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Article Contents

Introduction, analytical framework: blogging practices, interdependence of rules, relations, and code, conclusion and further research, acknowledgment, about the author.

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Blogging Practices: An Analytical Framework

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Jan Schmidt, Blogging Practices: An Analytical Framework, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , Volume 12, Issue 4, 1 July 2007, Pages 1409–1427, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00379.x

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This article proposes a general model to analyze and compare different uses of the blog format. Based on ideas from sociological structuration theory, as well as on existing blog research, it argues that individual usage episodes are framed by three structural dimensions of rules, relations, and code, which in turn are constantly (re)produced in social action. As a result, “communities of blogging practices” emerge-that is, groups of people who share certain routines and expectations about the use of blogs as a tool for information, identity, and relationship management. This analytical framework can be the basis for systematic comparative and longitudinal studies that will further understanding of similarities and differences in blogging practices.

Within the last few years, a new genre of computer-mediated communication has emerged ( Blood, 2002 ; Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, & Wright, 2005 ; Miller & Sheperd, 2004 ). Weblogs, or “blogs,” are frequently updated websites where content (text, pictures, sound files, etc.) is posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. Readers often have the option to comment on any individual posting, which is identified by a unique URL. Through such comments and references to other online sources in the postings, as well as through links to favorite blogs in the sidebar (the “blogroll”), blogs form a clustered network of interconnected texts: the “blogosphere.”

Specialized search engines and meta-directories like blogpulse.com or technorati.com have tracked between 50 and 85 million blogs as of June 2007, although the exact number of blogs is impossible to state at any given point in time due to the highly dynamic and decentralized character of the blogosphere. While the growth rate of the blogosphere seems to have slowed down recently ( Sifry, 2007 ), these numbers are remarkable even if one considers that a substantial number of blogs might be abandoned after a couple of weeks or months or are created for the sole purpose of search engine optimization.

Parallel to this rapid diffusion of the blog as a genre, a considerable body of research has been conducted on the uses and impact of blogs. Various authors have presented empirical findings on the sociodemographics of bloggers, as well as their motivations and habits ( Herring, Scheidt, et al., 2005 ; Huffaker & Calvert, 2005 ; Lenhart & Fox, 2006 ; Nowson & Oberlander, 2006 ; Schmidt, 2007 ). According to these studies, the majority of blogs are of the personal journal type, which deals with the bloggers’ personal experiences and reflections; within this group, female and teenage bloggers are in the majority. While the journal blog may evoke images of the solitary diary, it (as will be argued in more detail below) also facilitates interaction with other bloggers and readers, thus allowing for the emergence and sustaining of communities of shared interests and subcultural identification ( Hodkinson, 2006 ; Wei, 2004 ).

In addition to analyses of personal blogs, there has been extensive research on the relation between blogs and journalism ( Haas, 2005 ; Lasica, 2002 ; Matheson, 2004 ; Tremayne, 2006 ). Other studies have focussed on particular practices, for example blogging about political topics ( Bahnisch, 2006 ; Bruns, 2007 ; Singer, 2005 ) or as part of internal or external organizational communication through “corporate blogs” ( Charman, 2006 ; Efimova & Grudin, 2007 ; Kaiser, Müller-Seitz, Pereira, & Pina, 2007 ; Kelleher & Miller, 2006 ). A slightly different perspective is employed by looking at blogs as channels for expert communication and personal knowledge management, for example with regard to academics ( Ewins, 2005 ; Halavais, 2006 ; Walker, 2006 ) or professionals from other disciplines ( Bar-Ilan, 2005 ).

Finally, some authors approach blogs from a network perspective. This includes studies looking at the information flow within the blogosphere ( Adar & Adamic, 2005 ; Adar, Adamic, Zhang, & Lukose, 2004 ; Gruhl, Guha, Liben-Nowell, & Tompkins, 2004 ), as well as structural analysis of emerging networks ( Herring, Kouper, et al., 2005 ), sometimes within topical clusters such as the war blogosphere ( Tremayne, Zheng, Lee, & Jeong, 2006 ) or with respect to certain blog providers ( Schmidt, forthcoming ). While many of these works focus on the English-speaking blogosphere, a growing number of studies examine other country- or language-specific blogospheres ( Esmaili, Jamali, Neshati, Abolhassani, & Soltan-Zadeh, 2006 ; Merelo, Orihuela, Ruiz, & Tricas, 2004 ; Schlobinski & Siever, 2005 ; Trammell, Tarkowski, Hofmokl, & Sapp, 2006 ) or blog networks within certain hosting platforms, such as LiveJournal ( Herring et al., 2007 ), twoday.net ( Schuster, 2004 ), and Wallop ( Lento, Welser, Gu, & Smith, 2006 ).

The cited research already indicates that people make use of the format in various ways, contexts, and organizational settings. Given these differences, this article claims that we can speak about “the blog” only in a very general sense. As Bruns and Jacobs (2006) put it: “Our discussion of blogs, bloggers, and blogging must become more sophisticated; it makes as little sense to discuss the uses of blogs as it does to discuss, say, the uses of television unless we specify clearly what genres and contexts of use we aim to address” (p. 3). Although the studies mentioned provide valuable insights into specific uses, so far there has been no concise and systematic formulation of an analytical model of blogging practices that can integrate the varying motives, routines, and consequences of appropriation and usage of this new communicative genre. This article aims to contribute to a better and more complex understanding of blogs by presenting such a heuristic framework that is grounded both in ideas from general sociological theory and in existing blog research. 1

The starting point for the analysis is to recognize the idea from sociological structuration theory that all social action is characterized by a “duality of structure and agency” ( Giddens, 1984 ). In order to fully explain aspects of social life, one has to connect the micro-level of individual action and the macro-level of social structures by explaining the mechanisms of how the macro-level structures are framing the micro-level actions, and how the micro-level actions are in turn (re)producing the macro-level structures. Applied to the phenomenon of blogs, this approach leads to the idea of blogging practices, which in the most general sense consist of individual episodes in which a blogger uses specific software to attain specific communicative goals. These episodes are framed (but not solely determined) by three structural elements: rules, relations, and code. Through a blogging episode (which might consist of selecting, publishing, and networking; see below), the blogger (re)produces aspects of the guiding rules, (re)establishes social relations, and stabilizes or changes the way software-code is designed and employed.

In a sociological sense, rules are generalizable procedures and routines which act as schemas for action, guiding situational performance by providing shared expectations based on both previous actions and generalized knowledge ( Reckwitz, 1997 ). With respect to computer-mediated communication, Höflich (2003) distinguishes two different types of rules, which can be adapted for the analysis of blogging practices: adequacy rules and procedural rules.

Adequacy rules connect certain uses and sought gratifications to certain media, thus guiding the process of media selection. They consist of shared expectations about the appropriateness of given media to obtain certain gratifications. There are no single or distinct combinations of sought gratifications and specific media; rather the adequacy rules will differ for various recipient/user groups (e.g., based on age, gender, formal education, socio-cultural milieu) that might apply the same format for different reasons. In their study of blogs, Lenhart and Fox (2006) found that creative expression and the documentation of personal experiences are the predominant motivations for keeping a blog (similar findings are reported by Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004 ), but that about half of the bloggers also give reasons such as influencing other people or meeting new people.

Adequacy rules are relational in the sense that they depend on the characteristics of a given media format compared to other media formats. As a “bridging genre” ( Herring, Scheidt, et al., 2005 ) blogs combine features of other modes of computer-mediated communication, most notably the personal home page and the asynchronous interactions of newsgroups and discussion boards, into a new hybrid form: Compared to the personal homepage, blogs are more dynamic because content is updated more often, and other users can add comments. 2 They encourage interpersonal communication but, unlike other formats of synchronous communication (like Instant Messaging or chat), they do not necessarily entail instantaneous replies. They also give the author more control over the content and communicative setting, thus acting as a “protected space” ( Gumbrecht, 2004 ) for communication and self-presentation.

Procedural rules frame the actual use of blogs once the decision to choose a blog from among other available media formats has been made. They can be further classified according to the components of the blogging episode, a concept referring to the individual (but socially framed) and situated act of using blogging software to achieve specific communicative goals. It can be analytically separated into the three components of selection, publication, and networking, which refer to different actions, different roles, and different strategy sets (see Table 1 for an overview).

Overview of procedural rules

Selection Rules : These rules refer mainly to the blogger as the recipient of media content (including, but not limited to, other blogs), who has to decide which online sources to select for reading. To a certain degree, these decisions are habitualized, and a user’s favorite set of online sources will be influenced by thematic or professional interests (e.g., regularly reading an expert blog to keep up to date), as well as by existing social ties (e.g., regularly reading a relative’s or a friend’s blog). Technical features of content aggregation, most notably RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, help bloggers to better manage the vast amount of information available on the Internet, while providing a great deal of flexibility in adding or (less often) deleting sources to/from their own media palette. Shared routines and expectations that form selection rules are part of general strategies of information management in a mediated environment.

Publication Rules : These rules refer mainly to the blogger as the author of content who has to decide which topics to feature in his or her own blog, how to present the content (e.g., adding other channels than text, like pictures, podcasts, or video files), and how to design the blog in general. Differences in software might influence these decisions, because hosting platforms usually provide some standard templates, while stand-alone software gives users more flexibility and control over the appearance. There also exist significant differences in writing style between male and female bloggers ( Schler, Koppel, Argamon, & Pennebaker, 2006 ), and Herring and Paolillo (2006) have shown that these differences can mainly be explained by differing blog genres. However, speaking in one’s own personal voice and being open for dialogue rather than engaging in one-way-communication are core elements readers have come to expect from blog communication, be it in private online journals, corporate blogs, or political blogs. Thus, publishing a blog is a way of self-presentation that has to meet certain expectations about personal authenticity while maintaining a balance between staying private and being public ( Miller & Sheperd, 2004 ; Palen & Dourish, 2003 ; Scheidt, 2006 ; Viégas, 2005 ). Blogging anonymously or under a pseudonym (a decision made by about 30% of the bloggers surveyed by Schmidt [2007] ) can be an adequate strategy to cope with this tension. Shared routines and expectations that form publication rules are part of general strategies of identity management in a mediated environment.

Networking Rules : These rules refer mainly to the blogger as a “networker” who establishes hypertextual and social relations consisting of semantic references to allow for continuous communication, as well as of social references to express a social tie to another person. Both aspects of relations can be established through different technical means, for example links within a posting or a blogroll, or adding a comment to another blog ( Efimova & de Moor, 2005 ). Networking rules guide the blogger as to when to use which means. Shared routines and expectations that form networking rules are part of general strategies of relationship management in a mediated environment.

While blogging episodes are acted out by a single blogger, they necessarily involve other actors who produce content (which can be selected for reading), are readers themselves (thus influencing particular ways of identity management), and/or might be the destination of a networking act through referencing or commenting. It is also important to note that all three components do not have to be present in any given blogging episode, nor do they have to happen in a strict temporal order.

There are blogging practices such as running a link log or filter blog (which primarily consists of commented links to other online sources; see Blood, 2002 ; Bar-Ilan, 2005 ) where the three components come together: following a selection of online sources related to one’s interests, guided by rules of information management; editing certain information for publication in one’s own blog according to strategies of identity management (i.e., adding one’s own remarks to the posting); and engaging in relationship management by publishing the posting with a link to the original source, thus connecting to its author. However, while filter blogs might be the most visible types of blogs, they are far from being the most common ( Herring, Kouper, Scheidt, & Wright, 2004 ).

Yet even bloggers publishing a personal journal or a fictional blog ( Thomas, 2006 ) with no outbound linking at all might still read other blogs (information management) or comment on other blogs (relationship management). Thus, the perspective employed here focuses on the individual blogger rather than the blog itself, giving the social actors analytical precedence over the textual manifestation of blogging routines. Nevertheless, both practices and texts are strongly tied together, because selection and publication rules influence form and content of single blogs, while networking rules influence the form of the whole blogosphere.

There are other ways to further classify procedural rules. Their degree of explicitness is especially important since it connects blogging practices to issues of power and sanctioning. At one end of the spectrum there are formalized norms such as laws concerning freedom of speech, the Terms of Service of blog hosting services, or blogging policies established by organizations to regulate potential conflicts of professional and private interests among their employees. On the other end of the spectrum there are the informal rules of the blogging community as a whole or of certain subcommunities within the blogosphere. These informal rules constitute what might be called “blog etiquette” (e.g., crediting the source of a link or refraining from posting flaming “troll comments”) and are usually not stated explicitly but might nevertheless be called upon in cases of conflict. They are inspired in part by procedural rules from other formats of computer-mediated communication and in part by new social conventions that frame the new practices.

Different blogging communities may have different (but overlapping) sets of procedural rules that also act as indicators for affiliation. Only those who know and follow those shared routines and expectations will be considered part of the community and subsequently will have the chance to attain their communicative goals (e.g., see Wei, 2004 for a discussion of procedural rules within the Knitting Bloggers’ community; see also Efimova, Hendrick, & Anjewierden, 2005 ; Lenhart, 2005 ). Therefore, procedural rules are always tied to aspects of power: Who decides upon and who reinforces these rules? Some attempts to make implicit procedural rules explicit are heavily contested, as in the cases of “Weblog Ethics” ( Blood, 2002 ) or the “Bloggers’ code of ethics” ( Online News Association, 2003 ). These suggestions for guidelines, motivated by the goal to increase transparency and trust in blogging as a (semi-)journalistic practice, are met with suspicion by other bloggers who contest this particular notion of blogs. A comment on the Bloggers’ code of ethics posting demonstrates these conflicting views on procedural rules:

What did you use as your foundation for this so-called ethics code for bloggers? Reading this, it looks like nothing more than your own personal opinion. (…) Just who the hell do you guys think you are, posting stuff like this as the final word on principles and integrity, as though those who follow you are better than those who recognize that you are full of garbage? If I want to pander to people’s curiosity, then I have the right to do so. There’s no law in any country that says I can’t. (Comment by “Rooty,” 12/17/2004)

The second structural aspect of blogging practices is relations, of which two kinds can be distinguished: hypertextual relations (hyperlinks) and social relations (social ties). While hypertextual relations result from blogging episodes, social relations can in addition be maintained by other means of communication and interaction that lie outside blogging practices (e.g., face-to-face interaction or the exchange of personal emails). Hypertextual relations are established through different mechanisms built into the blogging software, the most important being the “permalink”-a fixed URL for each single blog entry-which makes it possible to point directly to microcontent rather than linking whole blogs. The basic relation is between two blog postings, where one posting refers to another by including a hyperlink to the permalink URL of the cited posting. “Trackbacks” make these links reciprocal by adding a backlink from the cited to the citing post, thus allowing for the tracking of “distributed conversations” ( Efimova & de Moor, 2005 ). A third way of establishing relations between blogs is through the use of comments, since they usually contain a link back to the commentator’s own blog (if existing) and might even include further references. In all three cases, the link as hypertextual relation can convey different aspects of social relations, such as expressing consent or dissent with the cited source, being a sign of friendship or professional affiliation, or just giving more context to the original posting by providing links to additional information ( Marlow, 2005 , pp. 110–117). Networking rules guide the decision for or against certain mechanisms-that is, how to connect to whom, depending on the context of the social relation.

Other technical means support the establishment of relations by aggregating links. The most common is the blogroll, a list of links to other blogs that are of particular interest to the blogger. Blogroll links also fulfill different purposes, for example recommending certain blogs, expressing personal acquaintance or friendship, or just being a sign of reciprocity if someone else blogrolled one’s own blog ( Schmidt, 2007 ). For this reason, they are also an important part of identity management since they can provide some clues about the blogger’s interests and affiliations. Because a blogroll is either permanently visible in a sidebar or at least accessible from the front page of a blog, its links have more importance in comparison to links in a posting that will automatically be moved to the archive after some new content is posted. However, studies have shown that only about half of the surveyed blogs have included blogrolls ( Herring, Scheidt, et al., 2005 ; Schmidt, 2007 ), so reducing the analysis of social networks to blogroll relations will not be sufficient.

The formation of relations is not limited to single blogs. Many blogging service providers aggregate links on their portal by featuring specific blogs or listing the most recent postings that have been published on the platform, thus giving temporary visibility to blogs within the platforms’ often very large community. Some hosters (like LiveJournal.com or multiply.com ) combine blogs with additional networking features, allowing members to make social relations to other members explicit and provide postings with different levels of visibility: “Many [LiveJournal] users apply these options enthusiastically to differentiate their records, for example, write about recently seen movies ‘for all,’ about their classes and exams to their ‘classmates,’ but tell their deeper emotional feelings to the limited number of close friends only” ( Kozlov, 2004 , p. 5).

On the micro-level, individual bloggers (in single blogging episodes guided by procedural rules) direct attention to certain sources by linking and commenting in their own blogs. On the macro-level, the aggregated result of these blogging episodes is a networked structure of the blogosphere that is characterized by a “power law.” This means that their relatively few nodes have a high number of incoming links (usually referred to as the “A-List” [ Trammell & Keshelashvili, 2005 ]), while the majority of nodes (usually referred to as the “long tail” [ Anderson, 2006 ]) have only a few incoming links or are not connected to central clusters at all ( Herring, Kouper, et al., 2005 ; Schmidt, forthcoming ).

