How Does a Peer-reviewed Article Compare With an Internet Blog?

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• PLoS One
• PMC3520957

PLoS One. 2012; vii(12): e50109.

Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Alter in Science 2.0

Sibele Fausto

ⁱ Escola de Comunicações e Artes, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil,

Fabio A. Machado

² Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil,

Luiz Fernando J. Bento

³ Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,

Atila Iamarino

⁴ Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil,

Tatiana R. Nahas

⁵ São Paulo, Brazil,

David Due south. Munger

^vi New York, New York, United States of America,

Matjaz Perc, Editor

Received 2012 January 28; Accepted 2012 Oct 18.

Supplementary Materials

Spreadsheet S1: Enquiry Blogging Reports raw data. Excel spreadsheet with Research Blogging data from November 1, 2007 until December 31, 2011. Sail S1-A: RB Blog Written report with weblog name, blog URL, status, Enquiry Blogging topic, number of posts and blog language. Sheet S1-B: RB Citations Report with publication appointment, post championship, number of views, blog name, DOI, journal title and Research Blogging topic.

(XLSX)

GUID: 983E3C2F-0E6C-40B2-A6DF-FB45524E4C41

Abstract

Increasing public interest in science information in a digital and 2.0 science era promotes a dramatically, rapid and deep alter in science itself. The emergence and expansion of new technologies and internet-based tools is leading to new means to ameliorate scientific methodology and advice, assessment, promotion and certification. It allows methods of conquering, manipulation and storage, generating vast quantities of data that can further facilitate the research process. It also improves access to scientific results through data sharing and give-and-take. Content previously restricted but to specialists is now available to a wider audience. This context requires new direction systems to make scientific knowledge more than accessible and useable, including new measures to evaluate the achieve of scientific data. The new science and enquiry quality measures are strongly related to the new online technologies and services based in social media. Tools such as blogs, social bookmarks and online reference managers, Twitter and others offer alternative, transparent and more than comprehensive information about the active interest, usage and attain of scientific publications. Some other of these new filters is the Enquiry Blogging platform, which was created in 2007 and at present has over 1,230 active blogs, with over 26,960 entries posted about peer-reviewed enquiry on subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zoology. This written report takes a closer expect at RB, in club to become insights into its contribution to the rapidly irresolute mural of scientific communication.

Introduction

The instruments and methodologies from Bibliometrics and Scientometrics traditionally cooperate in and are widely used by development agencies, academic institutions, and even corporations for planning and management of policies for Science and Technology (South&T), identification and promotion of new areas of enquiry, and many other issues in strengthening and growth of Due south&T activities.

Bibliometrics and Scientometrics tools provide statistics and indicators to generate measures of published scientific output. Although admittedly imperfect [ane]–[3], this field is mainly based on the number of publications and citations. In fact, every bit S. Arbesman has written,

For too long, the measurement of scientific contribution has centered on the publication. Whether through the number of articles, the citations those articles accept by other articles, or even other far more complicated metrics, about scientists are still measured by a derivative of the research article, the basic technology of scientific publishing that is well over 300 years quondam [4].

This is a more than 300 yr-erstwhile modus operandi of science advice, which began with the invention of the scientific journal in the 17^thursday century [v] and was well suited to communicating scientific research results for a long fourth dimension in a world where scientists published their findings, theories and ideas to other scientists. But it is insufficient for the current context of an increasing public involvement in science information in a digital and 2.0 science era, where the scientific community is witnessing a dramatic, rapid and deep change. The emergence and expansion of data and communication technologies and internet-based tools is opening infinite for new possibilities to improve both scientific methodology and advice, cess, promotion and certification [6].

New technologies let modern methods of acquisition, manipulation and storage, generating massive data volumes that can further facilitate the research procedure [7],[8]. These technologies also facilitate access to scientific results through information sharing and discussion. Content previously restricted only to specialists is now available to a wider audience.

This context requires new management systems to make scientific knowledge more than accessible and useable, including new measures to evaluate the accomplish of scientific information not merely amongst professionals and specialists merely also to the general public. The new science and inquiry quality measures are strongly related to the new online technologies and services based in social media. Tools such equally blogs, social bookmarks, online reference managers (CiteULike, Connotea, Mendeley, Zotero), and Twitter offer alternative, transparent and more comprehensive data about the active interest, usage and reach of scientific publications [9]–[15]. External online tools also represent a new course of post-publication review (e.g. Wikipedia referencing of manufactures is an indicator of future citations [16]), a consequence of the filtering washed past specialist authors.

