Blogs: a new(ish) niche in the scientific communication ecosystem Jeremy Fox University of Calgary Blog: dynamicecology.wordpress.com
Jan 06, 2016
Blogs: a new(ish) niche in the scientific communication
ecosystem
Jeremy Fox
University of Calgary
Blog: dynamicecology.wordpress.com
0. A potted history of blogs(according to Wikipedia)
•Blog: A website where one or more authors ("bloggers") post pieces of writing ("posts") for anyone to read and, usually, publicly comment on•Prehistory: Usenet, BBS, email lists like Ecolog, Evoldir•1994: advent of web browser leads to online diaries
-Justin Hall (Swarthmore undergrad)•1997: "weblog" coined•1999: shortened to "blog"•1999: blogger.com and other sites make online publishing easy•Commentary on news, politics, popular culture•Oldest science blogs are 10+ years old
1. An accidental blogger
I will now date myself
• Telnet for “electronic mail”
Oikos Blog
2. Dynamic Ecology
A team effort
Brian McGillUniversity of Maine
Meghan DuffyUniversity of Michigan
• Plus guest authors, and hundreds of commenters
Dynamic Ecology by the numbers
• 826 posts (~20/month)
• ~35,000 pageviews/month (>540,000 all time)
• ~18,000 unique visitors/month
• 8,900 comments all time
• Readership still growing
• Could show you more stats later...
3. Are blogs dying?
2004 2009 2013
Blogs are so 2009
Weekly Google searches on "blog", 2004-2014
Rel
ativ
e se
arch
vol
ume
(max
= 1
00%
)
Science blogs are so 2009R
elat
ive
sear
ch v
olum
e (m
ax =
100
%)
Weekly Google searches on "science blog", 2004-2014
2004 2009 2013
Rel
ativ
e se
arch
vol
ume
(max
= 1
00%
)Competitive replacement?
2004 2009 2013
blog
Tumblr
The blogging shake-out
4. The blogging niche
"And NUH is the letter I use to spell nutches,Who live in small caves, known as niches, for hutches..."
-Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra
Four “niche axes” of scientific communication
Informal Formal
Priv
ate/
clos
edP
ublic
/op
en
Slow
Fast
Two-way
One-waypapersbooks
Social media
conversationsemail
preprintsblogs
talksposters
5. Blogs from before there were blogs
John Lawton’s View from the Park(Oikos, mid-90s)
•Also: Dan Janzen's Thoughts from the Tropics (Oikos, mid-80s)
Opinion and perspectives pieces
Humor, satire, rhetoric
Why are juveniles smaller than their parents?
(Ellstrand 1983)The Spandrels of San Marco (Gould & Lewontin 1979)
“Information theory, photosynthesis, and religion” (Elias 1958) “Isadore Nabi”:
Debate and discussion
“Anything you can do I can do better!”(well, some things anyway)
“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology…Better than he was before. Better,
stronger, faster.”
Popular Dynamic Ecology postsmath :-(
E. O. Wilson vs. math
The 80 hours/week myth
Ecology teaching videos Statistical machismoHow to suggest referees
How I almost quit science
…and of course:zombie ideas in ecology
6. Reflections on “zombie ideas in ecology”
The intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH)
• IDH (Connell 1978): species diversity is, or should be, a humped function of disturbance frequency or intensity
• Hugely influential– intuitive– some now-famous early studies found the predicted pattern– spawned much research– now in all the textbooks
• …and wrong– <20% of empirical studies find a humped pattern– three main theories purported to predict a humped pattern are
logically invalid – fourth main mechanism (competition-colonization trade-offs) is
valid, but models of it mostly don’t predict humped pattern
• Published refutations are little-cited or explained away
Zombie ideas in ecology
The meme takes off
Luke Harmon talking about zombie ideas at the ASN meeting
Reflections on zombie ideasFor better or worse, the joke reflects:•My background•My personality•My way of writing•My views on blogs•My views on science
7. The future of blogging
xkcd.com
Economics has a blogosphere…
…ecology has blogs
• Short answer: Maybe, but probably not.• Longer answer: Ask yourself the following questions:
– Why do you want to blog?– Do you care if anyone reads it?– Do you really want to do it?– Do you have something to say?– How well and quickly do you write?– How self-confident are you?– Are there others who want to do it with you?– Can you live offline with whatever you plan to say
online?– Do people whose opinions you care about support it?
Should you blog?
Questions?
Comments?
0
20000
40000
7/20
129/
2012
11/2
012
1/20
133/
2013
5/20
137/
2013
9/20
1311
/201
31/
2014
Pageviews
Unique visitorsMon
thly
pag
evie
ws
or u
niqu
e vi
sito
rsA growing readership
• ~700-1500 unique visitors/day, 4000-8000/week
A global readership
50%
9.5%8% (UK)
4.1%
28.4% (ROW)
From a survey, our regular readers are:•40% graduate students•30% postdocs•20% faculty•10% other (non-academics, undergrads...)
•75% male (!)
Who reads Dynamic Ecology?
Readership of blog posts vs. papers
vs.
Readership of blog posts vs. papers
Dynamic Ecology vs. PLoS One ecology papers •2 posts in top 1% (11,000+ views)•10 posts in top 5% (4000+ views)•80+ posts in top 50% (1000+ views)
Dynamic Ecology vs. PLoS Biology•2 posts in top 10%•80+ posts in top 95%
Objections to blogs
“I am terribly concerned at present about the lack of control in scientific publication. Science has always been aristocratic. Not everyone could get his ideas published in effective journals…Today anyone can publish anything…[T]here is often so much noise one cannot hear the signals.”
-Harold Urey, Nobel Prize-winning chemist
…writing in 1964
(he was complaining about scientific journals, not blogs)
Blogs are just vanity publishing!
“[W]hen almost every person who can spell, can and will write, what is to be done? It is difficult to know what to read, except by reading everything…A book produces hardly a greater effect than an article, and there can be 365 of these in one year. He, therefore, who should and would write a book…now dashes down his first hasty thoughts, or what he mistakes for thoughts…[N]ot he who speaks most wisely, but he who speaks most frequently, obtains the influence.”
-John Stuart Mill, writing in 1836(his target was newspapers, not blogs)
Too much stuff is published these days!
But some have welcomed blogs
“Thanks to its rapid diffusion the world is endowed with a treasure house of wisdom and knowledge, till now hidden from view.”
-Werner Rolewinck …in 1474
(he was talking about the printing press, not blogs)
"The world is always coming to an end."
Nobody reads your blog (or your paper)
Adamic & Huberman 2002, Peterson et al. 2010
Citations (log scale)
Pro
port
ion
of p
ape
rs
(log
sca
le)
Visitors (log scale)P
ropo
rtio
n o
f we
bsite
s (l
og s
cale
)