These emerging patterns of centrality and peripherality are not only an indicator of hierarchies of attention and popularity, but also influence the way information, ideas, and “memes” spread through the blogosphere. Drezner and Farell (2004) , who discuss the connection between micro-level behavior and macro-level consequences with respect to U.S. political blogs, argue that only a few “focal point blogs” suffice to structure a sphere of public political discussion and information exchange. Several other studies and experiments have shown that the power law distribution of incoming links exists on various levels of the blogosphere, with consequences for the epidemic-like diffusion of information ( Adar & Adamic, 2005 ; Adar et al., 2004 ; Wu & Huberman, 2004 ). Since Google’s PageRank algorithm highly values links to determine the relevance of a site, the densely interconnected and often updated blogs are also very successful in promoting content and sites to high ranks in search queries, thus improving visibility and channeling additional attention to the blogosphere.

Due to its size and “fuzzy edges” (e.g., which sites still count as active blogs, which have to be considered abandoned), the blogosphere is usually not studied as a whole, but rather with respect to certain blog clusters. These might, for example, form thematic blog communities concentrating on specific topics ( Herring, Kouper, et al., 2005 ), or clusters might reflect social networks of professional affiliation or personal friendship. Looking deeper into this general structure one can identify various topical clusters that vary in their degree of temporal stability and numbers of blogs attached to them (see Efimova, Hendrick & Anjewierden 2005 for a sample analysis of a topical cluster on knowledge management). With respect to political topics, several studies have shown that differences in affiliation with ideological camps manifest in distinct sub-clusters within the blogosphere ( Adamic & Glance, 2005 ; Tremayne et al., 2006 ).

One may also look at ego-centered networks, where outgoing links express connections of an author to his/her sources, while incoming links indicate connections of an author to his/her audience (for a general introduction to ego-centered networks, see Burt, 1984 ). Such blog-based networks provide two resources: social capital and visibility. Social capital refers to the capability of an actor to mobilize resources through his/her position in a social network ( Burt, 1992 ; Lin, 2001 ). These networks can be characterized by measures such as strength, density, and range, which are dependent on the regularity and duration of (re)produced relations as well as on the quality of the social relationship. For example, Granovetter’s (1973) concept of strong and weak ties can be applied to blog-based networks: Strong ties usually exist prior to or alongside blogging, e.g., to friends or relatives. Blogs help to maintain these ties and may allow the blogger to mobilize emotional support and reinforce a social identity ( Hodkinson, 2006 ; Lenhart & Madden, 2007 ). Weak ties, in contrast, might exist within the blogosphere alone and mainly provide visibility to certain topics and a means of information flow through the selective reception and transmission of information, as explained above.

The third structural dimension of blogging practices is the code-that is, the blogging software and its underlying architecture. Two general types of blogging software exist: blog services and blog script packages. Services like LiveJournal, blogger.com , or twoday.net offer blog hosting on their servers. They are easy to use even for beginners and usually allow people to set up a basic blog in a couple of minutes, but in most cases the user’s control over the amount of storage and the design of the blog is limited. Blog script packages (e.g., MovableType, Wordpress), on the other hand, can be installed, used, and fully controlled on the user’s own web server. They require a certain degree of technical expertise for installation and maintenance, but give greater control over appearance and data. 3 For both types a wide range of solutions is available, offering different features with regard to content creation, content management, and community building/management. Most of the software is available either as open-source or (in the case of blog services) free of charge, although some providers rely on including advertisements on the blogs to finance development and support. These relatively low entry levels in terms of costs and required skills contribute to the dynamic diffusion and adaptation of the blog format in various personal and professional contexts.

Software code is fundamental for blogging episodes because it enables or restricts certain actions, for example including pictures, changing the blog layout, or specifying social relations in blogrolls. While there is an identifiable standardized technical structure to most blogs (including, for example, the reverse-chronological order and the use of permalinks and archives), a blogger can modify and personalize the software to a certain degree, depending on individual skills. Such additional features can assist information management (e.g., adding and visualizing categories or tags to classify individual postings; providing RSS feeds for postings and/or comments), identity management (e.g., altering the basic layout and design, providing options to indicate “current mood,” or show “music currently listening to” on the blog), and relationship management (e.g., by visualizing hyperlink or friendship networks within a blog community). In addition, blogging tools can be combined with other software through open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which, for example, allow bloggers to insert recently published pictures from flickr.com or their bookmarks from del.icio.us .

Like other innovations in digital media ( Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2002 ), blogs are underdetermined-in other words, the software code frames the blogging episode, but does not determine the use of blogs. Instead, it allows for a wide variety of uses and is in itself the result of social practices, most notably with respect to (1) the social construction and (2) the appropriation/adoption of code. Regarding the first point, as boyd (2007) has shown for innovation processes in social software in general, the further development of blogging software is also based to a high degree upon feedback loops between groups with different levels of technical expertise and knowledge. The development of the popular blogging software “Wordpress,” for example, is organized and communicated through (1) a blog that gives up-to-date information about new software versions and features, (2) a discussion board for frequently asked questions, and (3) a wiki where the coded features are documented by their respective authors. Since Wordpress is developed as an open source project, all interested users can modify and advance the code and its components. New versions are often released in an early stage of the development process to encourage user feedback (this is sometimes referred to as the “perpetual beta”). The resulting interactions of users and developers (who often use blogs themselves) lead to a high rate of sociotechnical innovation: “When any sizable number of bloggers start doing something, someone will construct a tool to automate it-further popularizing the activity” ( Blood, 2004 , p. 55).

Drawing on ideas of the Social Construction of Technology theory, we can also identify contingencies of the appropriation of blogs as technological systems ( Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987 ; Lievrouw, 2002 ). Users show a great deal of interpretative flexibility when adopting blogs for their communicative needs and making them part of their individual or organizational media repertoires. The differentiation of various blogging practices is in itself an indicator of this flexibility, but it also includes unintended or disruptive uses, for example in the case of spam blogs ( Kolari, Java & Finin, 2006 ). As has been argued by other authors (e.g., Herring, Scheidt, et al., 2005 ), the technical and structural frame of the blog genre does not determine specific content but rather allows for a wide range of uses.

The three structural dimensions of rules, relations, and code are analytically separate elements of blogging practices but are interdependent in various respects (see Figure 1 ). Procedural rules, most notably the networking rules, influence the size and composition of hypertextual and social networks emerging from ongoing blog-based interactions. Within some of these networks, communities of bloggers might emerge that share practices, develop a sense of group identity, and even explicitly define and enforce specific procedural rules (e.g., the knitting community described by Wei, 2004 ). One could call them “communities of practice”-not in the sense put forward by business theorists ( Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002 ), but rather in a more general sense: groups of people who share certain routines and expectations about the use of blogs as a tool for information, identity, and relationship management. Such communities of blogging practices also act as a test bed for continuous software development, since they can either directly articulate feedback and requests for additional features or exhibit specific social dynamics that can be monitored by developers.

Blogging practices: Analytical model

By incorporating shared expectations and routines into their individual ways of handling the format, bloggers not only fulfill their communicative goals, but also reinforce and reproduce the sets of adequacy and procedural rules. Depending on their position within these dynamic social networks, which in turn is a function of the relations obtained through blog-based communication, some bloggers (the “A-List”) have greater chances than others to act as role models influencing blogging practices. Their status will lend them higher visibility inside the blogosphere as well as for “outsiders” such as non-blogging journalists ( Herring, Kouper, et al., 2004 ) and might even grant them a certain degree of authority that can be mobilized to settle disputes over the correct use of blogs.

In summary, blogging practices show the duality of structure and agency inherent in all social action. Their structural elements of rules, relations, and code frame individual blogging episodes without being static. They are subject to negotiation and change, since they have to be (re)produced in single blogging episodes where bloggers can either reinforce these structural elements or contest them and add new aspects by developing alternative routines, expectations, and uses of code. As a result of these practices, the blogosphere, being both a network of interconnected texts and a manifestation of social networks, can structure attention and provide social capital. These emergent qualities are based upon single blogging episodes guided by rules of selection, publication, and networking and are employed in strategies of information management, identity management, and relationship management.

This article has outlined an analytical framework to investigate blog usage from the point of view of communication sociology. It argued that the individual and situated use of blogs is framed by the three structural aspects of rules, relations, and code. As a technical form of online-based communication, blogs are relatively underdetermined; thus, different blogging practices have emerged (and continue to emerge) during a process of institutionalization of this new format. These practices consist of specific routines and expectations regarding the use of blogs to obtain communicative goals; they lead to the formation not only of hypertextual networks, but also of social networks of varying density. Some of these networks are “communities of blogging practices” in a very general sense (e.g., CEO blogs). But we can also identify smaller and more close-knit networks, which might range from users of particular blog platforms to rather small groups of bloggers sharing certain interests (e.g., knitting bloggers).

The framework not only integrates existing research findings that have been cited throughout the article, but can also be the starting point for a systematic and longitudinal study of changes and stability in blogging practices and online-based networking in general. From a methodological point of view, this would call for a variety of empirical approaches, drawing from different research traditions.

Standardized surveys, ideally employing a panel design, will further our knowledge about bloggers’ sociodemographics, motivations, and procedural rules. They should be complemented by ethnographic methods and discourse analysis to show how shared routines and expectations emerge, are contested, and are reproduced within certain communities. A qualitative content analysis of blog postings and comments can also help to shed light on the finer points of identity and relationship management, as well as the discursive formation of procedural rules.

Such studies would have to take into account the actors’ different positions within the structure of blog-based networks, which give them different degrees of visibility and status that influence their discursive power. Quantitative as well as qualitative methods of network analysis will help describe and explain the formation of hypertextual and social relations, while efforts to visualize complex network structures might not only broaden our scholarly knowledge about the blogosphere and its mechanisms, but could also become part of future software versions. These and other approaches will also increase our understanding of the way blogging practices influence the structuring of attention and information flows, as well as the provision of various kinds of social capital.

The analytical dimension of code is most often excluded from studies, although changes in functionalities and features might have a great impact on blogging practices. To analyze the interdependencies of code and actual use, researchers should not only draw on approaches from usability studies and social informatics, but they should also consider comparative research designs to identify the consequences of various technical options for information, identity, and relationship management. General insights from the sociology of knowledge might help explain how interactions between people with different levels of expertise contribute to the sociotechnical dynamics observable within the field of social software.

Finally, the framework could be incorporated into internationally comparative research designs, of which there is still a profound lack. The studies in Schlobinski and Siever (2005) have identified various differences among national blogospheres, but it is not settled whether cultural factors or institutional characteristics of the various media systems (or a combination of both) account for these differences in rules, relations, and code. Comparative studies would help close this research gap and also give insight into the relative importance of blogs within the larger landscape of media and social software. Internet users increasingly apply a whole repertoire of applications for online-based networking, self-presentation, and information management. Teenagers are especially eager to create content online and to manage their social relations with peers through an array of tools for interpersonal communication, among them blogs, Instant Messaging, social networking sites, and mobile phones ( Lenhart & Madden, 2005 ). It will be an ongoing challenge to communication research to study the dynamic practices that form around the use of these technical innovations.

The work presented here was partially financed by grants from the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). I thank Steffen Büffel, Lilia Efimova, Susan C. Herring, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

This model has mainly been developed in and applied to a series of case studies and large-scale empirical surveys of the German-speaking blogosphere (see Schmidt, 2006 ; an English summary of the survey findings is presented in Schmidt, 2007 ).

While a majority of blogs offers the opportunity to comment on any entry, Mishne and Glance (2006) have shown that only about 15% of blog postings actually receive comments.

These differences lead not only to different compositions of user groups, but also to different levels of satisfaction with the software ( Schmidt, Wilbers, & Paetzolt, 2006 ).

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Jan Schmidt (Ph.D.) is Deputy Director of the Research Center “New Communication Media” at the University of Bamberg. His research interests focus on the sociology of online communication, social software, and online research methodology.

Address: Forschungsstelle “Neue Kommunikationsmedien” (FoNK), Otto-Friedrich-Universität, An der Universität 9, D-96045 Bamberg, Germany

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A Systematic Review of Blogging : Opportunities and Challenges

International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology

By this research, we want to display the key factors of how effective blogging as technology is. We collected information curated by several researchers on the same for understanding their point of view as well. By doing this we found out what makes blogging the best way of sharing information online. We also analyzed the technological aspect of modern-day blogging which includes modern technologies being used, privacy rules and control as well as data analytics. By these approaches, we showed how blogging is not only the best medium for sharing information but can also help in other fields as well like marketing, education, data analysis, community development. With this research, we also wanted to highlight the downsides of using blogging or micro-blogging.

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Mini review article, the role of blogs and news sites in science communication during the covid-19 pandemic.

• 1 R&D Department, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, Hannover, Germany
• 2 Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
• 3 Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

We present a brief review of literature related to blogs and news sites; our focus is on publications related to COVID-19. We primarily focus on the role of blogs and news sites in disseminating research on COVID-19 to the wider public, that is knowledge transfer channels. The review is for researchers and practitioners in scholarly communication and social media studies of science who would like to find out more about the role of blogs and news sites during the COVID-19 pandemic. From our review, we see that blogs and news sites are widely used as scholarly communication channels and are closely related to each other. That is, the same research might be reported in blogs and news sites at the same time. They both play a particular role in higher education and research systems, due to the increasing blogging and science communication activity of researchers and higher education institutions (HEIs). We conclude that these two media types have been playing an important role for a long time in disseminating research, which even increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. This can be verified, for example, through knowledge graphs on COVID-19 publications that contain a significant amount of scientific publications mentioned in blogs and news sites.

Introduction

Blogs are important channels for dissemination of research ( Woolston and Brown, 2018 ; Ross-Hellauer et al., 2020 ) and are increasingly created by various organizations, such as learned societies, universities, departments, and individual researchers. Blogging about research is considered as part of outreach activities by researchers, universities, and research-performing organizations ( Cameron et al., 2016 ; Alperin et al., 2019 ). This could be influenced by the fact that higher education institutions are usually evaluated to a certain extent based on their online visibility ( Aguillo et al., 2008 ; Belli and Gonzalo-Penela, 2020 ). Furthermore, media mentions of scholars are considered as an additional indicator for some rankings in higher education, particularly in specific academic disciplines, such as economics and business studies ( BMBF, 2018 ). Discussions on the values and limits of these rankings are outside the scope of this review.

However, a vast amount of content is generated in blogs. As of January 2022, WordPress users generated 70 million new blog posts and 77 million new comments each month and “over 409 million people view more than 20 billion (WordPress) pages each month” ( WordPress, 2022 ). WordPress is only one possible way to publish blogs among many other blog publishing tools, and it is an illustration of the wide use of blogs. In addition to blogs, news sites play an important role in science communication particularly by the typical mentioning of research outputs by journalists ( NAS, 2017 ).

In this mini review, we frame blogs and news sites as scholarly knowledge transfer channels for the general public. This topic gains importance due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as of January 2022 ( WHO, 2022 ). Due to the far-reaching impact of research on the pandemic and vice-versa, it is, therefore, crucial to provide an example of how a fraction of knowledge on this essential topic is transferred online to the wider public. Such an analysis can be of relevance for several stakeholders, for example, researchers from various academic disciplines, science communicators, policymakers, and the wider public. Thus, the purpose of this review is to provide an overview on COVID-19 research and two altmetric sources as science communication outlets, namely blogs and news sites. To put blogs and news sites as altmetric sources into context, we also reviewed literature that had been published before the COVID-19 pandemic. We selected literature from relevant journals, conferences, and workshops in scientometrics, and enriched this review with further reports and websites on the topic.

An overview on blogs and news sites as altmetric sources

Altmetric aggregators track the interaction of diverse audiences with research outputs across various data sources, such as online social networks (OSNs), news sites, and policy documents. Initially proposed in the so-called Altmetrics Manifesto in 2010 by Priem et al. (2010) , these online events are nowadays captured and collected by altmetric data aggregators. Altmetric.com is one of the largest altmetric data aggregators in terms of its use in scientific publications and studies. Other aggregators include Crossref Event Data (CED), PlumX , and the US Public Library of Science's (PLOS) article-level metrics (ALM) , while other open-source projects developed visualizations of altmetrics ( Hauschke et al., 2018 ).

Curated lists of blogs are tracked by several altmetric data aggregators, for example, Altmetric.com and PlumX. There is a distinction between blogs and microblogs, which refers to online social networks such as Twitter ( Bornmann and Haunschild, 2018 ). Surprisingly, due to the high amount of news that is shared on Twitter, the online social network was even considered as news media itself ( Kwak et al., 2010 ). Scholars have also investigated how news coverage of research outputs is related to citation rates, for example, in specific academic disciplines, such as biomedicine ( Dumas-Mallet et al., 2020 ).

Altmetrics as knowledge transfer channels

In general, medicine belongs to one of the main subject categories in Altmetric.com, CED, and PlumX with regards to news and blog sources ( Ortega, 2020 ). As this subject also includes research on COVID-19, it might be promising to study blogs and news sites as knowledge transfer channels. Altmetrics as knowledge transfer channels were discussed at an international conference in 2019, and we adopted this term for this review ( Ortega and Esquinas, 2019 ).

The similarity of topics from scientific publications (e.g. in the research area of Big Data) that are mentioned across various Altmetric.com sources, such as in blogs and news sites, is another area of interest for scholars ( Lyu and Costas, 2021 ). Additionally, a study has been carried out to calculate the time that it takes until a registered Digital Object Identifier (DOI) from the bibliographic database Crossref is reported for the first time in an Altmetric.com source. Blogs and news sites seem to be among the altmetric sources, where such a report happens relatively fast compared to other sources, that is “within the first few days after publication” ( Fang and Costas, 2020 ).

