Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information

Abstract

The research blog has become a popular mechanism for the quick discussion of scholarly information. However, unlike peer-reviewed journals, the characteristics of this form of scientific discourse are not well understood, for example in terms of the spread of blogger levels of education, gender and institutional affiliations. In this paper we fill this gap by analyzing a sample of blog posts discussing science via an aggregator called ResearchBlogging.org (RB). ResearchBlogging.org aggregates posts based on peer-reviewed research and allows bloggers to cite their sources in a scholarly manner. We studied the bloggers, blog posts and referenced journals of bloggers who posted at least 20 items. We found that RB bloggers show a preference for papers from high-impact journals and blog mostly about research in the life and behavioral sciences. The most frequently referenced journal sources in the sample were: Science, Nature, PNAS and PLoS One. Most of the bloggers in our sample had active Twitter accounts connected with their blogs, and at least 90% of these accounts connect to at least one other RB-related Twitter account. The average RB blogger in our sample is male, either a graduate student or has been awarded a PhD and blogs under his own name.

Altmetrics and Other Novel Measures for Scientific Impact

“…Analyzing the use of Twitter during scientific conferences, Weller and Puschmann (2011) and Letierce et al (2010) report that there was discipline-specific tweeting behavior regarding topic and number of tweets, as well as references to different document types including journal articles, blogs, and slides. Other sources have examined additional data sources besides reference managers and Twitter, investigating examined citation from Wikipedia articles (Nielsen 2007) and blogs (Groth and Gurney 2010;Shema et al 2012) as sources of alternative impact data.…”

Can alternative indicators overcome language biases in citation counts? A comparison of Spanish and UK research

“…Since the web contains many unwanted types of citation, such as publisher tables of contents and library article listings, later studies produced indicators from specific parts of the web. Some indicators were based on specific types of website, such as science blogs (Shema et al 2012) and and others used individual types of document, such as online presentations and online syllabi . More recently, indicators derived from social media (e.g., social bookmarks, comments, tweets) have emerged (Mas-Bleda and Aguillo 2015), known as altmetrics , influmetrics (Cronin 2001;Rousseau and Ye 2013), scientometrics 2.0 (Priem and Hemmiger 2010) and social media metrics (Stuart 2009).…”

(Micro)Blogging Science? Notes on Potentials and Constraints of New Forms of Scholarly Communication

“…Cope and Kalantzis 2009;Stein and Puschmann 2010). The phenomenon of science blogging has attracted significant attention and discussion in papers (e.g., Batts et al 2008;Tola 2008;Shema et al 2012) and at conferences (e.g., ScienceOnline '09, Science Blogging 2008: London). Sites such as Nature Network, ScienceBlogs.com, and Hypotheses.org act as hosting platforms of such specialized academic content, allowing researchers to present and discuss their work before a global audience, some with commercial publishers backing them, others funded publicly.…”