Scholarly and science blogs

A new form of academic discourse?

Theses

• Blogs are a specific type of online discourse

• Science blogs/scholarly blogs are a well established type of blogs with different subtypes

• Blogs can translate properties of scholarly discourses of the pre-web era into a hypertextual universe of discourse

What is a blog?

Entries ordered by inverse chronology

TextText

http://www.iaas.uni-bremen.de/sprachblog/

Permalinks

http://www.schmidtmitdete.de/

Comments

http://sozlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/biedermann-und-die-brandstifter-revisited-strukturwandel-sozialer-solidaritat-und-grenzuberschreitungen/

Feeds

http://www.louisgray.com/live/index.html

A type of news

Text

http://tyndallreport.com/

Links as the basic content

Text

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/02/14/theBestWayToReadTheNyTimes.html

“Authentic voices”

http://www.robertlender.info/blog/http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/

http://log.c3o.org/

Blogs as a form of online discourse

Specific ways of observation

• Simple interface

• RSS-Feeds

• Widgets, Aggregators

• Blog Search Engines

• Technorati and other services

Specific communication chains

• Comments

• Blogrolls

• Trackbacks

Uses of blogs

Documentation and monitoring

http://www.innovativeinteractivity.com/2009/01/05/behind-the-scenes-of-las-vegas-suns-thirst-in-the-mojave/xt

Explanation and reflection

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2008/07/americas_addiction_and_the_new.html

Agenda setting and intervention

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-fir.html

Types of Blogs

• Media Blog

• Tech Blog

• Science Blog

• Political Blog

• Corporate Blog

• Personal Blog

Scholarly blogs/science blogs

Blogs about science and humanities

Text

http://www.chronologs.de/chrono/blog/der-islam/allgemein/2008-12-22/weihnachten-im-islamxt

Blogs by scientists and scholars

http://www.hardbloggingscientists.de/info/

Academic reflection

http://thomaspleil.wordpress.com/

Documentations of scientific activities

http://www.schmidtmitdete.de/

Personal and institutional PR

http://mediendidaktik.uni-duisburg-essen.de/blog/2

Publication of peer reviewed research

TextText

http://researchblogging.org/

Popular science

http://www.wissenslogs.de/wblogs/blog/klimalounge/klimadaten/2008-05-08/die-klimawette

Contexts: Academic publishing on the web• Commercial Online Journals

• Open Access Journals

• Wikis

• Individual Sites and Publications

• Specialized Search Engines (Google Scholar)

Platforms and portals• ResearchBlogging.org

• ScienceBlogs.com

• Postgenomic

• wissensblogs

• Scientific Blogging

• Discover Blogs

• Nature Blogs

• Nature Network Blogs

• GermanResearchBlogging.org (zur Zeit nicht erreichbar)

• The Academic Blog Portal

Reputation

• Thesis: Translation between scientific reputation and blogger reputation is possible

• Scientific reputation and blogger reputation rely on similar mechanisms

• The blogosphere allows scholarly micro public spheres

Scientific exchange

• Thesis: Blogs facilitate scholarly communication on “fluid subjects”

• Blogs allow asynchronous open communication between personal talk and journals/congresses

• Blogs can serve as open research journals

Academic teaching

• Support of learning communities

• Support of self directed learning by students

• Documentation of work for master theses and doctoral dissertations

Public science

• Direct dialogue between scholars/scientists and the general public

• Short circuiting of existing publication channels

• Agenda setting/PR for science

Future: Blogosphere, social media, life web

• Microblogs and life streams take over

• Social networks and blogs are integrated

• Blurring of the border between posts and magazines

• Internal aggregation; blogs as knowledge repositories

References and Discussions

• Alex Halavais: "Scholarly Blogging: Moving Toward the Visible College" (Amazon)

• Wissenswerkstatt – tag “Wissenschaftsblog”

• Was sind gute Wissenschaftsblogs?