There might be multiple reasons for mentioning a research output in a blog post and a news article, and these reasons can even differ within the same blog or news site. For example, the research outputs mentioned in the news media based on their value is a research topic in journalism studies ( Badenschier and Wormer, 2012 ; Tunger et al., 2018 ; Prados-Bo and Casino, 2021 ). Another topic of interest is how users select news and how this selection can be influenced ( van der Sluis et al., 2012 ). The way in which the media reports about COVID-19 is a topic of interest in several studies, for example, to find out how preprint research is described by news outlets ( Fleerackers et al., 2021 ).

The relation of blogs and news sites as altmetric sources

Furthermore, the coverage of different altmetric data aggregators varies, and they track different lists of blogs and news sites. Due to such differences among altmetric data aggregators, their coverage has been compared in several research projects ( Zahedi and Costas, 2018 ). Generally speaking, blogs and news sites are closely related, for example, the content that is used in blogs often stems from news sites ( Nuernbergk, 2014 ). There are also several examples, where a certain topic was first discussed on a blog, and later picked up by news sites, or where bloggers fact checked the content of news sites ( Scott, 2008 ), an evaluation that is also called gatewatching ( Bruns, 2016 ). While this led to a transformation of how news are reported, some hurdles still exist ( Bruns, 2016 ). For example, bloggers need to set up their own blog or join an existing blog as an author ( Bruns, 2016 ). Another requirement is to constantly provide new blog posts for a longer period ( Bruns, 2016 ). What is more, the distinction between blogs and news sites is not always crystal clear, as blogs that report news are also sometimes called news blogs ( Bruns, 2016 ). Furthermore, blogs are not a genre as such, but rather consist of several sub-genres ( Lomborg, 2009 ). Another type of blog only disseminates articles of interest from other sources ( Bruns, 2016 ), and such types of blogs are typically also included as altmetric sources. Concerning blogs, evaluation of other sources and dissemination of information seems to be more common practices than reporting ( Bruns, 2016 ). News sites also exchange articles with each other. Going back in time, this exchange started as early as in the seventeenth century, when the first printed gazettes in Europe developed a way of exchanging information ( Colavizza et al., 2015 ).

Considering the relevance of blogs, a content analysis of these altmetric sources has been suggested by scholars ( Shema et al., 2015 ; Barata, 2018 ; Fraumann, 2020 ), an approach that is also used to study other altmetric sources, such as Twitter ( Araújo, 2020 ). This approach entails the identification of communities of attention ( Haustein et al., 2015 ), that is, a network of users that engage with a research output online, for example, by retweeting it. Several studies have been carried out to unveil the underlying data on blogs that also contribute to altmetric counts ( Shema et al., 2014 , 2015 ; Fraumann et al., 2015 ; Barata, 2018 ).

Additionally, another study compared the mentions of publications on blogs and news sites among three altmetric data aggregators, namely PlumX, Altmetric.com, and Crossref Event Data (CED) ( Ortega, 2020 ). CED also provides an Application Programming Interface (API) that may be used by others to build their own scientometric data services ( Hauschke et al., 2018 ). Publications on blogs and news sites seem to be mentioned less frequently compared to other altmetric sources, and Altmetric.com has the highest coverage compared to the other data aggregators ( Ortega, 2020 ). The variance between altmetric data aggregators in altmetric sources, such as blogs and news sites, fuels an ongoing debate in scientometrics ( Bar-Ilan et al., 2019 ). Unlike PlumX and CED, Altmetric.com seems to be the only one that captures older events, that is, links to blogs as early as 2005 ( Ortega, 2019 ). Data aggregators, such as Altmetric.com, decide on the sources to be included in their coverage ( Meschede and Siebenlist, 2018 ), and thus, control the information flow as gatekeepers, which can also be observed in other networks ( Belardinelli, 2019 ). Nevertheless, Altmetric.com also provides the possibility for users to suggest news sites, blogs, public Facebook pages, and YouTube channels as additional data sources via an online form 1 , as of 17 January 2022. According to Tunger et al. (2018) , there is a need to include more altmetric sources that relate to economy or policy areas.

Availability of data sources during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our literature review focused on studies that discuss blogs and news sites as altmetric sources. The global health crisis led to new research initiatives from several disciplines. For example, public datasets are being studied, such as publications on COVID-19 and the previous coronavirus publications from a scientometric perspective ( Porter et al., 2020 ; Colavizza et al., 2021 ); existing knowledge graphs are being extended ( Turki et al., 2021 ); or sentiment analysis on science news are being conducted ( Ferreira et al., 2020 ). Meta-research on COVID-19 is considered as an emerging research field, given its impact on research and researchers around the world ( Colavizza, 2021 ). In general, the response of academia to public health crises is a research topic in scientometrics ( Zhang et al., 2020 ), while the role of open access and international scientific collaboration during such emergencies has been discussed in several studies ( Belli et al., 2020 ; Homolak et al., 2020 ). Strikingly, 210,183 publications on COVID-19 have been reported in the bibliographic database Scopus , as of 1 August 2021 ( Ioannidis et al., 2021 ).

On top of that, the mentions of research publications in news sites and blogs, among other altmetric sources, have been extensively analyzed during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, to make use of the smaller time window compared to citation counts ( Boetto et al., 2021 ). Boetto et al. (2021) conclude based on PlumX data that blogs and news sites are two of the altmetric sources that can be used to detect early scholarly communication on COVID-19, in addition to Twitter and Facebook. Furthermore, Colavizza et al. (2021) analyzed the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) from a scientometric perspective on 1 July 2020, a dataset of 169,821 COVID-19 and coronavirus publications. The authors identified news (222,996 mentions) and blogs (29,119 mentions) as the sources that directly come after Twitter (5,868,992 mentions), when COVID-19 publications are mentioned on the Internet. The higher mentions of publications in news compared to blogs might also signal the importance of the topic for the wider public.

Compared to the other above-mentioned altmetric data aggregators, Altmetric.com seems to have the highest coverage in blogs and news sites, among others ( Ortega, 2018 ). Given the limited space of this review, we provide only an overview of this dataset. Still, we would like to stress that a comparison of various data aggregators is instructive, such as conducted, for example, by Ortega (2018 , 2019 , 2020) . Altmetric.com has included blogs as a category since October 2011 ( Altmetric.com, 2020a ), and it tracks over 15,000 academic and non-academic blogs via Rich Summary Site (RSS) feeds ( Altmetric.com, 2020a , c ). This number also changes depending on how many blogs are curated by Altmetric.com. The blogs are updated daily, and if a link to a ‘scholarly output' appears in a blog, the blog is harvested ( Altmetric.com, 2020c ).

News sites have been harvested by Altmetric.com since October 2011, and a new retrieval process has been in place since December 2015 ( Altmetric.com, 2021a ). News sites are also called mainstream media outlets by Altmetric.com ( Altmetric.com, 2020b ). Altmetric.com regularly harvests over 5,000 English and non-English news outlets ( Altmetric.com, 2020a , b ). Similar to the list of curated blogs, this number also changes regularly based on the curation efforts by Altmetric.com, for example, if users suggest new sources. This curated list is harvested in real-time by an unknown third-party provider directly via APIs or RSS feeds ( Altmetric.com, 2020c , 2021b ), although the full list cannot be downloaded directly from the public website. Hence, it is suggested to use the API to retrieve this list. The third-party data provider searches for direct hyperlinks to scholarly outputs in news articles. Furthermore, Altmetric.com uses text mining to search the news articles for mentions of scholarly outputs. To be tracked, the news article “must include at least the name of an author, the title of a journal, and a publication date” which is then matched with metadata in the Crossref API ( Altmetric.com, 2020d ). There is a difference between the harvesting frequency of these sources. News sites are harvested in real-time, while blogs are only harvested daily ( Altmetric.com, 2021b ).

In addition to the reviewed literature on blogs and news sites above, we conducted a query in the COVID-19 Altmetric.com in-house database from the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS). The data from Altmetric.com used in this query is updated up to 21 January 2021. The database was created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The related Altmetric.com in-house database is described in more detail in previous studies, for example, by Lyu and Costas (2021) . We counted the overall amount of blogs and news sites in the database. The query resulted in 541,649 news and 63,288 blog mentions, totalling 604,937 mentions in both altmetric sources. This leads us to conclude that there is a high amount of mentions of COVID-19 related publications in blogs and news sites.

Apart from the specific COVID-19 CWTS Altmetric database, we also queried the total number of publications that were tracked on blogs and news sites in the overall CWTS Altmetric database. The World Health Organization (WHO) characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic in a media briefing on 11 March 2020 ( WHO, 2020 ). We consider this media release as an event that might have increased science communication on several online sources, including on blogs and news sites. From 10 March 2019 until 10 March 2020, there were 104,547 unique publications tracked on blogs and 177,697 unique publications on news. From 11 March 2020 until 11 March 2021, these amounts increased by around 12% to 116,650 unique publications on blogs, and by around 19% to 211,828 unique publications on news sites, respectively. As such, we conclude that the number of publications that were tracked by Altmetric.com on blogs and news sites increased slightly during this period. However, it is impossible to test if this increase would have also happened within the same year without a pandemic.

Further available data sources

Obviously, in addition to Altmetric.com, there are several other news tracking services, although Altmetric.com provides some different features, such as linking to the research outputs themselves ( Altmetric.com, 2020e ). For example, apart from the well-known Google News , there is also the European Media Monitor , which tracks “thousands of news sources in over 70 languages”, is updated every 10 minutes, and can be followed via RSS feeds. The service was developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Center ( EC, 2022 ). Further studies retrieve news coverage of publications from the Factavia database that provides access to global news, among others ( Prados-Bo and Casino, 2021 ). Furthermore, how news are presented in Google Search or other search engines is a research field in itself ( Ørmen, 2016 ). Another source of interest in the altmetrics sphere with regards to news is EurekAlert! , a press release aggregator by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This particular news site is also studied as part of the Altmetric.com portfolio ( Bowman et al., 2019 ). The advantage of the Altmetric.com dataset is that it includes blogs and news sites in one file, which can be imported to and analyzed in relational databases, such as Structured Query Language (SQL). Still, we suggest analyzing various data providers to get a broader picture of blogs and news mentions.

Taking into account previous studies, we argue that blogs and news sites have always been playing an important role in disseminating research, and this role became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider a direct comparison between publications before the COVID-19 pandemic and during this global health crisis as infeasible since this event is a disruptive phenomenon ( Fassin, 2021 ). While it will only be possible to understand the whole picture of the role of blogs and news sites in disseminating research on COVID-19 after the end of the pandemic, the sheer amount of reported publications on COVID-19 calls for a brief overview of this topic which we provided here. We expect that researchers and practitioners from various disciplines as well as science communicators, policymakers, and the wider public can benefit from such an overview. While we mainly focused on blogs and news sites as altmetric sources due to the limited space of this mini review, several other sources can be considered for further reviews on the role of knowledge transfer channels during the COVID-19 pandemic. We would also suggest to study the amount of altmetrics sources that have been added during the pandemic by altmetric data aggregators.

What is more, how public health topics are captured by blogs and news media needs to be evaluated on an ongoing basis. In particular, when new global crises emerge, this topic is essential to study science communication from a different angle. How will the role of certain blogs and news sites change? What role will these two altmetric sources have in the future? We only covered a minor aspect of this research area and encourage other researchers to continue on this path.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under grant number 01PU17019.

Acknowledgments

We thank Zohreh Zahedi (CWTS, Leiden University) for providing continuous feedback on the article. We also thank Rodrigo Costas (CWTS, Leiden University) for commenting on earlier drafts of this article, and for querying the Altmetric.com database. In addition, we thank the Research Topic Editors Jennifer Dusdal (University of Luxembourg) and Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) for commenting on an earlier draft of the abstract. Finally, we thank the peer reviewers for their feedback, our colleagues at CWTS and TIB for commenting on a related research funding proposal, and Mariam Lepage (Altmetric.com) for answering questions concerning the Altmetric.com sources.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: altmetrics, knowledge transfer, science communication, science and society, blogs, news sites, COVID-19, scholarly information

Citation: Fraumann G and Colavizza G (2022) The role of blogs and news sites in science communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Front. Res. Metr. Anal. 7:824538. doi: 10.3389/frma.2022.824538

Received: 29 November 2021; Accepted: 02 September 2022; Published: 23 September 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Fraumann and Colavizza. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Grischa Fraumann, gfr@hum.ku.dk

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Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Change in Science 2.0

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Escola de Comunicações e Artes, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Affiliation Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Affiliation Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Affiliation Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Affiliation São Paulo, Brazil

Affiliation New York, New York, United States of America

• Sibele Fausto, 
• Fabio A. Machado, 
• Luiz Fernando J. Bento, 
• Atila Iamarino, 
• Tatiana R. Nahas, 
• David S. Munger

• Published: December 12, 2012
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109
• Reader Comments

7 Apr 2015: The PLOS ONE Staff (2015) Correction: Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Change in Science 2.0. PLOS ONE 10(4): e0124184. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124184 View correction

Increasing public interest in science information in a digital and 2.0 science era promotes a dramatically, rapid and deep change in science itself. The emergence and expansion of new technologies and internet-based tools is leading to new means to improve scientific methodology and communication, assessment, promotion and certification. It allows methods of acquisition, manipulation and storage, generating vast quantities of data that can further facilitate the research process. It also improves access to scientific results through information sharing and discussion. Content previously restricted only to specialists is now available to a wider audience. This context requires new management systems to make scientific knowledge more accessible and useable, including new measures to evaluate the reach of scientific information. The new science and research quality measures are strongly related to the new online technologies and services based in social media. Tools such as blogs, social bookmarks and online reference managers, Twitter and others offer alternative, transparent and more comprehensive information about the active interest, usage and reach of scientific publications. Another of these new filters is the Research Blogging platform, which was created in 2007 and now has over 1,230 active blogs, with over 26,960 entries posted about peer-reviewed research on subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zoology. This study takes a closer look at RB, in order to get insights into its contribution to the rapidly changing landscape of scientific communication.

Citation: Fausto S, Machado FA, Bento LFJ, Iamarino A, Nahas TR, Munger DS (2012) Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Change in Science 2.0. PLoS ONE 7(12): e50109. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109

Editor: Matjaz Perc, University of Maribor, Slovenia

Received: January 28, 2012; Accepted: October 18, 2012; Published: December 12, 2012

Copyright: © 2012 Fausto et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report.

Competing interests: The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: co-authors Atila Iamarino, Luiz Bento and Tatiana R. Nahas are administrators for Portuguese version of Research Blogging, which is owned and operated by Seed Media Group, LLC (Seed). They are not employed and do not receive any payment for this work, as per Research Blogging policies. By the time of this paper submission, David S. Munger used to be an administrator at the English version of the site, but he is not related to Research Blogging anymore. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Introduction

The instruments and methodologies from Bibliometrics and Scientometrics traditionally cooperate in and are widely used by development agencies, academic institutions, and even corporations for planning and management of policies for Science and Technology (S&T), identification and promotion of new areas of research, and many other issues in strengthening and growth of S&T activities.

Bibliometrics and Scientometrics tools provide statistics and indicators to generate measures of published scientific output. Although admittedly imperfect [1] – [3] , this field is mainly based on the number of publications and citations. In fact, as S. Arbesman has written,

For too long, the measurement of scientific contribution has centered on the publication. Whether through the number of articles, the citations those articles have by other articles, or even other far more complicated metrics, most scientists are still measured by a derivative of the research article, the basic technology of scientific publishing that is well over 300 years old [4] .

This is a more than 300 year-old modus operandi of science communication, which began with the invention of the scientific journal in the 17 th century [5] and was well suited to communicating scientific research results for a long time in a world where scientists published their findings, theories and ideas to other scientists. But it is insufficient for the current context of an increasing public interest in science information in a digital and 2.0 science era, where the scientific community is witnessing a dramatic, rapid and deep change. The emergence and expansion of information and communication technologies and internet-based tools is opening space for new possibilities to improve both scientific methodology and communication, assessment, promotion and certification [6] .

New technologies allow modern methods of acquisition, manipulation and storage, generating massive data volumes that can further facilitate the research process [7] , [8] . These technologies also facilitate access to scientific results through information sharing and discussion. Content previously restricted only to specialists is now available to a wider audience.

This context requires new management systems to make scientific knowledge more accessible and useable, including new measures to evaluate the reach of scientific information not only among professionals and specialists but also to the general public. The new science and research quality measures are strongly related to the new online technologies and services based in social media. Tools such as blogs, social bookmarks, online reference managers (CiteULike, Connotea, Mendeley, Zotero), and Twitter offer alternative, transparent and more comprehensive information about the active interest, usage and reach of scientific publications [9] – [15] . External online tools also represent a new form of post-publication review ( e.g. Wikipedia referencing of articles is an indicator of future citations [16] ), a result of the filtering done by specialist authors.

All these changes are stimulating the scientific community to reassess its means of communication. For example, the Science Online conference, now in its sixth edition (in January 2012) aims to explore science on the web [17] , encouraging studies have been released [18] , alternative metrics as PLoS Article-Level Metrics have been developed [19] – [21] , and all of these developments have helped to grow movements such as the new field of Altmetrics [22] . These new tools are based on a belief in the failure and insufficiency of the three more traditional filters - peer-review, citation counting analysis, and Journal Impact Factor - to indicate the most relevant and significant sources in a context of an explosive growth of the volume of academic literature in today's internet-age science.

