Two weeks ago I posted a survey asking people to rank the 3 science blog networks they visit most frequently. The responses (23 in total) are probably not representative, given that most of the traffic to the post came from people clicking on my tweet or on those of other former Sciencebloggers (and current Scientopioids). But I thought I should post the results nonetheless, so here they are.

 

As you can see, Scientopia and Scientific American appear to be the big winners, with Scienceblogs, Wired, Discover and PLoS BLoGs packed slightly behind, and the other networks getting a few votes each. Notable omissions that were pointed out to me via twitter were Free Thought Blogs (a network of skeptic/atheist bloggers including the part-time home of uber-blog Pharyngula) and Occam’s Typewriter (which Drug Monkey refers to as a collection of Nature Network refugees/émigrés). Thanks to DM and Cath Ennis for pointing out those omissions, which I’m guessing would have each received at least a couple votes.

The survey also asked what people liked most about their favourite networks. Here are a couple of the most interesting answers [with their top 3 in brackets]:

“‘I go to SciAm for the science, Scientopia for the culture, and SciBlogs for a sense of nostalgia.” [Scientopia, SciAm, Scienceblogs] [Travis’ Note: this experience matches my own quite closely]

“When I see attention called to them on Twitter, they most fit my interest. I was originally attracted to the Guardian by Ben Goldacre.” [PLoS Blogs and The Guardian]

“Breadth of coverage.” [SciAm, Wired, Discover]

“Interesting topics, usually end up visiting from Twitter” [Scientopia, Wired, The Guardian]

So there you have it. It would be very interesting to have a more representative poll of regular visitors to science blog networks - the attendees of #Scio12 might be a good group of science communicators who are likely to be aware of most of these networks. It would also be interesting to see which of these networks have the highest number of drop-ins, as compared to those with the most devoted repeat visitors (my guess is that Scientopia, as well as any network hosting Pharyngula, would have the most dedicated following, while the more “mainstream” networks like Wired and Discover are more likely to get drop-ins, but that’s just my uneducated guess).

Thanks to everyone who completed the survey, and feel free to offer your own interpretations in the comments below.

Travis