3. CSHL Press
Founded 1933
Approx. 60 staff, located at Cold Spring Harbor, Plymouth (UK),
Tuebingen (Germany) and San Diego
Over 200 books in print, including lab manuals, monographs,
textbooks, trade, and children’s books
Electronic media: technique videos, CDs, DVDs, electronic books,
companion websites for manuals and other books
6 Monthly Journals: Genes & Development, Genome Research,
Learning & Memory, RNA, Protein Science and CSH Protocols
BioSupplyNet.com: online and print directory of laboratory
suppliers and products (http://www.biosupplynet.com)
Online catalog at http://www.cshlpress.com
7. Bench Marks
Editorial Blog
http://www.cshblogs.org
RSS feed of blog
available on journal
home page
8. Why a blog?
Promote a new journal
Put a human face on
things
Promote community
Spark discussion on
methods, effectiveness,
modifications, variations
on procedures.
9. How’s it going?
“A panel of science web publishers said scientists had consistently
shunned wikis, tagging, and social networks, and have even proven
reticent to leave comments on web pages.”
The Register, March 2007
10. Web 2.0 is not a cure-all
“Web 2.0 has become a warm and dark space for people with too much time and
too few ideas. They are shielded through the flawed assumption that if more
“people” (and as a visitor to Second Life, I use this word advisedly …) are
involved in doing “something” then it becomes important. When we were at high
school, this was called mob rule. Now it is called social networking.”
Tara Brabazon
Professor of Media Studies, Brighton University
“…this is a promotional vehicle for a cadre of mostly unimportant serial self-
promoters (including the author), and a few "somebodies" who you can already
learn too much about somewhere else. if you need a reason to hate the small
group of wannabe-celebrities who form the "web2" echo chamber, then this book
has a purpose…”
Amazon.com review of a recent book on Web 2.0
11. The Blogosphere
More than
112,000,000 blogs
More than 1 blog
created every
second
From http://datamining.typepad.com/ and
http://sspnet.org/News/OReilly_TOC__A_WakeUp_Call_to/news.aspx
12. Information Overload / Time Constraints
Social networking sites, blogs, wikis, etc., all demand a great deal
of time from their users
“I can barely keep up with the literature in my field and with what my
labmates are doing. Who has time to spend reading some grad student’s
blog?”
Anonymous Postdoc
“[It] takes too much time to comment on a scientific article properly,
there’s no incentive (can’t put it in your CV) or honor to be gained (no one
asked me to review this) and they are not written to be discussed.”
Roland Krause
Notes From The Biomass Blog
13. Who Reads Science Blogs?
Other science bloggers
“The long tail of proliferating mediocrity, where bloggers link to other bloggers and
podcasters namecheck other podcasters, is the great cost of Web 2.0.”
Tara Brabazon
Professor of Media Studies, Brighton University
14. Those participating can skew your view
“If an attempt to craft a wiki that strives for accuracy, even
via a flawed model, is considered something for “stick-in-
the-muds”, then it’s apparent that many of Wikipedia’s
supporters value the dynamics of its community more than
the credibility of the product they deliver.”
W.A. Gerrard
“In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who
never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of
users account for almost all the action.”
Jacob Nielsen
15. Who Reads Science Blogs?
Other science bloggers
“The long tail of proliferating mediocrity, where bloggers link to other bloggers and
podcasters namecheck other podcasters, is the great cost of Web 2.0.”
Tara Brabazon
Professor of Media Studies, Brighton University
Non-scientists / Non-specialists
“Despite the proliferation of physics blogs, Carroll is not very optimistic about them
taking a more prominent role in physics research. From posting papers on arXiv.org
to e-mail, the current way in which physicists communicate is already efficient. Blogs,
however, could serve as a place for specialists and nonspecialists to interact,
chipping away at the barriers separating academia from the general public.”
Caltech :Engineering and Science:, October 2007
16. Who Reads Science Blogs?
Journalists
“The truth is that science journalists have always relied on actual
scientists to help us understand the implications of some new
discovery. Some of us are pretty savvy about some areas of
science, but still, we need to get expert perspective. Scientist-
bloggers help us do that, only more efficiently.”
Michael D. Lemonick
TIME Magazine Contributing Writer
Search engines
17. Who Reads My Blog?
Comments:
8.1% = About journal content / Methods
91.9% = About Web 2.0 / Science Publishing
Top 5 Posts:
3 = About journal content / Methods
2 = About Web 2.0 / Science Publishing
Top 10 Posts:
7 = About journal content / Methods
3 = About Web 2.0 / Science Publishing
18. Science is being read, despite the echoes
Top Posts:
1) Keller Sandwiches / Explants
Xenopus developmental biology research
technique
2) Why Web 2.0 is failing in biology
Heavily linked and discussed in many blogs
19. Be prepared for flamewars
“I like hearing from people who are engaged with the site. Other
times, it’s not so fun running a visible site. Some people are
determined to deliberately misunderstand much of what they
encounter in life. Sometimes I have a hard time realizing that that’s
their problem, not mine.
Jason Kottke
“Ok David. I can respect your opinion on the matter. But it gets ugly
when you bring Linux into the fold…”
Blogger Daniel Lemire
In response to a Bench Marks post that wasn’t about Linux at all
20. The elephant in the room
“Nature's head of web publishing Timo Hannay confessed that of the firm's
myriad Web 2.0 projects, only a couple bring in any revenue.”
The Register, March 2007
“Marketing managers won’t remain clueless forever. Sooner or later they’ll
discover that Web advertising offers almost no ROI. Only two forms of
Web ads actually work: search ads and classified ads (such as eBay and
real estate listings).”
Jacob Nielsen
Greater than 60% of Bench Marks traffic comes from
RSS feed readers.
21. Summary
Understand who your
audience is, and why you are
blogging
Blogging is a great way to
gain exposure for your
material
Understand the nature of the
online community and be
prepared to deal with it
From http://xkcd.com/