Here we highlight scientific blogs as one important new filter of scientific research. The science blogosphere has grown significantly in recent years. The information gap that was traditionally fulfilled by science journalists and scientifically-curious laymen now has a new protagonist: the scientist. Blogs are one of the most common methods that scientists use to communicate their ideas to other scientists or to the general public [23] . This preference may be due to incentives for scientists to engage with the blogosphere [24] and face its challenges to traditional peer-reviewed research channels. But these challenges may also be a great opportunity [25] , enabling scientists to make a direct connection to students [26] – [28] and bringing them closer to the general public. Scientific blogs have a positive tendency for aggregation, mainly through blog platforms developed by respected science journals or through new tools that either allow a new system of science publishing [29] and post-publication filtering or value online peer-reviewed publication.

This study aims to describe the platform Research Blogging, an aggregator of scientific blog citations of peer-reviewed publications, showing its history, current configuration and characterization of languages, covered topics, number of blogs, posts, use of Open Access (OA), and mentions of scientific and other research. We see it as a critical tool in the ever-changing world of scientific communication, with its own important contribution to this change in the science endeavor.

Research Blogging: background, current state and characterization

Research Blogging (RB) was created in 2007 by the scientific blogger Dave Munger, after one of his readers showed appreciation for his use of an icon to distinguish posts about peer-reviewed research from other general or personal messages on his blog. An icon for all scientific blog posts citing peer-reviewed research was developed, and then a central aggregator collected all such marked posts in a collection harvested from across the internet. Soon, hundreds of bloggers were using the site and a new platform [ http://researchblogging.org ] was developed and is still maintained in collaboration with Seed Media Group. The RB Website aggregates peer-reviewed research posts from several science blogs in seven different languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chinese, Polish and Italian. It is a useful source for readers interested in cutting-edge research and first-hand comments and explanations of science, by scientists and experts in their respective fields. In addition, given that the intrinsic structure of the web makes it difficult to a clear distinction between scientific and pseudo-scientific content, RB is a tool to identify serious academic research and avoid the spread of pseudo-scientific contents, serving as a self-regulated organization that helps to collect only academically relevant information. The site now has over 1,230 active blogs, with over 26,960 entries posted about peer-reviewed research on subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zoology, in categorized blogs.

How Research Blogging works

All RB content is user generated. Participating bloggers - often experts in their research area - identify relevant research in their field. When they write substantive posts about the research on their blogs, they can choose to have those posts aggregated by RB. RB serves as a central means of disseminating findings of peer-reviewed research that careful bloggers have found interesting enough to read and closely analyze.

After registration, bloggers decide themselves to which category their blog will belong indicating their blog topics from the available list within RB site:

Anthropology

Computer Science/Engineering

Ecology/Conservation

Geosciences

Mathematics

Neuroscience

Social Science

Research/Scholarship

Once registered in RB, bloggers use a one-line form to create a snippet of code to place in their posts. This snippet not only notifies the RB site about the scientific posts, it also creates a properly formatted research citation for the blog. The RB software automatically scans registered blogs for posts containing RB code snippet. When it finds them, it indexes and displays them on site front page — thousands of posts from hundreds of blogs, organized by topic. RB editors identify the notable posts in each major discipline, publishing the results on news page in the platform. Other services like PubGet [ http://pubget.com ] index the RB database as well, so every time readers search for a journal article, they can also locate blog posts discussing the article, and RB also uses sharing tools for divulgation through RSS feeds and social media applications (app) as Twitter.

Quality Control

Participating bloggers agree to use the “Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research” icons and the aggregator at ResearchBlogging.org only when they are writing a thoughtful, original blog post about peer-reviewed research. Just a linking to or quoting a news article or press release is not considered sufficient for inclusion on RB.

Blogs can be a powerful tool for dissemination of scientific information and RB is one of the tools that promote a self-regulated quality control of blog posts. Bloggers must demonstrate to the RB editors and readers that they regularly produce posts that meet the criteria to use a “blog badge” [28] . RB editors ensure that newly-registered blogs follow guidelines based on weeks of discussion at ResearchBlogging.org community to safeguard the quality of the aggregator platform. The site continues to receive further recommendations and suggestions for modifications to these guidelines, which are subject to ongoing revision so as to maintain the spirit of good scholarship. The quality of the posts listed on RB site is monitored by the blogger members. If a post doesn't follow the guidelines, it is removed from RB database, and borderline cases may be discussed publicly on the RB blog as well.

The following extract, taken directly from the RB site, describes the most important guidelines for inclusion:

• The “Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research” icons are to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about peer-reviewed research;
• Similarly, when a blogger is registered with ResearchBlogging.org and uses our system to generate a citation for purposes of aggregation by our site, the citation is to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about the peer-reviewed research listed in the citation;
• *Reviewed by experts in field
• *Published with clearly stated publication standards
• *Viewed as trustworthy by experts in field
• *In the case of certain curated archives such as arXiv.org, the “intention” for research to be reviewed may be seen as an adequate proxy for peer review
• Posts using the icon or RB citation code should offer a complete formal citation of the work(s) being discussed;
• The post author should have read and understood the entire work cited;
• The blog post should report accurately and thoughtfully on the research it presents;
• Where possible, the post should link to the original source and/or provide a Document Object Identifier (DOI) or other universal reference number;
• The post should contain original work by the post author — while some quoting of others is acceptable, the majority of the post should be the author's own work;
• Users and readers may report potential abuse of the icons and aggregation system by flagging the post on RB site. Reported abuses may be brought to the attention of readers and discussed publicly online.

There are previous studies about Research Blogging, focusing in its characterization as areas covered, journal titles cited, bloggers' gender and anonymity and other aspects [30] , [31] . Our study expands to a closer look to RB, in order to get insights into its contribution to the changes which we verify in scientific communication.

Data collection and treatment

We conducted an exploratory study, with a quantitative approach to guide the search into posts by the Research Blogging Website. The search was performed in January 2012 and included the entire period available in RB since its inception, considering the posts published between November 1, 2007 and December 31, 2011. We chose to analyze only posts actively discussing peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals, and excluded posts that merely listed references with no discussion. Citations in posted entries with references to books, conference proceedings, guidelines and other online or offline sources were disregarded. We also disregarded those without an active online address and no longer available – only six blogs with a total of 12 posts.

Data were extracted, we hand-searched reference lists from retrieved posts to verify inconsistencies, and then the treated data were summarized in order to generate quantitative descriptions of the following:

• *number of blogs
• *categories by RB topic
• *distribution among the seven languages adopted by RB
• *number of posts
• *citation distribution (number of articles cited by post, journal titles, in restricted journals and in OA journals)
• *reach by number of views.

In addition to generating automatic references on RB by searching for the DOI from scholarly papers, bloggers can create references manually when DOI is unknown, and thus they do not follow a single standard to refer to the journals, e.g. the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America appears in full, abbreviated by Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, and by PNAS. This was the case of some journals in the extracted sample, and this sort of lapse in standardization is a common problem in data mining for informetric research [32] , thus any sample obtained automatically must be checked for find inconsistencies and be previously treated to a valid analysis. Here we confirm the titles by the consultation to Ulrich's Periodicals Directory Online [ http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com ].

Two of the original topics present in RB, Health and Medicine, were joined into a single topic, Health Sciences, and their data values were added to facilitate the analysis under a single category. For counts of views, we consider unique views for each post, and a view for each article cited in this post; i.e. two articles in one post were considered to be viewed two times, while one view was assigned to the post. For all other analysis, we consider simple counts. The access status of periodicals in search for Open Access journals was accessed by consultation to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) [ http://www.doaj.org , last accessed in January 2012].

Statistical analysis and comparison among metrics

We counted the blog citations and post visualizations for each scientific journal cited in the RB database. We obtained 7 scientometric measurements for the journals available at Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Thomson Reuters, namely: Journal Impact Factor, Total Articles, Total Citations, Half-Life, Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor Score and Article Impact. We evaluated the correlations among RB count variables and JCR metrics through the Spearman's ρ statistic. The significance of the correlations was accessed through a permutation test (9,999 permutations) and were evaluated at the level of α = 0.05. Additionally, to investigate if Open Access policy would influence citations ( i.e. OA articles were more cited than expected), we compared the proportion of OA blog citations to the proportion of OA articles in the sample through a binomial test. These analyses were performed in the R programing environment v. 2.14.2 [33] .

Our results below were extracted from the raw data which are available in Supporting Information [ Spreadsheet S1 ], in accordance with the scenario for science 2.0, with data spreading and sharing [34] .

Totals by Blogs and Posts by RB topics and Journal Titles by Area

During the period analyzed, the Research Blogging website collected, registered, indexed and shared 26,969 posts by 1,236 blogs considering all entries in total [ Fig. 1 ]. The RB topic with the most posts was Biology, with 9,787 posts (36%), followed by Health Sciences (here combined with Health and Medicine), with 4,177 posts (15%). Psychology had 3,401 posts (13%), Neuroscience had 2,495 (9%), Social Science 1,108 (4%), Anthropology 1,058 (4%), Chemistry 879 (3%), Physics 835 (3%), Geosciences 518 (2%), Research/Scholarship 438 (2%), Astronomy 407 (2%), Computer Science/Engineering 239 (1%), Ecology/Conservation 221 (1%), Philosophy 152 (1%) and finally Mathematics with 77 posts. The Other RB topic category had 1,177 posts (4%) [ Fig. 2 ].

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RB posts indexed since its creation.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g001

Posts classified by self-assigned categories available within RB site.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g002

The most common language was English with 1,008 blogs and 22,660 posts, followed by Portuguese, with 65 blogs and 1,013 posted entries. Spanish had 52 blogs with 1,456 posts, German had 36 blogs and 742 posts, Italian had 32 blogs with 449 posts, Polish had 24 blogs and 512 posts, and Chinese had 19 blogs with 137 posted entries [ Fig. 3 and Table 1 ].

English is supported since RB inception in 2007. The other languages were added gradually (German, August 2008; Spanish, May 2009; Portuguese, June 2009; Chinese, August 2009; Polish, April 2010; Italian, December 2010).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g003

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.t001

Within the analyzed period 19,000 RB posts cited and linked 26,154 scientific papers published in 3,350 different journals [ Fig. 4 ]. The most-covered subject area by journal titles was the Health Sciences, with 1,071 titles, followed by Applied Social Sciences with 796 titles. Biological Sciences had 599 journal titles, Exact & Earth Sciences, 530 titles while the Multidisciplinary area had 308 titles and the Humanities 46 journal titles [ Fig. 5 ].The journals cited 1,000 times or more were Science (1,829 times), Nature (1,803), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA – PNAS (1,372) and PLoS ONE (1,156): all general purpose periodicals [ Table 2 ]. This result is similar to the sequence found by Shema, Bar-Ilan & Thelwall [30] in a minor sample of RB posts, putting these four first journal titles in a “Golden Circle” on the Research Blogging website. The citation trend does not follow a close relation to Impact Factors (IF), and all three groups of most cited journals have some periodicals with high IFs and some with IFs of less than 10.

Only posts citing peer-reviewed research from periodicals were considered.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g004

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.t002

The second most-cited group of journals spanned from 201 to 350 citations and include six journal titles; the third most-cited group was those with between 101 and 200 citations — 18 titles. There were 36 journals with 51 to 100 citations, 134 journals with 20 to 50 citations, 581 journals with 5 to 19 citations, 1,059 journals with 2 to 4 citations, and 1,512 journals with one citation.

From the 3,350 journals listed in the RB database, 1,822 had scientometric information available at JCR. The correlation matrix shows a moderately modular structure [ Fig. 6 ]. The lowest correlations were associated with Article Half-Life, showing a mean correlation of 0.18 with other metrics and non-significant correlations with both RB count variables. The Total Number of Articles also seems to have generally low correlations with other metrics, with values ranging from 0,16 to 0,26, except for Total Citation and Eigenfactor Score (0.74 and 0.75, respectively). Apart from those variables, all JCR metrics shows correlations among themselves that ranges from 0.54 to 0.97 (0.94, excluding 5year based IF), with an average of 0.58, even if we exclude the 5year based IF. In contrast, RB counts have correlations with the JCR metrics (except Total Articles and Half-Life) that ranges from 0,32 to 0,42, with a mean correlation of 0.37. RB counts showed an average correlation of 0.27 with Total Articles. The correlation between RB citations and RB counts was 0.88.

All non-significant correlations were set to zero.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g006

Open Access Journals

The results showed that 11.7% of the citations (3,054 of 26,154) came from Open Access journals, a value four times larger than that observed in Wikipedia citations - 2.8% [16] . These citations come from the 7.2% OA journals present in our sample (241 of 3,350). The differences between the proportion of OA citations and OA articles available were significant under a binomial test (p = 2.079e−144). Unlike in Wikipedia citations, six of the most cited journals were OA [ Table 2 ]: PLoS ONE in First group (with more than 1,000 citations), Psychological Science and PLoS Biology in Second group (with between 201 and 350 citations) and PLoS Medicine, Pediatrics and PLoS Pathogens in Third group (with 101 to 200 citations). Also, when visits were considered, three of the 10 most visited article links were of OA journals: PLoS One, Psychological Science and PLoS Biology.

As explained in Methods , for view count we considered unique views for each post, and a view for each article cited in this post, i.e. to two articles in one post were two separate views, one for each article [ Fig. 7 ], and only one view for the post. As expected, results showed that more cited journals obtained higher numbers of overall views, but this is also true for some less cited journals, which obtained high number of views too [ Fig. 8 ]. The opposite trend was found to individual article from journals often cited that in some cases did not obtain a high number of views. When we analyzed the views for unique articles - not journals - some surprising views were seen: the most-viewed article was from the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, which has an IF of only 0.71. It received 62,217 views, well ahead of second place, an article in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (IF 5.064), which had 15,265 views.

Article views (in thousands) are represented according to citing posts at Research Blogging. Most recent articles have less time to accumulate views.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g007

The trend-line was estimated through exponential fitting between the count data through non-linear squares and the correlation was estimated through Spearman rank-based statistic ρ.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.g008

Blogs and Posts by RB topics

Both the registered blog totals and total number of posts are dominated by Biology (36% of posts). Health Sciences appears in a distant second position (15%), an interesting result since the area of Health Sciences dominates scientific communication, in a number of traditional publications [35] , also verified here when we analyze the cites by the journal titles [ Fig. 5 ]. Other categories have minor representation, with 13% (Psychology) and 9% (Neuroscience). Still others form a long tail of the site, with the remaining eleven categories taking less than 4 percent of the total number of posts on RB [ Fig. 2 ]. It's possible that the topic distribution is due to the early dominance of Biology. Perhaps other disciplines saw RB as primarily a Biology/Health site and opted out.

Frequency of posts per year

The frequency of posts grew vigorously from the establishment of Research Blogging in November 2007, with the number of posts in 2009 doubling over 2008 [ Fig. 1 ]. After a peak in 2010, in 2011 the number of posts declined to levels similar 2009. This increase in 2010 may be related to Research Blogging Awards 2010, since nominations started early February and winners were announced early March, 2010. Following this period, despite the addition of new blogs and languages, the number of posts and views have returned to values equal to or smaller than 2009. We consider the equivalency in posts from 2011 and 2009 an actual decrease in blog posts, since this number results from more blogs and languages that adopted RB during these two years. During the second half of 2011, the automatic aggregation tool of RB was not functional, which may have led to this decrease. This difference could be in part explained by a shift in science divulgation in recent years from blogs to other online platforms, such as social networks ( e.g. Twitter and Facebook). These tools have different purposes and functionalities, and mainly in the case of science writing would be more a good complement for spreading scientific blog posts [36] and to collect and share stories and resources [37] , [38] rather than construction and discussion as observed in blogs, indicating that these new tools are more related to social networks acting in spread and sharing information, linking to contents (including to the blogs), whereas blogs would be considered as information repositories. With faster ways of propagation and discussion of topics in these new tools, the decrease in post numbers may represent shorter comments on articles left out of blogs and posted in social media instead, and that posts are less frequent but used to cover research more thoroughly.

Languages and RB Topics covered

The dominant language on RB is English, with 1,008 blogs posting 22,660 entries, followed by Portuguese (65 blogs and 1,013 posts), Spanish (52 blogs and 1,456 posts), German (36 blogs and 742 posts), Italian (32 blogs and 449 posts), Polish (24 blogs and 512 posts), and Chinese (19 blogs and 137 posts) [ Fig. 3 , Table 1 ].

English has been supported for the longest period at RB, having been a part of the system since its inception in 2007. The other languages were added gradually (German, August 2008; Spanish, May 2009; Portuguese, June 2009; Chinese, August 2009; Polish, April 2010; Italian, December 2010), and there is some correlation between when a language was added and the number of posts in that language. However, perhaps because more science publishing and blogging occurs in English, or because the RB interface is in English, English continues to substantially outpace the other languages.

There are also some interesting regional patterns. The general dominance of Biology is not the same in all languages. In Italian, there are more posts in Physics than Biology (174∶141), in Chinese there are more posts about Chemistry (37), Psychology (36) and Computer Science/Engineering (24) than Biology (11). Polish demonstrated an equilibrated distribution of topics [ Table 1 ]. These regional peculiarities show an interesting avenue for future comparisons in scientific communication among different cultures.

