Science Blogging, etc.

A nice article in The Economist today, about science blogging, Science 2.0 and publishing:

User-generated science:

By itself this is unlikely to bring an overhaul of scientific publishing. Dr Bly points to a paradox: the internet was created for and by scientists, yet they have been slow to embrace its more useful features. Nevertheless, serious science-blogging is on the rise. The Seed state of science report, to be published later this autumn, found that 35% of researchers surveyed say they use blogs. This figure may seem underwhelming, but it was almost nought just a few years ago. Once the legion of science bloggers reaches a critical threshold, the poultry problem will look paltry.

The new version of ResearchBlogging.org gets a nice shout-out. There is one thing in there that I would like to correct, though:

Nature Network, an online science community linked to Nature, a long-established science journal, has announced a competition to encourage blogging among tenured staff. The winner will be whoever gets the most senior faculty member to blog. Their musings will be published in the Open Laboratory, a printed compilation of the best science writing on blogs.

I want to point out that the two things are not related. The Senior Scientist Blogging Challenge is not in any way connected to the Open Lab 08. The inclusion of blog posts into the anthology will be decided by Jenifer Rohn and me after a panel of judges reads all the entries and makes suggestions for the Top 50 (which we will probably just take whole as we did before) - nobody's post will be pre-approved for any reason.