Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
5.5.1
Why Blog?
Scientists typically do not blog on public sites about their work in progress or
work that has not been published. Instead, they blog about the process of
science, interesting articles they have read, tutorials on things they have fi gured
out or the basics for a broader audience, and ideas and information they have
that is not enough for a separate publication.
The process of preparing and writing a blog post as well as receiving com-
ments and feedback helps the scientists learn the topic better and clarify their
thinking on it. Blogging tutorials on the basics of a topic or on how to do
something in the laboratory can serve as a distributed apprenticeship [27].
Some scientists fi nd that they have more content than they can fi t in the page
limits of a publication and so use their blogs to provide additional information.
Similarly, if they have an idea that they do not have time to pursue or that is
not enough for a separate publication, the blog is a way to explore and share.
Blogging makes the information posted fi ndable by the author later, provides
a time and date stamp, and also makes the information fi ndable by other sci-
entists when they need it.
Another advantage of blogging is the speed in that someone can write
something which is published without peer review and their opinion is instantly
out in the open and joins the scientifi c discourse. Of course, the anonymity
also allows people to vent their feelings in a manner impossible in scientifi c
papers, letters to the editor, and so on. A great source of chemistry blogs as
well as examples of “scientifi c venting” is Derek Lowe's in the pipeline (http://
pipeline.corante.com/ ).
5.5.2
To Blog Publicly or on the Intranet?
It may be tempting to blog on an intranet or to only allow collaboration part-
ners to read the posts. Unfortunately, it is diffi cult to get a critical mass of
readers to get the full value with an intranet blog. Intranet blogs generally do
not get as many comments and so may not be as rewarding to the blogger. On
the other hand, the blogger might feel more free to share details of his or her
current work and the blog will still be useful for refi nding information. Also
there may be a real sense of fear blogging internally, in case management
disagrees with your opinion and effectively sanitizes it.
5.5.3 Using Computational Methods to Make Use of Information and
Knowledge in Blogs
A nascent use of blogs is to gather opinions on scholarly articles. Publishers
are beginning to search, mine, and aggregate blog posts that discuss articles.
Public opinion researchers also mine blog posts and use sentiment analysis to
understand how their product is viewed. This could be extended to chemistry
blogs to crowdsource new ideas and approaches.
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