Our correlation analysis shows that there is general decoupling of blog metrics and other classical scientific metrics ( Fig. 6 ). This is exemplified by the fact that, generally, the correlation between RB counts and JCR metrics are lower than those observed among the majority of JCR metrics, with the exception of Article Half Life and Total Articles. This suggests that the main factors influencing journal citation in the blogosphere are not the same that determine journal merit, as evaluated through JCR metrics, even though academic merit have a substantial influence on blog citation, as reveled by the presence of significant correlations among almost all JCR metrics and RB counts.

The presence of this imperfect association between classical metrics and blog citation can be exemplified by the fact that high IFs are present in most-cited journals but are not a prerequisite or predictive of journal citations in posts [ Table 2 ]. So, rather more than being more frequently cited due to high relevance due to IF, the “Golden Circle” may also be favored because it consists of multidisciplinary journals, while those with fewer citations are specialized journals, with a more restricted audience. We consider the wide variety of journals that were discussed to be a positive feature of RB, although almost half of the titles was only referenced once in the study time period.

These findings in general draw attention to the importance of new article level metrics and other scientometrics tools for measuring the relevance of papers outside traditional publications [19] – [21] . Also, as articles cited in Wikipedia tend to be more relevant than equivalents, an indicative that the choice of Wiki citations favors relevant research [16] , it may be interesting to follow if citations in blog posts are predictive of future article relevance.

Another interesting finding was that increasingly blogs cite more articles in the same post. One post had 29 citations, 18 of which refer to articles that are part of a series derived from a project proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) [39] . This difference supports the argument that blogs promote a deeper understanding of the subjects they cover and the hypothesis that bloggers are writing less frequently, but dealing with more relevant information. In fact, while the number of posts and citations fell in absolute terms in 2011 [ Fig. 2 , 3 ], the number of citations per post did not. This number has increased from 1.38 in 2010 to 1.48 in 2011, which may indicate that bloggers are beginning to add more content to each post. Also, blogs tend to cite more types of sources than just peer-reviewed articles, leading to questions about online metrics: Are mentions of published scientific research at blogs or Wikipedia as valid as citations? Should we reconsider what we commonly understand by citation: an article talking about another article? These are important questions, since the process of scientific communication is historically based on procedures which don't necessarily have analogs in a digital and 2.0 context, where we are looking for new, valid metrics for assessing the reach and impact of science and research [40] .

Open Access journals

There is a large, ongoing effort to promote and disseminate Open Access scientific journals, motivated by the idea that scientific information must flow freely to generate more knowledge [41] . Our findings show that the number of OA journals cited by RB posts is much larger than observed for Wikipedia citations [16] , suggesting that blog authors have favored OA content, and blog readers have proportionally more access to the original article discussed at the posts. Recently, there has been an increasing concern in publication policy and public access to research results [42] , [43] , and academic bloggers are especially engaged in these matters [44] , which may reflect in OA trends. The large presence of paid content journals indicates that bloggers still maintain some of the characteristics of traditional scientific discourse as a preference for high-impact and multidisciplinary journals, following findings in others studies about RB [12] , [30] . On the other hand, we suggest that they perform an important social function by exposing and explaining scientific content that is inaccessible to the general public due to the constraints of paid access scientific journals in a transition context permeated by the effort to the greater access to scientific knowledge.

The results corroborate the methodologies of Article-Level Metrics that consider the individual article to determine its value and reach, in contrast to journal-level measures of research quality that have traditionally been made available until now [19] , as an alternative form to verify the quality, importance, and relevance to scientific literature, more immediately than the IF allows. One of the criteria of article-level metrics - the number of views to the article - allows verify the article relevance soon after the publication unlike journal-level measures based in IF.

In addition, as P. Janiszewski points out, citation on blogs may improve the reach of research:

Put another way, the same research which I published in a prestigious medical journal and made basically no impact, was then viewed by over 12,000 sets of eyes because I decided to discuss it online. And it doesn't end there [45] .

The systematic indexing and citation registering adopted by RB is an efficient filter for published research and its dissemination, allowing article views and access statistics agree with blog coverage metric [20] .

Future directions

Extracting data from RB posts is a challenge, mainly due to the heterogeneous pattern of journals entries by the bloggers, as previously explained. Also regarding RB further improvements, it will be useful to allow its data to be mined by integrating features like its Twitter app with tools like CrowdoMeter [46] , [47] , improving the categorization of the citations in RB posts, and integrating other tools to promote a joint effort with the scientific community. Additionally, it would be informative to deeper evaluate the regional patterns observed between languages, allowing comparisons in scientific communication among different cultures.

The emergence and rise of more recent online technologies and services based in social media tools such as Twitter may mean that blogs, one of the oldest digital platforms, are losing ground in numbers. We believe that blogging is still an important way to give visibility to science in a more complete and detailed format. It can offer an alternative view of science, one that is more transparent, comprehensive, and comprehensible, while increasing interest, usage and reach of scientific publications; it continues to hold an important place among other new technologies. Platforms like RB not only spread but also record and index published research, as well as having an important social function by bringing restricted publications of science to the general public.

Also, it points to a new path of scientific information spreading. The previous (and somehow still ongoing) path was: 1) scientific data published in traditional scientific journals; 2) press releases; 3) scientific data divulged (not always accurate) in the mass media. An important new ongoing path is: 1) scientific data published in traditional scientific journals and also in open access scientific journals; 2) peer-reviewed posts published in science blogs, which provides updated and accurate scientific information in more accessible language to a non-scientific public. Considering this, it would be a relevant challenge to develop and/or improve new metrics related to tools like RB in order to better evaluate its effective contribution to scientific information reach.

In this sense, our correlation analyses suggest that RB citations and views indeed evaluate different aspects of scientific production. The fact that the correlations between RB counts and JCR metrics is lower then the correlations among JCR variables (with the exception of Total Articles and Article Half-Life) suggests that the overall factors influencing the traditional metrics are not the main factors in defining blogging citations and views. If the pattern found here for JCR metrics are consistent with large-scale studies of correlation between different metrics [48] , than this could be an indicative that RB-based metrics are evaluating a different feature of journal quality, merit or impact. Even if RB counts are connected to Usage metrics ( e.g . Closeness Centrality, Degree Centrality, Journal Use Probability), the mean correlation between those and Citation metrics is very high (according to Bollen et al [48] , it ranges 0.68 to 0.73, with the exception of Usage Impact Factor, with a value of 0.27), strongly suggesting that RB counts are evaluating a different aspect of research quality. Specific investigations of the relationship between Usage metrics and RB counts are warrant in order to evaluate the true relation of these metrics. Overall, RB metrics correlations are consistent with findings for other altmetrics [49] , indicating that they should be viewed as such.

Even though RB counts would not be available to all journals (not all journals are cited in blogs), they nevertheless state something about the social impact of those that were cited, and could be of use to journal editors that wish to develop policies to increase their journal outreach. Large publishers (such as Nature group) are already doing this through the establishment of a blogosphere linked to their publications. RB is different in this sense because it is not directly connected to any scientific publishing group and could be seen as a relatively independent source of scientometric information, and a more reliable base for policy-making.

Supporting Information

Spreadsheet s1..

Research Blogging Reports raw data. Excel spreadsheet with Research Blogging data from November 1, 2007 until December 31, 2011. Sheet S1-A : RB Blog Report with blog name, blog URL, status, Research Blogging topic, number of posts and blog language. Sheet S1-B : RB Citations Report with publication date, post title, number of views, blog name, DOI, journal title and Research Blogging topic.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109.s001

Acknowledgments

We thank Rogério Mugnaini (Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades, USP) and Gilson L. Volpato (Departamento de Fisiologia, Instituto de Biociências, Caunesp, UNESP) for encouragement and kind advice on data analysis and discussion.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SF LB AI TRN DM. Performed the experiments: SF LB AI DM. Analyzed the data: SF LB AI DM FAM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SF LB AI. Wrote the paper: SF LB AI TRN DM FAM.

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• v.17(3); 2015 Mar

Blogging as a Viable Research Methodology for Young People With Arthritis: A Qualitative Study

Julie prescott.

1 University of Bolton, Department of Education and Psychology, Bolton, United Kingdom

Nicola J Gray

2 Green Line Consulting Ltd, Manchester, United Kingdom

Felicity J Smith

3 UCL, School of Pharmacy, London, United Kingdom

Janet E McDonagh

4 University of Manchester, Centre for Musculoskeletal Research, Manchester, United Kingdom

The development of services that are responsive to the needs of users is a health policy priority. Finding ways of engaging young people in research to gain insights into their particular experiences, perspectives, and needs is vital but challenging. These data are critical to improving services in ways that meet the needs of young people.

Our aim was to evaluate Web-based blogging as a viable method for understanding the daily experiences and condition management strategies of young people with juvenile arthritis.

To meet the objectives of the study, a qualitative approach was required to gather information on the experiences and perspectives of young people regarding the management of their condition and its daily impact. In collaboration with a group of young people with arthritis, a custom website was developed. This website provided the opportunity for young people (aged 11-19) with arthritis from a United Kingdom pediatric hospital to contribute blogs. It was designed so that young people were free to write about whatever was important to them, but the site also included some structure and prompts to facilitate the writing of blogs. Qualitative analytical procedures were employed, supported by NVivo software.

Engagement in the study by young people was variable in terms of their participation rates, frequency of website visits, and the length of their blogs. Young people used the site in different ways, some responding to the website categories and prompts that the team created, while others used it as a diary to record their experiences and thoughts. In line with principles of qualitative inquiry, the data collection was participant-led. Young people were in control of what, how much, and how often they wrote. However, some young people expressed difficulty regarding knowing what they should blog about. For a number of reasons, discussed here, the blogs may also not be fully reflective of experiences and perspectives of the participants. However, the data obtained provided insights into young people’s experiences of living with arthritis and their use of medicines in the context of their daily lives.

Conclusions

Web-based research with young people presents opportunities and challenges for researchers. Web-based blogging methodology has the potential to give young people and parents the space and empowerment to express their own ideas and concerns. However, this project suggests that it might not be the best way to engage a large diverse group of young people and might most effectively be combined with other approaches. Despite these limitations, the study provided valuable data about the experience and impact of living with a long-term condition from the perspectives of young people with arthritis.

Introduction

In 2003, Internet-based research was viewed as still being in its infancy [ 1 ]. More than 10 years on, the Internet is widely employed in many aspects of daily life and is increasingly being used within academic research. In particular, Web-based surveys have become very popular [ 2 , 3 ]. They have been noted for their potential to reach very large audiences, inexpensively, with rapid replies [ 4 , 5 ]. Although for some research, they may be limited by anticipated response rates; in other studies with specified populations, and with the use of more sophisticated software, they can be valuable [ 6 , 7 ].

The potential value of Web-based research for qualitative studies is less clear. The Internet has been used for a diverse range of studies using traditional qualitative data-gathering techniques such as interviews [ 8 , 9 ] and focus group research [ 10 ]. Experience is considerably more limited regarding the potential use of blogs [ 11 , 12 ]. A blog (short for weblog) has been described as a Web-based diary in which the blogger can freely record opinions and recount experiences. Blogs can be produced by single or multiple authors, and they provide information to tell a story, and/or represent particular experiences or perspectives on any issue [ 13 ]. Bloggers are often part of a blogging community that centers on a common interest (eg, Olive’s 2013 study on surfers [ 12 ]). By their very nature, it seems that blogs may provide an excellent research opportunity; however, they are currently underutilized in social science and health services research. Hookway [ 11 ] compares blogs to offline diary research, suggesting blogs allow for more extensive research opportunities through the potential anonymity of blogs (both the anonymity of the blogger and those that comment on other blogs) and the ability to enable researchers to reach a wider audience. Diary research has been used to investigate, among other issues, health behavior [ 14 - 16 ]. Benefits include the ability to collect sensitive information [ 14 ] and the ability to capture an “everchanging event” [ 14 ], where the time between an event and its recording is reduced, resulting in less memory impairment and reduced reconstruction of the event compared to other qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups [ 17 ]. Olive [ 12 ] found blogging a good means of data collection since there were no location constraints to blogging—as long as you had access to a computer and the Internet—and the process of blogging could also allow the blogger to be reflective.

Web-based resources for gaining information and sharing experiences on medical/health issues are increasingly popular [ 18 ], and these too may provide data for research, especially for populations with specific medical/health issues [ 18 ]. Malik and Coulson [ 19 ] used Web-based methodologies by examining a password-protected Web-based support group to understand the lives and experiences of young people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A particular benefit of Web-based support groups, as featured in Malik and Coulson’s [ 19 ] study, is that the groups are available 24/7, which enables people to receive support and advice when more traditional resources are unavailable. Web-based support groups also offer people the convenience of support with similar people from within their own homes [ 20 ], which may be an important feature for people with long-term conditions who may have difficulty attending face-to-face meetings. Web-based groups also offer anonymity, which may increase self-disclosure [ 20 , 21 ]. Another study [ 16 ] of 6 young people aged between 11 and 16 years with IBD used an audio (offline) diary methodology. Researchers claimed that the diary methodology was a viable method for communicating and engaging with young people. Participants were able to record what they wanted, when they wanted, with researchers able to gain an understanding of the lives of a diverse group of young people.

With all Web-based methodologies, researchers must be aware of their sample: their sample’s ability to blog, having an interest in blogging, and access to the resources. However, research suggests that many young people aged between 13-19 blog [ 22 , 23 ]. Indeed, Hookway [ 11 ] posits that bloggers need low technical competence in order to blog, and therefore it is a methodology that is potentially inclusive. In the United Kingdom, however, inequalities in relation to access and use of the Internet have been identified [ 24 , 25 ] with boys, older children, and middle class children more likely to have access. This suggests there is still a digital divide for young people that should be borne in mind when considering Web-based research with specific groups. Despite inequalities in access, previous studies in the United States [ 23 ] and United Kingdom [ 26 ] on gender differences in blogging have suggested that females aged 15-17 blog more than their male counterparts. Gender differences have been found to exist in how and why people blog [ 26 , 27 ] and with female-authored blogs being commented on, and noted less [ 26 ].

The development of services that are responsive to the needs of users is a health policy priority in the United Kingdom, and the value of qualitative methods in enabling researchers and policy makers to gain insights into the experiences and priorities from the perspective of service users is recognized. In particular, research into the perspectives of young people that can inform service development is very limited [ 28 ]. It is recognized, however, that young people with long-term conditions have very distinct needs and concerns in their daily management and preferences regarding service provision and delivery. Finding ways of engaging young people in research—to gain insights into their experiences, needs, and priorities—is vital but challenging [ 28 ].

This paper describes Web-based blogging as a method for understanding the daily experiences and condition management of young people with juvenile arthritis. A systematic review of qualitative studies involving the experience of children and young people living with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) has been conducted [ 29 ]. None of the resulting 27 studies, completed up to 2011, involved Web-based blog data, although there were a small number involving video diaries [ 29 ]. The overall aim of the research was to investigate the relationships between identity and medication use among adolescents with arthritis and to explore the role of health professionals in delivering services to this group. This paper discusses how using a qualitative Web-based bespoke blogging website, shaped by young people, enabled the research team to meet the overall research objectives and engage with young people with a long-term health condition.

Study Setting and Participants

Young people (aged 11-19 years) with arthritis who attended a clinic at a major UK pediatric hospital were invited to take part in the study. The clinic served a diverse group of young people from the West Midlands area.

Ethical and Research Approvals

Approval for the study was given by Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee in July 2012 (ref 12/WM/0184) and the Hospital Directorate for Research and Development .

Young people and their parents were identified from the patient list of a rheumatology clinic in a large UK pediatric hospital. Eligibility criteria for young people required that they had confirmed child/adolescent onset arthritis, were aged 11-19 years, and had no cognitive/learning disorder that would prevent their ability to provide data. All eligible young people (and their parents) were invited to participate by letter (n=107) and followed up during routine clinic appointments (n=70). Young people under the age of 16 gave their own assent to take part, coupled with a parent’s consent. Young people aged 16 and over provided their own consent. Consenting participants were given an information pack about the “Arthriting” website and a personal login code. To maximize relevance and uptake, development of the website was undertaken in partnership with a young people’s user group and included stringent security processes to ensure data protection and participant safety (eg, password-protected logins, secure firewalls, regular moderation). The website was also functional on smartphones, recognizing that many young people (and parents) access the Internet this way. Once registered, participants were asked to choose a nickname and password for future logins. On completion of the 2-month period, participants were sent a letter and online shopping voucher to thank them for their time.

Website Design

The young people contributed to the design of the website by attending a discussion with the website builders and members of the research team. Many of its features were decided in partnership with the young people, who had strong ideas regarding the look and operation of the website. One young person suggested the name “Arthriting” and the logo for the project and website. The website had a secure login function for young people to contribute blogs. Once logged in, participants had a project “Dashboard”, which showed them where they were in the project and gave them a launching-off point to the blog space (see Figure 1 ). To ensure confidentiality of data, blogging could not take place as a community, but privately as individuals. Some of the young people expressed a wish to communicate with each other, but due to the potentially sensitive nature of the material and desire of others that blogs were private, a decision was made to have a closed individual blog rather than an open group blog method. Thus, blogs were not open for comment by others.

Arthriting website logged-in dashboard (dummy demo testing user).

Blog Structure

To achieve the objectives of the project, the research team generated an initial list of blog categories to give young people ideas for the topics and types of messages that they might post (eg, thoughts about identity, the arthritis condition, medication, and the use of health services). These “blog categories” were developed and refined in discussion with the young people.

