Science of Blogging video pussy wet pissing
Science, meet World
Archive for November, 2010
Working with your Public/Media Relations office: A primer for researchers
Nov 29th
Editor’s note: As I video-blogged last week, our post on why scientists should blog got bounced around the web a good bit and resulted in a number of generous mentions on other blogs (check the trackbacks to view). Among these mentions was Andrew Careaga’s Higher Ed Marketing blog, a wonderful resource on all matters related to marketing and public relations in higher education. After a brief exchange via Twitter, Andrew graciously agreed to provide a post for Science of Blogging on how researchers can work with the public relations or media department at their host institution to get their research across to a wider audience. As the first official guest contributor on Science of Blogging, here’s Andrew.
* * *
Peter’s excellent case study on why scientists should blog led me to share my perspective on this subject. As a public relations/communications professional working in higher education, I think it’s fantastic that Peter shares his ideas by blogging. I wish more researchers would follow his lead. Frankly, it would make the media relations aspects of my job easier and probably more enjoyable.
The way I see it, researchers who blog about their work provide a public service. They’re sharing their knowledge with a broader audience than the readership of scientific or academic journals. (A very good Tufts University feature about academics who blog illustrates the value from their perspective.) And by responding to blog comments and exchanging ideas with other bloggers (as I’m doing here), researchers are able to interact with people beyond their disciplines.
Ideally, the media relations folks on college campuses are valuable partners for scholar-bloggers who want to get their research ideas out to the public. PR folks should not serve as personal publicists for certain faculty members – although most of us in the PR field know of a few professors who would love it if that were the case. Rather, we are partners in disseminating scholarship. We can do so not only by publicizing faculty research, but also by talking about the researchers’ own public-service blogging, and by pointing journalists and others to the researchers’ own blogging efforts.
So, how can researchers work with media relations staff? Here are a few suggestions. More >
How to Promote Your Science Blog: ResearchBlogging.org
Nov 26th
One of the most difficult aspects of starting a new blog is attracting readers. For the first few months after Peter and I started our blog on obesity research, we averaged 5-10 hits per day, at least half of which were due to the two of us refreshing the site on different computers! This can be incredibly frustrating, since you are putting a lot of time and effort into creating valuable content that few people are able to enjoy. Luckily there are a number of tools that you can use to attract new readers right from the start, with one of the most important being ResearchBlogging.org.
Research Blogging is a website that aggregates blog posts that discuss peer-reviewed research. The blog post must discuss the research in a relatively in-depth fashion (e.g. the post must do more than simply summarize the abstract), but this is something that many science blogs do on a fairly regular basis. If you discuss peer-reviewed studies on your blog, then you simply need to register your blog with Research Blogging, and then insert the Research Blogging citation code into each blog post which discusses a peer-reviewed journal article. For example, on our obesity blog roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of our posts discuss the results of a peer-reviewed paper, and so we include the Research Blogging code on each of those articles. These posts then get advertised on the Research Blogging main page, as well as the sidebar of the Scienceblogs network (Scienceblogs and Research Blogging are both owned by SEED media group). This is huge, as Scienceblogs is one of the most popular science websites in the world. So by signing up for Research Blogging, you are basically getting your work advertised for free, on a tremendously popular website that caters to people who like to read about science.
That’s a pretty great deal! More >
Thanks and Future Direction: SoB Vlog 01
Nov 25th
Just a quick message to say thanks and to discuss where ScienceofBlogging is heading.
Peter
Why all scientists should blog: a case study
Nov 23rd
I started blogging about 2 years ago.
At that time I was 2 years into my PhD and had a respectable number of peer-reviewed publications to my name.
I should have felt supremely proud to have joined the elite circle of publishing scientists.
Unfortunately, despite the publications, I longed to feel that any of my work was making an impact beyond the traditional boundaries of academia: peer-review publications and scientific conferences.
As I was not a full-fledged PhD with a ton of experience, my opportunities for media appearances and invitations to give presentations around the globe were appropriately limited.
So, with my good friend and colleague, Travis, I started a blog.
Our first post may have been read by a total of 6 people – assuming our girlfriends (now fiancées) and both sets of parents read the link we sent via email.
Fast forward to 2 years later, and our little blog is now hosted on the freshly launched PLoS Blogs network.
I have just published the final study from my PhD in the prestigious journal, Diabetes Care.
Despite the wonderful journal, presentations at international conferences discussing the work, and a message that I thought was rather important to the field, the work was met with complete silence. More >
How building your online social network may affect your offline social life
Nov 20th
One of the main reasons drawing people of all ages online is the prospect of connecting and communicating with others. This need for connecting online is the impetus behind the immense popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and countless others.
In the realm of online vs offline social networking, an interesting question often arises: As one’s online social networks grow, does that person also become more popular offline?
There are generally two schools of thought on this issue, broadly promoted by the cyberpessimists and the cyberoptimists.
You can almost guess what I’m about to write next, right?
Cyberpessimists believe that being social online results in being anti-social offline. The premise makes sense; we only have so much time to dedicate to socializing online or off. Thus, as the time socializing online increases, our face-to-face exposure with contacts may diminish.
The cyberoptimists assert the opposite: online social networking actually supplements rather than displaces offline social networking.
So who’s got the right idea?
Maybe neither according to a recent study by Pollet and colleagues in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. More >
Scientists: Publicizing your research gets you cited more often
Nov 18th
There is no shortage of benefits for scientists - young and well-tenured - to publicize their research beyond peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. And yet, few scientists look beyond the pages of their discipline’s journal to showcase their work.
While all researchers should strive to translate their work for mass consumption, the scientist’s day is a long one, and often this task is overshadowed by more pressing issues of academia; grants, lectures, publications, conferences, student’s dissertations, etc.
Part of the problem is that many researchers fail to recognize the more tangible benefits of exposing their research to a greater audience.
Take for example the findings of a 2003 study by Vincent Kiernan in the Chronicle of Higher Education which clearly shows a strong relationship between the media exposure of a given study and the resulting rate of citation of that work in the scientific literature in the ensuing years. More >
