265 david crotty

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Blogging as a biology editor

Transcript of 265 david crotty

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Blogging as a biology editor

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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

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� Founded 1933� Approx. 60 staff, located at Cold Spring Harbor, Plymouth (UK), Tuebingen (Germany) and San Diego� Over 200 books in print, including lab manuals, monographs, textbooks, trade, and children’s books� Electronic media: technique videos, CDs, DVDs, electronic books, companion websites for manuals and other books� 6 Monthly Journals: Genes & Development, Genome Research, Learning & Memory, RNA, Protein Science and CSH Protocols� BioSupplyNet.com: online and print directory of laboratory suppliers and products (http://www.biosupplynet.com)� Online catalog at http://www.cshlpress.com

CSHL Press

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Manual Publishing

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Surely there’s a better way

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CSH Protocols

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Bench Marks

� Editorial Blog

http://www.cshblogs.org

� RSS feed of blog available on journal home page

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Why a blog?

� Promote a new journal

� Put a human face on things

� Promote community

� Spark discussion on methods, effectiveness, modifications, variations on procedures.

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How’s it going?

“A panel of science web publishers said scientists had consistently shunned wikis, tagging, and social networks, and have even proven reticent to leave comments on web pages.”

The Register, March 2007

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Web 2.0 is not a cure-all

“Web 2.0 has become a warm and dark space for people with too much time and too few ideas. They are shielded through the flawed assumption that if more “people” (and as a visitor to Second Life, I use this word advisedly …) are involved in doing “something” then it becomes important. When we were at high school, this was called mob rule. Now it is called social networking.”

Tara Brabazon

Professor of Media Studies, Brighton University

“…this is a promotional vehicle for a cadre of mostly unimportant serial self-promoters (including the author), and a few "somebodies" who you can already learn too much about somewhere else. if you need a reason to hate the small group of wannabe-celebrities who form the "web2" echo chamber, then this book has a purpose…”

Amazon.com review of a recent book on Web 2.0

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The Blogosphere

� More than 112,000,000 blogs

� More than 1 blog created every second

From http://datamining.typepad.com/ and

http://sspnet.org/News/OReilly_TOC__A_WakeUp_Call_to/news.aspx

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Information Overload / Time Constraints

� Social networking sites, blogs, wikis, etc., all demand a great deal of time from their users

“I can barely keep up with the literature in my field and with what my labmates are doing. Who has time to spend reading some grad student’s blog?”

Anonymous Postdoc

“[It] takes too much time to comment on a scientific article properly, there’s no incentive (can’t put it in your CV) or honor to be gained (no one asked me to review this) and they are not written to be discussed.”

Roland Krause

Notes From The Biomass Blog

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Who Reads Science Blogs?

� Other science bloggers“The long tail of proliferating mediocrity, where bloggers link to other bloggers and

podcasters namecheck other podcasters, is the great cost of Web 2.0.”

Tara Brabazon

Professor of Media Studies, Brighton University

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Those participating can skew your view

“If an attempt to craft a wiki that strives for accuracy, even via a flawed model, is considered something for “stick-in-the-muds”, then it’s apparent that many of Wikipedia’s supporters value the dynamics of its community more than the credibility of the product they deliver.”

W.A. Gerrard

“In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.”

Jacob Nielsen

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Who Reads Science Blogs?

� Other science bloggers“The long tail of proliferating mediocrity, where bloggers link to other bloggers and

podcasters namecheck other podcasters, is the great cost of Web 2.0.”

Tara Brabazon

Professor of Media Studies, Brighton University

� Non-scientists / Non-specialists“Despite the proliferation of physics blogs, Carroll is not very optimistic about them taking a more prominent role in physics research. From posting papers on arXiv.org to e-mail, the current way in which physicists communicate is already efficient. Blogs, however, could serve as a place for specialists and nonspecialists to interact, chipping away at the barriers separating academia from the general public.”

Caltech :Engineering and Science:, October 2007

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Who Reads Science Blogs?

� Journalists

“The truth is that science journalists have always relied on actual

scientists to help us understand the implications of some new discovery. Some of us are pretty savvy about some areas of science, but still, we need to get expert perspective. Scientist-bloggers help us do that, only more efficiently.”

Michael D. Lemonick

TIME Magazine Contributing Writer

� Search engines

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Who Reads My Blog?

� Comments:

8.1% = About journal content / Methods

91.9% = About Web 2.0 / Science Publishing

� Top 5 Posts:

3 = About journal content / Methods

2 = About Web 2.0 / Science Publishing

� Top 10 Posts:

7 = About journal content / Methods

3 = About Web 2.0 / Science Publishing

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Science is being read, despite the echoes

� Top Posts:

1) Keller Sandwiches / Explants

Xenopus developmental biology research technique

2) Why Web 2.0 is failing in biology

Heavily linked and discussed in many blogs

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Be prepared for flamewars

“I like hearing from people who are engaged with the site. Other times, it’s not so fun running a visible site. Some people are determined to deliberately misunderstand much of what they encounter in life. Sometimes I have a hard time realizing that that’s their problem, not mine.

Jason Kottke

“Ok David. I can respect your opinion on the matter. But it gets ugly when you bring Linux into the fold…”

Blogger Daniel LemireIn response to a Bench Marks post that wasn’t about Linux at all

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The elephant in the room

“Nature's head of web publishing Timo Hannay confessed that of the firm's myriad Web 2.0 projects, only a couple bring in any revenue.”

The Register, March 2007

Greater than 60% of Bench Marks traffic comes from RSS feed readers.

“Marketing managers won’t remain clueless forever. Sooner or later they’ll discover that Web advertising offers almost no ROI. Only two forms of Web ads actually work: search ads and classified ads (such as eBay and real estate listings).”

Jacob Nielsen

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Summary

� Understand who your audience is, and why you are blogging

� Blogging is a great way to gain exposure for your material

� Understand the nature of the online community and be prepared to deal with it

From http://xkcd.com/