When using the blogs, participants were able to choose their own font style and color and choose an emoticon to express how they were feeling that day. They were invited to choose a blog category and to write their own title for the blog. They could also indicate their feelings in a “smiley status”. Young people could edit or delete blogs at any time during their 2-month engagement with the project. There were no minimum or maximum blog lengths or number of blog entries that any person could post. We hoped that they would visit and revisit during their 2-month stay.

Data Collection

The young people’s information sheet gave the following guidance about blogging:

You will then be invited to write down online what you think of your medicines (both injectable ones as well as those you take by mouth), and how medicines fit—or indeed do not fit—into your everyday lives. It will be like writing a diary but online and like a diary, entries do not have to be every day nor do they have to be lengthy—only just enough to give others a picture of what life is like for you with your arthritis and your medicines. You can take up to 2 months to cover all the issues that you want to tell us about.

Basic demographic and relevant clinical data (which we asked permission to extract during the consent process) were recorded. These data were age, sex, ethnic group, age at diagnosis, and number of medications.

Data Processing and Analysis

For analysis of the blog data to meet the objectives of this paper, a subgroup of the wider multidisciplinary project team (the authors of this paper) first examined each individual blog to provide a case-by-case overview of the themes of each individual’s entry. From this, a coding frame was developed. As analysis proceeded, this was modified and refined using constant comparison techniques, in which all items of data assigned a particular code were appraised for similarities and divergences from those already coded. To ensure the reliability of analytical procedures, all stages of the data processing, coding, and analysis involved at least 2 members of the research team. Computer software (NVivo) was used to assist in the data management and handling.

In total, 107 young people were eligible and invited to take part, of which 36 young people completed consent procedures and 25 registered with the site. At least one blog was received from each of 21 young people. In addition, 6 parents also registered and completed at least one blog. The sample of the 21 young bloggers broadly reflected the wider clinic population in terms of age and type of arthritis diagnosis, but white young people and females were overrepresented in our blog sample. This may be viewed as consistent with literature showing that female adolescents are more likely to use online health information sources [ 25 ]. Table 1 shows characteristics of the 21 young people who contributed at least one blog.

Characteristics of participants.

We asked each young person and parent to choose a nickname for their blog and to avoid linking it closely to their real name. The moderator did not know the identity of the bloggers, but the clinical staff did. Where the clinical staff determined that the nickname was too close to the blogger’s real name, we retained the first and last letter and put two full stops “..” in between, regardless of how many other letters there actually were. Blogs have not been edited by the team, but some examples are extracts from a longer blog.

Young People’s Approach to the Site

The following quote illustrates a young person’s understanding of the study and their role in it: “Taking medication every day is hard, and living with the pain of arthritis is harder, and over the next few weeks, I hope to blog and give you a better understanding of what it’s like ‘living with arthritis’ and ‘being me’.” [BeanyBabe96, female, age 16].

There was great variability in the frequency of visits to the site by young people and in the length of blogs, with some young people writing frequently and at length and others writing one or two blogs over the duration of the project. Among the young people who blogged, the average number of blogs posted was 8, and the range 1-36. Among the 6 parents, the average number of blogs posted was 4, and the range 1-12. In total, 187 blog entries were contributed.

The young people approached the site and blogging in different ways. Some were guided by the “blog categories” listed on the site. They worked through these, contributing thoughts and experiences that they felt were relevant. This could provide a young person’s perspectives on a broad range of issues. For example, the following were contributed by a female blogger, aged 13, nickname 123456:

Hi today I’m going to talk about medication and how I feel about it. Honestly it doesn’t really affect me most of the time); it doesn’t make me feel different from anyone. I’m glad I take medication because without it I wouldn’t be well. However sometimes when I am angry I don’t feel like taking it because I can’t be bothered and think why should I have to take it. WHY ME????

Hey, so my dreams and goals. Well, when I’m older I want to become a doctor. I’ve always wanted to become a doctor even from a young age, but after I got diagnosed I saw how much the doctors helped and cared for me. I would like to do that for some to. My illness won’t affect my future a lot; hopefully it stays in control and then everything will be alright.

So relationships...it doesn’t really affect me at all I’m still the same person I was before I got diagnosed. My relationships with other are the same, I’m a bit more moody than I used to be which sometimes makes relationships with others hard because I just want to be by myself, but other than that it doesn’t affect me at all!!!’

Other bloggers adopted a more diary-like approach recording their experiences, views, and perspectives with no particular reference to the blog categories. These blogs could provide insights in the context of current priorities and everyday concerns of young people. Thus the blogs may not necessarily explicitly focus on the experience of arthritis and medicines but still do demonstrate how these issues relate to, or impact on, wider aspects of a young person’s life. The blog of “flower123”, a 14-year-old female blogger, is a fascinating example of this approach. A typical entry recounted experiences at school and social activities with family and friends:

Yesterday after school I went to my dance class I had loads of fun !! Today I Finally got my guitar tuned YAY !! I can now hopefully try to teach myself how to play also me and my friend [girl’s name] were on Skype playing our guitars (really badly :/) !!!!!

Although flower123’s blogs do not always focus on arthritis and medicines, those that do provide genuine insights into the place, priority, and impact of arthritis and medicines for the young person. There is a series of references to “my injection”, identified by the drug name in her very first entry as Enbrel (the brand name for the biological medicine etanercept) but never referred to by name again. These events seemed to have a profound effect on her. We present them here with the blog dates for reference:

28thSeptember 2012—Feel rubbish today :( got a cold. Had my injection last night didn’t hurt at all !! YAY !!

2ndOctober 2012—yesterday I had my first injection of the week and it didn’t hurt !! YAY :)

10thOctober 2012—on Monday I had my injection stung a bit not as bad as it has done but it’s OK now

17thOctober 2012—on Monday had my injection it didn’t hurt but it was uncomfortable through my leg I could feel it spreading throughout :/ 

23rdOctober 2012—yesterday I had my injection and it didn’t hurt a bit YAY !!!!

20thNovember 2012—yesterday when I had my injection it hurt a bit :/ it hurt when it was going into my leg :(

23rdNovember 2012—but I feel better today still not 100% and I didn’t go to school today :/ x had my injection yesterday when I was ill and it hurt : flower123, female

After writing weekly about the first few injections, there was a gap of almost a month before the next blog. Perhaps the intervening weeks had been uneventful and straightforward, as the post-gap entries describe more painful experiences. The blog ended on November 29, so it is unclear whether the situation improved. The blogs of flower123 show that her main priorities were activities with her friends and family; her arthritis seemed not to restrict her. The injections were sometimes troubling, but not limiting.

Depth and Breadth

The quotes above demonstrate how the blogs enabled the collection of data that are contextualized within the lives, priorities, and experiences of the bloggers. These data would be difficult to obtain in either focus groups or interviews. Many of the issues brought up by individuals were repeated in subsequent blogs, sometimes enabling a longitudinal perspective in which researchers could gain insight into the dynamics of the situation from the perspective of the young person, and a temporal view of the impact of both having arthritis and the use of medicines.

The following quote illustrates how, in a single blog, many and diverse issues relating to a young person’s experience of living with arthritis may be presented and illustrates the potential for examining the wider context and importance of these issues for the young person. It enables an understanding of health and medicines in the context of wider positive and negative aspects of life:

Arthritis is annoying because you try to put it in the back of your head but it keeps coming, every day you have to think about it because when you want to do something like eg: run but then you realise if you fall over it could be a trip to the hospital which I really don’t like, not because of the staff or anything like that because you are all lovely but it’s just because I have been so many times there and most of the time it has been bad news which makes it a horrible place if you know that when you go there’s a chance you will come home upset and worried about the next step like an operation. I get angry when other people moan about little things like your legs ache, but I’m not saying that I feel sorry for myself all the time it’s just I would swap with  anyone in a heartbeat not to have this, it’s horrible all the not doing stuff other people can do, but in a way I’m lucky that I can walk at all it’s just that I love sports and getting involved but sometimes I can’t do that which is upsetting because I want to do the things I love. It makes me sound ungrateful but I’m not I think my mom and dad are amazing with what they do with me and support me all the time so I am grateful for that but I just get annoyed when people moan because it’s better than not running or even being in this earth today. If I could change myself eg: not having arthritis I don’t know if I would because it has made me a stronger person and realise that not everything's good in life there are bead things on the way and I have faced some of my fears like operations and needles and I’m proud of myself for that because if I didn’t have this condition then I wouldn’t have become brave and I wouldn’t have faced some of the things that I have faced before. B..a, female, age 13

Overall, the blogs covered a huge variety of issues. The study objectives and the website provided some framework for the topics that bloggers may wish to write about, and this would inevitably impact on the data obtained. Notwithstanding, bloggers did contribute wide-ranging perspectives and experiences. Table 2 provides examples of the range of topics in the blogs.

Themes and topics of young people’s blogs.

Young Person-Parent Dyads—Comparing Perspectives

This study also provided an opportunity to analyze data across a small number of parent-young person dyads. Data from young people and parents may relate to similar or different experiences and issues. Data may also highlight similar and potentially conflicting perspectives. Qualitative analysis may enable these viewpoints to be examined in the contexts of the differing concerns and priorities of young people and their parents. For instance, this parent-young person dyad felt differently about the school’s involvement:

At school I know they help her either by rearranging the seating plan in the classroom so her neck is ok or by letting her sit out of certain activities if she cannot manage them and doing something else, college however is another big step – feeling a bit scary for her. chickflick-parent

sometimes school does not understand, like on Tuesday we had assembly and the chairs in the rows are really close together, it hurts my legs to keep them in that position for all that time, mom keeps on telling me to tell them but I feel awkward about it, hopefully college will be different. pefkosfan, female, age 15

Sharing the Experience of Living With Arthritis

For the purposes of the research, the blog site was closed. However, contributions that were effectively giving advice to others may reflect the desire of young people for a forum to interact with others with whom they share experiences:

The advice I would give to any young person that has arthritis would be don’t give up the things you love just because you’ve been diagnosed. if you give up on the active things you love then you will start to give up on other things and start using it as an excuse why not to do things. Spacecadet, female, age 16

Although not intended to have any “therapeutic role”, several participants commented (both via their blogs and to research team members in clinic) that the experience of blogging had been helpful:

well today is the last day of my blog and I think that this has been a great opportunity to talk about my feelings about my arthritis and just general things really :) thank you to everyone who set this up as a really good website. :) flower123, female, age 14

Another young person and their parent commented that the experience of blogging had been therapeutic during a difficult period of adjustment following their diagnosis.

Challenges of Using Blogging as a Research Tool

Despite the many benefits for using blogging to engage with young people with arthritis as discussed, there were a number of challenges with conducting research through blogging.

Non-Participation

A number of participants who declined to participate in the study gave reasons to the researchers when they were approached. These included not having enough time, not using the Internet very much, being “too lazy”, busy with studying for their exams, not liking to write, and the perception of a parent that a young person would not wish to participate.

Some other reasons that were not explicitly stated, but hypothesized by the research team, include not knowing what to write on a blog, preference for outdoor rather than indoor activities, not wanting to think about their illness when they were well, and problems in accessing the site at home, for example, due to permissions that are required to run the website.

The specific reasons given by the young people may indicate how blogging in research of this kind may not be suitable for all young people.

Not Knowing What to Write

Some young people indicated to the research team that they did not know what to write about and were unsure as to whether what they were writing about would be deemed important or significant. The prompts posted by the research team on possible issues to blog about were intended to reduce this anxiety. Perhaps more reference should have been made to these prompts throughout the study, but the research team wanted to avoid “telling” the young people what to write about, as the goal of the project was to find out about was important to them.

Technical Problems

There were also some technical issues. Access to the Arthriting site was restricted by schools and workplaces with firewalls, although participants would have been able to access the site from home or through a smartphone. Access was actually restricted in the pediatric hospital itself, which reduced opportunities to demonstrate the site during the informed consent procedures.

Principal Findings

This project offered a novel way of engaging young people in research, by creating a secure individual blog-space. Young people blogged to different extents; not all took up the blogging opportunity, but others enjoyed the experience and their blogs provided valuable insights relevant to our study objectives.

Strengths and Limitations

This methodology did present a number of limitations. First, the sample was self-selecting. Despite all eligible young people being invited to take part, many declined. The sample may reflect only those who feel competent with Web-based activities and who have reasonable literacy skills. We likely missed out on the insights of young people who do not consider Web-based resources relevant to their own condition. A recent study emphasized that not all young people choose to seek information about pain online [ 30 ]. Some of the reasons given for non-participation in our study indicate that the methodology may not suit all; this approach might be most effective if combined with other inclusive qualitative methods, such as telephone interviewing. This might promote involvement of a more representative sample. We saw substantial attrition at each recruitment stage of the study, and the expectation of a 2-month engagement might have been too ambitious.

The blogs (ie, the dataset) may also not be fully reflective of experiences and perspectives of the participants. This methodology would not necessarily be expected to provide a systematic and comprehensive dataset. For example, it could be that the young people were more likely to blog when they had problems or issues with their arthritis that made them focus on their condition and perhaps blog more. The blogs, often rich in context, need to be analyzed with this in mind, with each data item providing a perspective important to a young person at a particular point in time and in the context of other aspects of their life and priorities. The data enabled “how” and “why” questions to be explored in the analysis. When discussing the viability and relative strengths of blogging as a research methodology, it is necessary also to consider issues of reliability and validity. If we were to compare this with interview and focus group methodologies, then this method had no interviewer or transcriber bias. In the use of “audio-diaries”, Sargeant and Gross [ 16 ] similarly described how they achieved “a view of how the disease fitted into individual lives”.

In line with principles of qualitative inquiry, the data collection was “participant-led”. Young people were in control of their involvement. They determined what they wrote about, how much they wrote, and how often they visited the site. When young people expressed difficulty regarding what they should blog about, the research team—while providing appropriate assistance (possible categories on the website)—wished to avoid influencing their blogs.

In our quest for security, the blogs were for private use by each individual and were not associated with a community where experiences and issues could be shared. This might also have been off-putting to those who wished to communicate with others. Conversely, others may have been willing to disclose feelings and experiences that they may have been reluctant to share in a Web-based community setting. The desire of some young people with a less common condition, like juvenile arthritis, to “meet” and compare experiences could be addressed by a dedicated Web-based forum. Although a young person’s discussion forum does exist for young people with arthritis, this can be dominated by older adolescents and adults and is thus not appealing to the age group of “younger young people” that we engaged.

Web-based research with young people presents opportunities and challenges for researchers. Web-based blogging methodology has the potential to give young people and parents the space and empowerment to express their own ideas and concerns. However, this project suggests that it might not be the best way to engage a large diverse group of young people and might most effectively be combined with other approaches. Despite this, the study provided valuable data on the experience and impact of living with a long-term condition from the perspectives of young people with arthritis.

Acknowledgments

This research project was commissioned by the Pharmacy Practice Research Trust (PPRT) and completed in association with Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Arthritis Care. The PPRT merged with the Pharmaceutical Trust for Educational and Charitable Objects (PTECO) in December 2012 to form Pharmacy Research UK.

We would like to thank all the young people and parents who took part in the Arthriting project and especially the young advisers who helped to develop the blog website and who coined the title “Arthriting”.

We would like to acknowledge the work of the Research Management Group of the Arthriting Project and specifically of our colleagues Kevin Harvey (University of Nottingham, Karen Shaw (University of Birmingham), Rachel Stephenson (Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust), David Terry (Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust), Kate Fleck (Arthritis Care), and Rachel Roberts (Pharmacy Research UK).

We would also like to thank the Web designers, Ambinet, who worked with the young advisers and the project team, and Marie McGee (adolescent rheumatology transition co-ordinator at Birmingham Children’s Hospital) who supported the young advisers’ Web development meetings.

Pharmacy Research UK funded the evaluation from which this paper and the data included are derived. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Pharmacy Research UK.

Abbreviations

Authors' Contributions: All authors have contributed to each section within this paper and made additional edits to the paper.

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

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Blogging your research: Tips for getting started

Curious about research blogging, but not sure where to start?

In this post, Alice Fleerackers and Lupin Battersby answer common questions about why, when, and where to blog about research. Inspired by a recent SFU Knowledge Mobilization Hub webinar on research blog writing we weave in best practices for effective knowledge mobilization, and offer helpful resources for entering the world of research blogging.

What is a “research blog”?

Research blog posts take many shapes and forms, but most look nothing like a scholarly paper 

This GIF of slides from Alice Fleerackers recent webinar states first, that a blog is (almost) nothing like a research paper. Next, it captures the outline of a typical research paper: abstract, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and reference list. A typical blog post has the conclusion, discussion and background (literature review, methods, results), in that order. In other words a typical blog post outline is: the key take aways, why it matters, and a bit of context.

Research blogs can take many forms, from commentaries to summaries. But, at the most basic level, all research blog posts should have two things in common: 

• Scholarly : True to their name, research blog posts incorporate scholarship in some way. That could look like a detailed overview of a recent study, a deep dive into a new method, a summary of key findings, or something else entirely. While many scholars blog about their own research, you can also use blogging to comment on work by others in your field.  
• Web-friendly : No matter what the topic, effective blog posts are written and formatted with the online reader in mind. That means they should include clear language, plenty of visuals, and a mobile-friendly design. Different bloggers have different styles, but most posts tend to be between 500 and 2,000 words long.

