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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Ooh, lots of comments. I just read the Nature editorial, too. My head is spinning with thoughts, and I don’t seem to be able to put them in a convenient 20-minute talk format, but/so I will probably do a blog post about things to get everything sorted out.
Maya, yes, I think the reasons you mention are the main ones for scientists not to blog. Even when you consider things they are required to do, such as teaching, they often already consider that a waste of time.
Anonymous, no, PhD students are often not considered “scientists” for these kinds of discussions. Not saying that’s a good thing, but in general “scientist” tends to mean “(post-postdoc?) academic researcher” or “industry scientist” (and sometimes not even that last one)
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Funny, I recognize my past self in Maya, believe it or not, as this is coming from a prolific blogger. When I was in grad school, I was living, breathing and dreaming science for 10 years straight. There was no time for anything else because I was OBSESSED with my research. I refused to manage my time wisely, or to balance my life and my work, because all I cared about was my work. Any suggestions that I should probably relax my sphincter a little and do something else, I would have probably responded to with derision. We scientists are sometimes crazy like that. But, as you can see from my example, it is possible to become normal again, later on.
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Bora, I find the fact that a crazy-active blogger like YOU were at one point so submerged in research that you would never consider doing any such thing as blogging only stresses the obstacles: If even the bloggiest of bloggers was that way, it raises the bar to get the dormant moderate blogger out of other researchers.
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Jean-Claude, while I agree with your points that blogging is just another way of communicating, I think the issue is that blogging is often “advertised” specifically as either talking to a very wide audience (“the public”) or is assumed to be musing about what people had for lunch. And there ARE lots of blogs like that. Especially science blogs are “supposed” to be the first kind – talking to the public – and every single time someone says “this is a good science blog (post)” the argument is something related to outreach. The Times list of science blogs, Open Lab (to a lesser extent), it’s all portrayed to be this big Talking To The Public thing. And that is something that people don’t have time for.
To you, blogging is a way to connect to people that are useful to you professionally, because, well, open notebook science. But most people don’t do that (yet). I am also kind of sceptical about open notebooks, but if they do catch on then that would certainly help lift the image of blogging.Also, thanks for coming over here to comment. I do pop into FriendFeed from time to time, but it often ends up making me angry. Part of it is the chaotic presentation of things on there (info overload, hard to see what to skip) but it’s also the repetitive discussions by and between certain people (not you) that drive me up the wall. It’s always the same, yet it all goes by at a lightning speed. I haven’t yet noticed that I miss anything by not being on there. When I do pop in it is because I expect something to be discussed on there, and that’s why I had a look at the related discussion for this thread on FriendFeed. But that’s silly and excessive, that I have to look both here AND there. It’s not simpler, it’s more difficult! And (to swerve back on topic) whatever FriendFeed does or is supposed to do, it’s not doing much to lower the barriers to blogging for scientists. So, anyway, thanks for commenting on the Place Where Things Are Actually Being Discussed.
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Eva,
By definition the most popular blogs will be those where the audience is the general public. Even though I don’t do much blogging of that type, I absolutely respect those who do and I don’t think I am in a position to evaluate what they get out of it. Those who persist must have good reasons for doing so – and a lot of people benefit from their efforts.But yes I was referring to blogging as a general communication tool – not at all about the content. You could also use the telephone to spend a lot of time talking about things that are not productive for your research. But that is not a reason to say people should not use the telephone.
As for FriendFeed, I can only speak from my experience. In the past year I have found it to greatly simplify my online interactions (with a few extra feeds from Google Reader). It just happens that my main collaborators are very active there.
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“It just happens that my main collaborators are very active there.”
Yes, I think that’s key.
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Is there any chance of the NatureMethods editorial on a related topic being made open access for the purpose of discussion?
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Katherine, the Nature Methods editors are inviting comments on their editorial at Methagora, their blog. Can I suggest you re-post your question there where the editors will be sure to see it? Decisions about access to journal content are made by the publishers of the journals, so the editors should be able to find out for you if it is possible.
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Just thought I would highlight an article in the Times Higher about UK scholars heading into the blogosphere.
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The times higher article is really useful, thanks for the link Branwen.
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