Blogs: a new(ish) niche in the scientific communication ecosystem

1. Blogs: a new(ish) niche in the scientific communication ecosystem Jeremy Fox University of Calgary Blog: dynamicecology.wordpress.com

2. 0. A potted history of blogs(according to Wikipedia) • Blog: A website where one or more authors ("bloggers") post pieces of writing ("posts") for anyone to read and, usually, publicly comment on • Prehistory: Usenet, BBS, email lists like Ecolog, Evoldir • 1994: advent of web browser leads to online diaries • -Justin Hall (Swarthmore undergrad) • 1997: "weblog" coined • 1999: shortened to "blog" • 1999: blogger.com and other sites make online publishing easy • Commentary on news, politics, popular culture • Oldest science blogs are 10+ years old

3. 1. An accidental blogger

4. I will now date myself • Telnet for “electronic mail”

5. Oikos Blog

6. 2. Dynamic Ecology

7. A team effort Meghan Duffy University of Michigan Brian McGill University of Maine • Plus guest authors, and hundreds of commenters

8. Dynamic Ecology by the numbers • 826 posts (~20/month) • ~35,000 pageviews/month (>540,000 all time) • ~18,000 unique visitors/month • 8,900 comments all time • Readership still growing • Could show you more stats later...

9. 3. Are blogs dying?

10. 2009 2013 2004 Blogs are so 2009 Weekly Google searches on "blog", 2004-2014 Relative search volume (max = 100%)

11. Science blogs are so 2009 Weekly Google searches on "science blog", 2004-2014 Relative search volume (max = 100%) 2004 2009 2013

12. Competitive replacement? Twitter Relative search volume (max = 100%) blog Tumblr 2004 2009 2013

14. The blogging shake-out

15. 4. The blogging niche "And NUH is the letter I use to spell nutches, Who live in small caves, known as niches, for hutches..." -Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra

16. Four “niche axes” of scientific communication Two-way One-way Public/ open Social media blogs preprints papers books talks posters Slow Fast conversations email Private/ closed Informal Formal

17. 5. Blogs from before there were blogs

18. John Lawton’s View from the Park(Oikos, mid-90s) • Also: Dan Janzen's Thoughts from the Tropics (Oikos, mid-80s)

19. Opinion and perspectives pieces

20. Humor, satire, rhetoric Why are juveniles smaller than their parents? (Ellstrand 1983) The Spandrels of San Marco (Gould & Lewontin 1979) “Information theory, photosynthesis, and religion” (Elias 1958) “Isadore Nabi”:

21. Debate and discussion

22. “Anything you can do I can do better!” (well, some things anyway) “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology…Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.”

23. How I almost quit science Popular Dynamic Ecology posts math :-( The 80 hours/week myth E. O. Wilson vs. math Ecology teaching videos How to suggest referees Statistical machismo

24. …and of course:zombie ideas in ecology

25. 6. Reflections on “zombie ideas in ecology”

26. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) • IDH (Connell 1978): species diversity is, or should be, a humped function of disturbance frequency or intensity • Hugely influential • intuitive • some now-famous early studies found the predicted pattern • spawned much research • now in all the textbooks • …and wrong • <20% of empirical studies find a humped pattern • three main theories purported to predict a humped pattern are logically invalid • fourth main mechanism (competition-colonization trade-offs) is valid, but models of it mostly don’t predict humped pattern • Published refutations are little-cited or explained away

27. Zombie ideas in ecology

28. The meme takes off Luke Harmon talking about zombie ideas at the ASN meeting

29. Reflections on zombie ideas For better or worse, the joke reflects: • My background • My personality • My way of writing • My views on blogs • My views on science

30. 7. The future of blogging xkcd.com

31. Economics has a blogosphere…

32. …ecology has blogs

33. Should you blog? • Short answer: Maybe, but probably not. • Longer answer: Ask yourself the following questions: • Why do you want to blog? • Do you care if anyone reads it? • Do you really want to do it? • Do you have something to say? • How well and quickly do you write? • How self-confident are you? • Are there others who want to do it with you? • Can you live offline with whatever you plan to say online? • Do people whose opinions you care about support it?

34. Comments? Questions?

35. A growing readership 40000 Pageviews Monthly pageviews or unique visitors 20000 Unique visitors 0 7/2012 9/2012 1/2013 3/2013 5/2013 7/2013 9/2013 1/2014 11/2012 11/2013 • ~700-1500 unique visitors/day, 4000-8000/week

36. A global readership 9.5% 28.4% (ROW) 8% (UK) 50% 4.1%

37. Who reads Dynamic Ecology? • From a survey, our regular readers are: • 40% graduate students • 30% postdocs • 20% faculty • 10% other (non-academics, undergrads...) • 75% male (!)

38. Readership of blog posts vs. papers vs.

39. Readership of blog posts vs. papers • Dynamic Ecology vs. PLoS One ecology papers • 2 posts in top 1% (11,000+ views) • 10 posts in top 5% (4000+ views) • 80+ posts in top 50% (1000+ views) • Dynamic Ecology vs. PLoS Biology • 2 posts in top 10% • 80+ posts in top 95%

40. Objections to blogs

41. Blogs are just vanity publishing! “I am terribly concerned at present about the lack of control in scientific publication. Science has always been aristocratic. Not everyone could get his ideas published in effective journals…Today anyone can publish anything…[T]here is often so much noise one cannot hear the signals.” -Harold Urey, Nobel Prize-winning chemist …writing in 1964 (he was complaining about scientific journals, not blogs)

42. Too much stuff is published these days! “[W]hen almost every person who can spell, can and will write, what is to be done? It is difficult to know what to read, except by reading everything…A book produces hardly a greater effect than an article, and there can be 365 of these in one year. He, therefore, who should and would write a book…now dashes down his first hasty thoughts, or what he mistakes for thoughts…[N]ot he who speaks most wisely, but he who speaks most frequently, obtains the influence.” -John Stuart Mill, writing in 1836 (his target was newspapers, not blogs)

43. But some have welcomed blogs “Thanks to its rapid diffusion the world is endowed with a treasure house of wisdom and knowledge, till now hidden from view.” -Werner Rolewinck …in 1474 (he was talking about the printing press, not blogs)

44. "The world is always coming to an end."

45. Nobody reads your blog (or your paper) Proportion of papers (log scale) Proportion of websites (log scale) Visitors (log scale) Citations (log scale) Adamic & Huberman 2002, Peterson et al. 2010