How to write effective research-based blog content is a topic for another post. But to get you started, here are some basic research blog formats to explore:

The slide captures 3 basic blog format from easy to hard. 1. Q&A: interview a co-author or yourself; questions as subheadings; conclusions-focused. 2. Summary: share 3-5 key findings; listicle-style; results-focused. 3. Feature: Journalistic/narrative; contextualize findings with interviews, current events, other research; issue-focused.

Why to blog about your research

Research blogging is a form of knowledge mobilization that can help get the right information to the right people at the right time. Blogging your research can reduce research waste, improve access, build awareness, and increase connections.

A research blog can boost your impact within and beyond academia, benefiting you professionally and personally. Well crafted posts can increase the reach of your publications and lead to further collaborations and opportunities. They can also become tools to close the loop with participants and engage stakeholders with your topic area. Connecting with your community and knowing that your research is being read is deeply satisfying.

Plus, blogging is a great way to practice plain language communication—excellent preparation for conference presentations and lectures.

Deciding where to blog

The best place to start blogging will depend on your time, budget, skills, experience, and goals. A few common options include:

Create your own blog

If you plan to do a lot of blogging, consider starting your own website. Code your own if you have the skills. (If you need to purchase hosting, Reclaim Hosting offers a very affordable student plan.) Otherwise, you can create a free or low-cost blog using services like WordPress , Wix , or Squarespace . You may also be able to add a blog to your existing website, especially if you are already using one of these services.

Starting your own blog has the advantage of control : It’s up to you how often to blog, what style and tone to use, and what topics to cover. But it has the disadvantage of time and effort. Running (and promoting) your own site only makes sense if your schedule allows for it.

Blog on a third-party platform

If you only plan to blog from time to time, posting on a third-party site can be a good option. Platforms like Medium or Write As offer a space where anyone can publish content for free. These platforms are designed for the web and easy to use. (No coding required!) Some also offer extra features, like newsletters and analytics, though these can cost extra.

Third-party platforms have the advantage of letting you post professional-looking blog posts without having to start an entire blog . But the disadvantage is that you have less control over your content. Medium, for example, is notorious for changing its business model . It’s always possible that, one day, everything you’ve posted there will disappear. 

Platforms like Medium offer spaces where anyone can publish content.

Guest post on another blog

Does your university library or your faculty have a blog? If so, contributing a guest post is an option worth considering.

Guest blogging makes a lot of sense when you are just starting out, or only plan to blog occasionally.  Because there’s already a built-in audience for the blog, there’s less pressure to promote the content to reach readers. If you’re lucky, you may even get some editorial support from the blog you’re writing for.

Just remember that you’ll need to tailor your writing style and topic to suit the blog you’re posting on. Again, the trade off for less effort is less control.

Setting a (workable) blogging schedule

Good blogging takes time—and, for researchers, time is often in short supply. Even outside of academia, many blogs fail because the person running them has overestimated their capacity to keep things going.

Avoid this trap by being honest with yourself from the get-go. Sit down and evaluate how much time you can realistically contribute to blogging before even writing your first post. While posting frequently can help boost your blog’s Search Engine Ranking , posting consistently is more important. Whether you’re publishing a blog post once a week, once a month, or once a year, it’s easier to build a following online when you stick to a set schedule .

Choose the platform that makes the most sense for your capacity (see “Deciding where to blog”). Set a schedule that you think you can maintain, then stick to it!

Setting up an editorial calendar, like this one by Science Borealis , can help you keep your research blog on schedule.

Promoting your posts

Once you have a blog set up, you’ll need to find some readers.

There are lots of different ways to promote your blog . Sharing posts on social media is often a good start, especially if you already have a following there. Depending on your target audience, promoting new posts through a newsletter or an email listserv could also work.

Reaching out to existing blogs in your field can be another effective strategy. Some blogs will let you write a guest post that includes a link to your own blog. Others, like Library Journal ’s infoDOCKET or LSE Impact Blog may want to “reblog” your content. Reblogging and guest posting are a win-win for everyone: The blog you’re contributing to gets free, high quality content. In return, you get to introduce yourself to a relevant community of readers.

Some blogs, like the LSE Impact Blog , occasionally repost blog posts published on other sites — a great way to promote your content to a relevant readership.

Setting worthwhile goals

Before you start on the metrics, set yourself short- and medium-term goals. What will success look like for you?

This could range from improving your lay writing skills, to building interest in a problem space, to expanding your reach. Ensure it makes sense for you in terms of the scope of your research and your resources (e.g. time). Then determine what to track and measure.

Tracking and measuring success

Many platforms, like Wordpress, Squarespace, and Medium, offer built-in analytics. Most websites are also compatible with Google Analytics or a similar alternative . All of these tools let you track metrics like number of daily users, time spent per post, most popular posts, and more. These metrics can give you insights into how your content is performing and who you are (or aren’t) reaching.

Just like any metrics, it’s important to consider qualitative measures as well as quantitative ones. How long are people staying on your website? Are they leaving comments? Are they sharing it on social media? Depending on the kind of research you’re covering, the answers to these questions may be more important than how many clicks you’re receiving.

Google Analytics offers insights into how many views your posts are receiving, how long users are staying on your blog, and more. 

Most of all, use your analytics responsibility . It can be easy to get caught up in the numbers and forget the big picture. Let these tools guide you on how to improve your content and outreach to achieve your goals. But don’t let them mean more than they do.

Research blogs to explore

Looking for inspiration for your first post? Familiarizing yourself with what’s available in your field is a simple way to decide on a style and topic for your own blog. Plus, reading other blogs is a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

Luckily, there are tons of amazing research blogs out there to explore. Below, we’ve listed just a few of our favourites, but there are many, many more. Enjoy!

Researcher- or research group-led blogs

• Iva Cheung (Publishing; Communication; Knowledge translation)
• The Saucy Scholar (Women’s & Gender Studies; Critical Cultural Studies; Queer Scholarship)
• Feel Healthy with Dr. Scott Lear (Health science)
• ScholCommLab Blog (Scholarly communication; Science communication)

Institution- and organization- led blogs

• Knowledge Nudge (Knowledge Translation; Healthcare)
• Black Perspectives – AAIHS (Black Intellectual History; Diverse fields)
• LSE Impact Blog (Scholarly communication; Social sciences; Academic impact)
• Digital Orientalist (Digital Humanities; Cultural Studies; Various disciplines)

Blogging networks and collectives

• Science Borealis (Canadian science, various)
• Culturally Speaking Blog @ Psychology Today (Mental Health, Culture, Race)
• Hypotheses (Humanities, various)
• Platypus, the CASTAC blog (Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing)

Contact us : For assistance with scholarly publishing, please contact  [email protected] .

Scientific Research Blogging: Tips for Researchers!

Are you interested in writing scientific research blogs? As a researcher, you should be interested in both reading and writing scientific blogs. There are many types of scientific blogs including science news blogs, blogs for scientific associations, research blogs, and educational blogs. These blogs are a platform for sharing and critiquing science. Here, we will describe why blogging can be good for your research career and how you can get started. Although this article focuses on scientific research blogs, these principles apply to all types of blogging.

In a scientific research blog , you discuss your own work or a peer-reviewed paper. Its purpose could be anything from talking about new research, debunking myths, calling up forgotten science, or explaining a difficult concept. As a scientist with in-depth knowledge in a certain field, you are better equipped to doing this than someone else such as a journalist who may not be familiar with the concepts. You also have hands-on lab experience and will have a deeper understanding of the experiments. This puts you in a good position to discuss a paper’s strengths and weaknesses and talk about its wonders.

Why Scientific Blogging Can Help You

Time is often a constraint for researchers, and you may wonder whether you have the time to pursue – science blogging. However, if you do make the time, you will acquire several benefits such as:

• Refining your writing skills.
• Promoting your work and yourself.
• Educating the public (and your students).
• Networking with others in your field.
• Initiating collaborations.
• Receiving feedback on your ideas in an informal setting.

How to Start Writing Research Blogs

Here are a few guidelines to start writing your research blog-

• Before you hit the keyboard with your ideas, read, and comment on other science research blogs . This will help you gain recognition in the blogging community.
• Find a blogging platform : Have a look at WordPress, Warwick blogs, Tumblr, and blogger.com to mention a few. Most of these offer a free domain.
• Find an interesting peer-reviewed article or identify a topic from your work to discuss and share your views.

 Considerations for Effective Blogging

Have a plan. Decide on the purpose of your blogs and set yourself a few guidelines. You should decide on the word count, format, and frequency of your blogs. Also, you may want to consider your privacy and how much of your research you should reveal.

Some points to consider include:

• Target audience : Who are they and how will you reach them?
• Discoverability : How will you promote your blogs? Will you make interesting comments with a link to your blog using social media?
• Tone: Blogs are informal; therefore, your tone should be conversational and should address the reader directly.
• Shorter blogs are preferable to long essays.
• Use strong and entertaining keywords that will help your blog pop up in web searches.
• Will you add videos and images?
• Be patient : People tend to comment more frequently on platforms such as Twitter compared to a blog. It will take time to build an audience.
• Guest blogs : Writing for well-known bloggers can help you become established.

Learn from the Experts

Have a look at a well-known scientific research blog called ScienceDaily . This scientific blog is written by a husband and wife team (Dan and Michelle Hogan). They are active members of the scientific community and are also involved in editing and teaching science. ScienceDaily features discoveries from around the globe on various scientific topics. This site has become well-known and is supported by the world’s leading universities.

Scientific research blogging can enhance your career as well as encourage young people to take an interest in science. To be effective, you need to be discoverable and social media can help you with this. Would you be interested in giving this a try? Let us know in the comments section below!

Thanks for sharing such a wonderful Writing tips which wil, surely be a big help to the students who are creating a thesis or working on dissertation work

A specialized paper requires plenty of skills and knowledge. And if you are not interested in writing it by yourself, then you will really get bored and irritated by such a difficult task.

A specialized paper requires plenty of skills and knowledge. Therefore, in order to evade pressure and wastage of time, one can take help from one of most skilled dissertation writers.

Thanks for writing such an information blog which will surely be a great help for the students as well as the intitutions.

Amazing Content you have shared.

Thanks for this. May I ask a question? Does research blogging violate any copyright laws? Like is it fine to make a blog about a scientific paper and then citing it, and not encounter any copyright strikes? Thanks for the answer.

Thank you! Keeping some blogs or blog posts scientific can also help the authenticity of knowledge on the internet.

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Amanda Hoover

Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

Mark Andrews

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Matt Burgess

Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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For more details on restrictions on religion around the world, read our latest report on the topic, “Globally, Government Restrictions on Religion Reached Peak Levels in 2021, While Social Hostilities Went Down.”  

Note: Government restrictions include laws, policies and actions by authorities that impinge on religious beliefs and practices, while social hostilities involving religion include actions by private individuals or groups in society that limit such practices.

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Plastic waste has infiltrated every corner of our planet, from oceans and waterways to the food chain and even our bodies. Only 9% of plastic is recycled due to factors including poor infrastructure, technical challenges, lack of incentives, and low market demand.   

“We need legislation that disincentivizes big oil from producing plastic in the first place, coupled with enforced single use plastic taxes and fines,” says Desiree LaBeaud , professor of pediatric infectious diseases and senior fellow at   Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment . “We also need truly compostable alternatives that maintain the convenient lifestyle that plastic allows us now."

Plastic presents a problem like no other. Stanford scholars are approaching it from many angles: exploring the connection between plastic and disease, rethinking how plastic could be reused, and uncovering new ways of breaking down waste. In honor of Earth Day and this year’s theme – Planet vs. Plastics – we’ve highlighted stories about promising solutions to the plastics challenge. 

Environmental changes are altering the risk for mosquito-borne diseases

Our changing climate is dramatically altering the landscape for mosquito-borne diseases, but other changes to the physical environment - like the proliferation of plastic trash - also make an impact, as mosquitos can breed in the plastic waste we discard. 

Since this study published, HERI-Kenya , a nonprofit started by Stanford infectious disease physician Desiree LaBeaud , has launched HERI Hub , a brick and mortar education hub that educates, empowers and inspires community members to improve the local environment to promote health.

Using plastic waste to build roads, buildings, and more

Stanford engineers  Michael Lepech  and  Zhiye Li  have a unique vision of the future: buildings and roads made from plastic waste. In this story, they discuss obstacles, opportunities, and other aspects of transforming or upcycling plastic waste into valuable materials. 

Since this white paper was published, students in Lepech's  life cycle assessment course  have explored the environmental and economic impacts of waste management, emissions, and energy efficiency of building materials for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts. In addition to recycled plastic, they proposed a photovoltaic system and conducted comparison studies to maximize the system’s life cycle. This work is being translated into an upcoming publication.

Stanford researchers show that mealworms can safely consume toxic additive-containing plastic

Mealworms are not only able to eat various forms of plastic, as previous research has shown, they can also consume potentially toxic plastic additives in polystyrene with no ill effects. The worms can then be used as a safe, protein-rich feed supplement.

Since this study published, it has inspired students across the world to learn about and experiment with mealworms and plastic waste. Stanford researchers involved with this and related studies have been inundated with requests for more information and guidance from people inspired by the potential solution.

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Stanford Woods Institute has awarded more than $23 million in funding to research projects that seek to identify solutions to pressing environment and sustainability challenges, including new approaches to plastic waste management. 

Converting polyethylene into palm oil

This project is developing a new technology to convert polyethylene — by far the most discarded plastic — into palm oil. The approach could add value to the plastic waste management chain while sourcing palm oil through a less destructive route.

Improving plastic waste management

This project aims to radically change the way plastic waste is processed via a new biotechnology paradigm: engineering highly active enzymes and microbes capable of breaking down polyesters in a decentralized network of “living” waste receptacles. 

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Researchers detect a new molecule in space

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New research from the group of MIT Professor Brett McGuire has revealed the presence of a previously unknown molecule in space. The team's open-access paper, “ Rotational Spectrum and First Interstellar Detection of 2-Methoxyethanol Using ALMA Observations of NGC 6334I ,” appears in April 12 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters .

Zachary T.P. Fried , a graduate student in the McGuire group and the lead author of the publication, worked to assemble a puzzle comprised of pieces collected from across the globe, extending beyond MIT to France, Florida, Virginia, and Copenhagen, to achieve this exciting discovery. 

“Our group tries to understand what molecules are present in regions of space where stars and solar systems will eventually take shape,” explains Fried. “This allows us to piece together how chemistry evolves alongside the process of star and planet formation. We do this by looking at the rotational spectra of molecules, the unique patterns of light they give off as they tumble end-over-end in space. These patterns are fingerprints (barcodes) for molecules. To detect new molecules in space, we first must have an idea of what molecule we want to look for, then we can record its spectrum in the lab here on Earth, and then finally we look for that spectrum in space using telescopes.”

Searching for molecules in space

The McGuire Group has recently begun to utilize machine learning to suggest good target molecules to search for. In 2023, one of these machine learning models suggested the researchers target a molecule known as 2-methoxyethanol. 

“There are a number of 'methoxy' molecules in space, like dimethyl ether, methoxymethanol, ethyl methyl ether, and methyl formate, but 2-methoxyethanol would be the largest and most complex ever seen,” says Fried. To detect this molecule using radiotelescope observations, the group first needed to measure and analyze its rotational spectrum on Earth. The researchers combined experiments from the University of Lille (Lille, France), the New College of Florida (Sarasota, Florida), and the McGuire lab at MIT to measure this spectrum over a broadband region of frequencies ranging from the microwave to sub-millimeter wave regimes (approximately 8 to 500 gigahertz). 

The data gleaned from these measurements permitted a search for the molecule using Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations toward two separate star-forming regions: NGC 6334I and IRAS 16293-2422B. Members of the McGuire group analyzed these telescope observations alongside researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Charlottesville, Virginia) and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 

“Ultimately, we observed 25 rotational lines of 2-methoxyethanol that lined up with the molecular signal observed toward NGC 6334I (the barcode matched!), thus resulting in a secure detection of 2-methoxyethanol in this source,” says Fried. “This allowed us to then derive physical parameters of the molecule toward NGC 6334I, such as its abundance and excitation temperature. It also enabled an investigation of the possible chemical formation pathways from known interstellar precursors.”

Looking forward

Molecular discoveries like this one help the researchers to better understand the development of molecular complexity in space during the star formation process. 2-methoxyethanol, which contains 13 atoms, is quite large for interstellar standards — as of 2021, only six species larger than 13 atoms were detected outside the solar system , many by McGuire’s group, and all of them existing as ringed structures.  

“Continued observations of large molecules and subsequent derivations of their abundances allows us to advance our knowledge of how efficiently large molecules can form and by which specific reactions they may be produced,” says Fried. “Additionally, since we detected this molecule in NGC 6334I but not in IRAS 16293-2422B, we were presented with a unique opportunity to look into how the differing physical conditions of these two sources may be affecting the chemistry that can occur.”

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Venus exploration remains key to understanding exo-earths, says paper.

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NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 5: In this handout image provided by NASA, Liz Heller and Andriel Mesznik watch ... [+] the transit of Venus on June 5, 2012 in New York, New York. The Transit of Venus involves the planet Venus crossing in front of the sun. The next pair of events will not happen again until the year 2117 and 2125. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, our sister planet Venus remains a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Remarkably similar in size, mass, and bulk makeup, today, Earth and Venus couldn't be more different. Earth is an ecological utopia while Venus is a poster child for planetary desolation.

