Who are you?
I am writing up my thesis, while doing some odd expts, so I have all the time in the world to share my expert comments :-) + I don’t have a family.
I did not observe that scientsts are the busiest in the world. But most of those who focus on good old science are quite busy.
Being busy with doing science is sufficient enough reason for not doing something like blogging, that, btw, is balance.
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Anonymous
So, I thought someone was already a scientist when doing a PhD. Why can’t blogging be a part of the rites of science? Maybe you’re in the wrong career path then …
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I can see you are not a scientist. Your convoluted logic would have been okay if it was correct.
And it is good for you that you post anonymous :-)
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Maya: it is true that blogging is not something that most scientists do or regard as useful. I’ve listed in brief a few reasons why I think it can be useful. There have been some much more detailed discussions about these points previously on Nature Network. Maybe you – and Eva? and Katherine? – might like to look at those (if you haven’t already).
I refer you in particular to this post by Martin Fenner which sums up many aspects well. Why do we blog and other important questions, answerd by 34 science bloggers. Martin’s blog archive reveals other pertinent posts on this topic, for example this one for science educators who are interested in using blogs for their teaching activities, but there are many other posts there that spell out plenty of advantages.
Nature has an editorial this week on science blogging – mainly to do with confidentiality, but not all. There is a discussion forum on Nature Network in which the editors are seeking opinions from scientists, so I hope people reading this conversation will also comment there.
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Maya – I’d say that if you are a PhD student in a science discipline, then you are a scientist. A junior scientist, but a scientist for sure. I think your generalized statement is an indication that you’re probably a little overwhelmed at the moment with your PhD and/or can’t consider that what works for one scientist doesn’t work for another. If blogging isn’t your thing, don’t blog, but don’t disparage those who do.
I suspect that Anonymous is a scientist, and their logic seems just fine. Blogging is just another way of saying writing for a specific audience and that is something that all scientist must learn to do at some point in their training.
Time management is one of the key aspects of any profession, and science has its fair share of challenges. I chose to blog as a productive and busy scientist because the benefits of doing so, both professionally and personally, outweigh any negatives of the additional demands on my time.
My personal belief is that scientists must do better at outreach and communication. Scientist must lower the barriers between their profession and the rest of society. Scientists must get their own positive publicity and information out there because no one else is doing it for us. Blogging is a means of engaging with a wider scientific audience, and works for some people.
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Really well put Katherine! Blogging is about communication. It is an additional way to share information, just like the telephone, email, lunch meetings, conferences, traditional papers, etc. In some cases, it is more efficient than alternative modes of communication.
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