The conventional view is that Venus simply formed too close to our evolving yellow dwarf star to maintain liquid water at its surface. But in the last few decades, that view has come to be seen as simplistic. That’s because this explanation fails to adequately answer why Venus came to have surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead and atmospheric surface pressures ninety times that of Earth.

Even so, the authors of a new paper being published today in the journal Nature Astronomy argue that Venus remains crucial to understanding earth-mass and earth-like planets circling other stars.

Venus represents an astrobiological cautionary tale. That’s because observations of terrestrial mass exoplanets that —- at first glance —- would appear to be habitable may simply be producing an abundance of abiotic oxygen. That is, oxygen that has nothing to do with life on the planets’ surfaces.

Venus. The planet Venus, the second planet from the Sun, has the longest rotation period (243 days) ... [+] of any planet in the Solar System. It orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days, making a Venusian year shorter than an Earth year. Artist NASA. (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

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In the late 1970s, NASA’s Pioneer Venus orbiter mission detected evidence for the catastrophic outgassing of an ocean’s worth of water. The abiotic oxygen produced during this outgassing would have been readily visible to alien astronomers if they were looking our way. We can only speculate whether some other intelligent civilization at the time might have misinterpreted our own Venus as being habitable due to this putative abundance of abiotic oxygen.

Such scenarios only illustrate how difficult it is going to be to say with any certainty that a given exoplanet may harbor life.

Venus As Research Lab

We are extremely lucky to have Venus right next door; it's likely the only other large rocky world we will ever get to, Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, and the paper’s co-author, told me via email. Earth-size worlds in other planetary systems are light years away; we have no foreseeable means of reaching them, says Byrne.

In order to really understand how you obtain conditions which are suitable for life to form in the first place, you really need to understand the past the present and future of planets and how they evolve with time, Stephen Kane, the paper’s lead author and a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, told me via phone. That's why we argue that Venus is really the key to that because it shows an extremely different evolution from Earth, he says.

In contrast to Earth, Venus has a rotational period of 243 days. Its atmosphere is almost entirely Carbon Dioxide CO2 (with a small amount of nitrogen and trace abundances of other gases) such as sulfur dioxide, argon and water vapor, the authors write. Moreover, the planet is cloaked in a global layer of sulfuric acid clouds, they note.

Byrne points out that although Venus and Earth formed in the same manner as the other rocky planets in our solar system, it’s still a puzzle as to why they took such divergent evolutionary paths.

If you move a planet too close to the star, then it's going to lose the primary atmosphere that it formed with and it's going to create a secondary atmosphere, says Kane. But if it's too close to the star, the planet will also lose its secondary atmosphere, he says.

Illustration of NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter mission.

Kane says that one of the most interesting things about Earth is that it has had surface liquid water for about 4 billion years. This means that Earth has had to maintain a very narrow temperature range, which he calls “extraordinary.”

As For A Solar System Without A Venus Analog?

If we did not have Venus, you can only imagine what we would be inferring about the Earth size planet population that we're currently discovering around other stars, says Kane. That’s because our models would never predict Venus, he says.

Earth and Venus are the same size and the same mass, but on a planetary scale everything else about Venus is different, says Kane. The magnetic field is different, the rotation rate is different, and Venus doesn't have a moon, so its axial tilt is different, he says.

Kane is also puzzled by Venus’ slow rotation rate and how it’s changed over time.

With Venus, we now think that the atmosphere itself has slowed the planet down, says Kane. It’s been assumed that Venus always was a slow rotator, but we don't know that, he says. And we don't fully understand the effect that the change in Venus' rotation rate has had on its climate evolution, says Kane.

Is there hope of ever understanding our sister planet?

For a start, a fleet of spacecraft will investigate Venus over the next decade, says the European Space Agency. They include ESA’s Envision mission, NASA’s VERITAS orbiter and DAVINCI probe, and India’s Shukrayaan orbiter.

These upcoming missions represent the best next step in making Venus a research priority.

As we discover more and more Earth- size worlds orbiting other stars we'll need to figure out how to distinguish those that are like Venus from those that are like Earth, says Byrne. If it's solely based on distance to the host star, then distinguishing that will be straightforward, he says. But if it's more complicated, and Earth-like worlds can form and be stable closer in to their parent stars, then we're going to have to understand why Venus and Earth turned out so differently, Byrne notes.

But Was Venus Ever Earth-Like?

Whether the answer is yes or no, figuring out this mystery is going to be a big deal, says Byrne.

And it will help us better understand our own planet.

Figuring out when, why, and how Venus ended up different to Earth will tell us how Earth has managed to stay habitable for almost its entire lifetime, says Byrne.

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• 5 Steps to Getting Started with Llama 2
• The Llama Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future
• Introducing Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding
• Meta and Microsoft Introduce the Next Generation of Llama
• Today, we’re introducing Meta Llama 3, the next generation of our state-of-the-art open source large language model.
• Llama 3 models will soon be available on AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, Hugging Face, Kaggle, IBM WatsonX, Microsoft Azure, NVIDIA NIM, and Snowflake, and with support from hardware platforms offered by AMD, AWS, Dell, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm.
• We’re dedicated to developing Llama 3 in a responsible way, and we’re offering various resources to help others use it responsibly as well. This includes introducing new trust and safety tools with Llama Guard 2, Code Shield, and CyberSec Eval 2.
• In the coming months, we expect to introduce new capabilities, longer context windows, additional model sizes, and enhanced performance, and we’ll share the Llama 3 research paper.
• Meta AI, built with Llama 3 technology, is now one of the world’s leading AI assistants that can boost your intelligence and lighten your load—helping you learn, get things done, create content, and connect to make the most out of every moment. You can try Meta AI here .

Today, we’re excited to share the first two models of the next generation of Llama, Meta Llama 3, available for broad use. This release features pretrained and instruction-fine-tuned language models with 8B and 70B parameters that can support a broad range of use cases. This next generation of Llama demonstrates state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of industry benchmarks and offers new capabilities, including improved reasoning. We believe these are the best open source models of their class, period. In support of our longstanding open approach, we’re putting Llama 3 in the hands of the community. We want to kickstart the next wave of innovation in AI across the stack—from applications to developer tools to evals to inference optimizations and more. We can’t wait to see what you build and look forward to your feedback.

Our goals for Llama 3

With Llama 3, we set out to build the best open models that are on par with the best proprietary models available today. We wanted to address developer feedback to increase the overall helpfulness of Llama 3 and are doing so while continuing to play a leading role on responsible use and deployment of LLMs. We are embracing the open source ethos of releasing early and often to enable the community to get access to these models while they are still in development. The text-based models we are releasing today are the first in the Llama 3 collection of models. Our goal in the near future is to make Llama 3 multilingual and multimodal, have longer context, and continue to improve overall performance across core LLM capabilities such as reasoning and coding.

State-of-the-art performance

Our new 8B and 70B parameter Llama 3 models are a major leap over Llama 2 and establish a new state-of-the-art for LLM models at those scales. Thanks to improvements in pretraining and post-training, our pretrained and instruction-fine-tuned models are the best models existing today at the 8B and 70B parameter scale. Improvements in our post-training procedures substantially reduced false refusal rates, improved alignment, and increased diversity in model responses. We also saw greatly improved capabilities like reasoning, code generation, and instruction following making Llama 3 more steerable.

*Please see evaluation details for setting and parameters with which these evaluations are calculated.

In the development of Llama 3, we looked at model performance on standard benchmarks and also sought to optimize for performance for real-world scenarios. To this end, we developed a new high-quality human evaluation set. This evaluation set contains 1,800 prompts that cover 12 key use cases: asking for advice, brainstorming, classification, closed question answering, coding, creative writing, extraction, inhabiting a character/persona, open question answering, reasoning, rewriting, and summarization. To prevent accidental overfitting of our models on this evaluation set, even our own modeling teams do not have access to it. The chart below shows aggregated results of our human evaluations across of these categories and prompts against Claude Sonnet, Mistral Medium, and GPT-3.5.

Preference rankings by human annotators based on this evaluation set highlight the strong performance of our 70B instruction-following model compared to competing models of comparable size in real-world scenarios.

Our pretrained model also establishes a new state-of-the-art for LLM models at those scales.

To develop a great language model, we believe it’s important to innovate, scale, and optimize for simplicity. We adopted this design philosophy throughout the Llama 3 project with a focus on four key ingredients: the model architecture, the pretraining data, scaling up pretraining, and instruction fine-tuning.

Model architecture

In line with our design philosophy, we opted for a relatively standard decoder-only transformer architecture in Llama 3. Compared to Llama 2, we made several key improvements. Llama 3 uses a tokenizer with a vocabulary of 128K tokens that encodes language much more efficiently, which leads to substantially improved model performance. To improve the inference efficiency of Llama 3 models, we’ve adopted grouped query attention (GQA) across both the 8B and 70B sizes. We trained the models on sequences of 8,192 tokens, using a mask to ensure self-attention does not cross document boundaries.

Training data

To train the best language model, the curation of a large, high-quality training dataset is paramount. In line with our design principles, we invested heavily in pretraining data. Llama 3 is pretrained on over 15T tokens that were all collected from publicly available sources. Our training dataset is seven times larger than that used for Llama 2, and it includes four times more code. To prepare for upcoming multilingual use cases, over 5% of the Llama 3 pretraining dataset consists of high-quality non-English data that covers over 30 languages. However, we do not expect the same level of performance in these languages as in English.

To ensure Llama 3 is trained on data of the highest quality, we developed a series of data-filtering pipelines. These pipelines include using heuristic filters, NSFW filters, semantic deduplication approaches, and text classifiers to predict data quality. We found that previous generations of Llama are surprisingly good at identifying high-quality data, hence we used Llama 2 to generate the training data for the text-quality classifiers that are powering Llama 3.

We also performed extensive experiments to evaluate the best ways of mixing data from different sources in our final pretraining dataset. These experiments enabled us to select a data mix that ensures that Llama 3 performs well across use cases including trivia questions, STEM, coding, historical knowledge, etc.

Scaling up pretraining

To effectively leverage our pretraining data in Llama 3 models, we put substantial effort into scaling up pretraining. Specifically, we have developed a series of detailed scaling laws for downstream benchmark evaluations. These scaling laws enable us to select an optimal data mix and to make informed decisions on how to best use our training compute. Importantly, scaling laws allow us to predict the performance of our largest models on key tasks (for example, code generation as evaluated on the HumanEval benchmark—see above) before we actually train the models. This helps us ensure strong performance of our final models across a variety of use cases and capabilities.

We made several new observations on scaling behavior during the development of Llama 3. For example, while the Chinchilla-optimal amount of training compute for an 8B parameter model corresponds to ~200B tokens, we found that model performance continues to improve even after the model is trained on two orders of magnitude more data. Both our 8B and 70B parameter models continued to improve log-linearly after we trained them on up to 15T tokens. Larger models can match the performance of these smaller models with less training compute, but smaller models are generally preferred because they are much more efficient during inference.

To train our largest Llama 3 models, we combined three types of parallelization: data parallelization, model parallelization, and pipeline parallelization. Our most efficient implementation achieves a compute utilization of over 400 TFLOPS per GPU when trained on 16K GPUs simultaneously. We performed training runs on two custom-built 24K GPU clusters . To maximize GPU uptime, we developed an advanced new training stack that automates error detection, handling, and maintenance. We also greatly improved our hardware reliability and detection mechanisms for silent data corruption, and we developed new scalable storage systems that reduce overheads of checkpointing and rollback. Those improvements resulted in an overall effective training time of more than 95%. Combined, these improvements increased the efficiency of Llama 3 training by ~three times compared to Llama 2.

Instruction fine-tuning

To fully unlock the potential of our pretrained models in chat use cases, we innovated on our approach to instruction-tuning as well. Our approach to post-training is a combination of supervised fine-tuning (SFT), rejection sampling, proximal policy optimization (PPO), and direct preference optimization (DPO). The quality of the prompts that are used in SFT and the preference rankings that are used in PPO and DPO has an outsized influence on the performance of aligned models. Some of our biggest improvements in model quality came from carefully curating this data and performing multiple rounds of quality assurance on annotations provided by human annotators.

Learning from preference rankings via PPO and DPO also greatly improved the performance of Llama 3 on reasoning and coding tasks. We found that if you ask a model a reasoning question that it struggles to answer, the model will sometimes produce the right reasoning trace: The model knows how to produce the right answer, but it does not know how to select it. Training on preference rankings enables the model to learn how to select it.

Building with Llama 3

Our vision is to enable developers to customize Llama 3 to support relevant use cases and to make it easier to adopt best practices and improve the open ecosystem. With this release, we’re providing new trust and safety tools including updated components with both Llama Guard 2 and Cybersec Eval 2, and the introduction of Code Shield—an inference time guardrail for filtering insecure code produced by LLMs.

We’ve also co-developed Llama 3 with torchtune , the new PyTorch-native library for easily authoring, fine-tuning, and experimenting with LLMs. torchtune provides memory efficient and hackable training recipes written entirely in PyTorch. The library is integrated with popular platforms such as Hugging Face, Weights & Biases, and EleutherAI and even supports Executorch for enabling efficient inference to be run on a wide variety of mobile and edge devices. For everything from prompt engineering to using Llama 3 with LangChain we have a comprehensive getting started guide and takes you from downloading Llama 3 all the way to deployment at scale within your generative AI application.

A system-level approach to responsibility

We have designed Llama 3 models to be maximally helpful while ensuring an industry leading approach to responsibly deploying them. To achieve this, we have adopted a new, system-level approach to the responsible development and deployment of Llama. We envision Llama models as part of a broader system that puts the developer in the driver’s seat. Llama models will serve as a foundational piece of a system that developers design with their unique end goals in mind.

Instruction fine-tuning also plays a major role in ensuring the safety of our models. Our instruction-fine-tuned models have been red-teamed (tested) for safety through internal and external efforts. ​​Our red teaming approach leverages human experts and automation methods to generate adversarial prompts that try to elicit problematic responses. For instance, we apply comprehensive testing to assess risks of misuse related to Chemical, Biological, Cyber Security, and other risk areas. All of these efforts are iterative and used to inform safety fine-tuning of the models being released. You can read more about our efforts in the model card .

Llama Guard models are meant to be a foundation for prompt and response safety and can easily be fine-tuned to create a new taxonomy depending on application needs. As a starting point, the new Llama Guard 2 uses the recently announced MLCommons taxonomy, in an effort to support the emergence of industry standards in this important area. Additionally, CyberSecEval 2 expands on its predecessor by adding measures of an LLM’s propensity to allow for abuse of its code interpreter, offensive cybersecurity capabilities, and susceptibility to prompt injection attacks (learn more in our technical paper ). Finally, we’re introducing Code Shield which adds support for inference-time filtering of insecure code produced by LLMs. This offers mitigation of risks around insecure code suggestions, code interpreter abuse prevention, and secure command execution.

With the speed at which the generative AI space is moving, we believe an open approach is an important way to bring the ecosystem together and mitigate these potential harms. As part of that, we’re updating our Responsible Use Guide (RUG) that provides a comprehensive guide to responsible development with LLMs. As we outlined in the RUG, we recommend that all inputs and outputs be checked and filtered in accordance with content guidelines appropriate to the application. Additionally, many cloud service providers offer content moderation APIs and other tools for responsible deployment, and we encourage developers to also consider using these options.

Deploying Llama 3 at scale

Llama 3 will soon be available on all major platforms including cloud providers, model API providers, and much more. Llama 3 will be everywhere .

Our benchmarks show the tokenizer offers improved token efficiency, yielding up to 15% fewer tokens compared to Llama 2. Also, Group Query Attention (GQA) now has been added to Llama 3 8B as well. As a result, we observed that despite the model having 1B more parameters compared to Llama 2 7B, the improved tokenizer efficiency and GQA contribute to maintaining the inference efficiency on par with Llama 2 7B.

For examples of how to leverage all of these capabilities, check out Llama Recipes which contains all of our open source code that can be leveraged for everything from fine-tuning to deployment to model evaluation.

What’s next for Llama 3?

The Llama 3 8B and 70B models mark the beginning of what we plan to release for Llama 3. And there’s a lot more to come.

Our largest models are over 400B parameters and, while these models are still training, our team is excited about how they’re trending. Over the coming months, we’ll release multiple models with new capabilities including multimodality, the ability to converse in multiple languages, a much longer context window, and stronger overall capabilities. We will also publish a detailed research paper once we are done training Llama 3.

To give you a sneak preview for where these models are today as they continue training, we thought we could share some snapshots of how our largest LLM model is trending. Please note that this data is based on an early checkpoint of Llama 3 that is still training and these capabilities are not supported as part of the models released today.

We’re committed to the continued growth and development of an open AI ecosystem for releasing our models responsibly. We have long believed that openness leads to better, safer products, faster innovation, and a healthier overall market. This is good for Meta, and it is good for society. We’re taking a community-first approach with Llama 3, and starting today, these models are available on the leading cloud, hosting, and hardware platforms with many more to come.

Try Meta Llama 3 today

We’ve integrated our latest models into Meta AI, which we believe is the world’s leading AI assistant. It’s now built with Llama 3 technology and it’s available in more countries across our apps.

You can use Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the web to get things done, learn, create, and connect with the things that matter to you. You can read more about the Meta AI experience here .

Visit the Llama 3 website to download the models and reference the Getting Started Guide for the latest list of all available platforms.

You’ll also soon be able to test multimodal Meta AI on our Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

As always, we look forward to seeing all the amazing products and experiences you will build with Meta Llama 3.

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