All these changes are stimulating the scientific community to reassess its means of communication. For case, the Science Online briefing, now in its sixth edition (in January 2012) aims to explore science on the web [17], encouraging studies have been released [eighteen], alternative metrics as PLoS Article-Level Metrics have been developed [nineteen]–[21], and all of these developments have helped to abound movements such as the new field of Altmetrics [22]. These new tools are based on a conventionalities in the failure and insufficiency of the iii more than traditional filters - peer-review, citation counting analysis, and Periodical Touch on Factor - to indicate the most relevant and significant sources in a context of an explosive growth of the volume of bookish literature in today's net-age scientific discipline.

Hither we highlight scientific blogs every bit one of import new filter of scientific research. The science blogosphere has grown significantly in recent years. The information gap that was traditionally fulfilled by science journalists and scientifically-curious laymen at present has a new protagonist: the scientist. Blogs are one of the most common methods that scientists utilize to communicate their ideas to other scientists or to the general public [23]. This preference may exist due to incentives for scientists to appoint with the blogosphere [24] and face its challenges to traditional peer-reviewed inquiry channels. Only these challenges may also be a groovy opportunity [25], enabling scientists to make a direct connection to students [26]–[28] and bringing them closer to the general public. Scientific blogs have a positive tendency for assemblage, mainly through blog platforms adult by respected science journals or through new tools that either allow a new organization of scientific discipline publishing [29] and post-publication filtering or value online peer-reviewed publication.

This written report aims to depict the platform Research Blogging, an aggregator of scientific blog citations of peer-reviewed publications, showing its history, current configuration and characterization of languages, covered topics, number of blogs, posts, use of Open up Access (OA), and mentions of scientific and other enquiry. We see it as a critical tool in the ever-changing world of scientific communication, with its own important contribution to this change in the science endeavor.

Inquiry Blogging: background, current state and label

Inquiry Blogging (RB) was created in 2007 by the scientific blogger Dave Munger, after one of his readers showed appreciation for his employ of an icon to distinguish posts nearly peer-reviewed research from other general or personal messages on his weblog. An icon for all scientific weblog posts citing peer-reviewed research was developed, and so a cardinal aggregator collected all such marked posts in a drove harvested from across the internet. Soon, hundreds of bloggers were using the site and a new platform [http://researchblogging.org] was developed and is even so maintained in collaboration with Seed Media Group. The RB Website aggregates peer-reviewed enquiry posts from several science blogs in seven unlike languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, High german, Chinese, Smoothen and Italian. It is a useful source for readers interested in cutting-edge research and first-hand comments and explanations of science, past scientists and experts in their corresponding fields. In addition, given that the intrinsic structure of the spider web makes information technology hard to a clear distinction between scientific and pseudo-scientific content, RB is a tool to identify serious academic enquiry and avoid the spread of pseudo-scientific contents, serving as a self-regulated organization that helps to collect only academically relevant information. The site now has over ane,230 active blogs, with over 26,960 entries posted near peer-reviewed inquiry on subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zoology, in categorized blogs.

How Research Blogging works

All RB content is user generated. Participating bloggers - ofttimes experts in their research expanse - place relevant inquiry in their field. When they write substantive posts nigh the research on their blogs, they tin choose to have those posts aggregated by RB. RB serves as a key means of disseminating findings of peer-reviewed research that careful bloggers have establish interesting enough to read and closely analyze.

After registration, bloggers decide themselves to which category their blog will belong indicating their blog topics from the available list within RB site:

Anthropology

Astronomy

Biology

Chemistry

Information science/Engineering

Ecology/Conservation

Geosciences

Wellness

Mathematics

Medicine

Neuroscience

Philosophy

Physics

Psychology

Social Science

Enquiry/Scholarship

or Other

Once registered in RB, bloggers use a one-line class to create a snippet of code to identify in their posts. This snippet non only notifies the RB site near the scientific posts, it also creates a properly formatted research citation for the weblog. The RB software automatically scans registered blogs for posts containing RB code snippet. When it finds them, it indexes and displays them on site front end page — thousands of posts from hundreds of blogs, organized by topic. RB editors identify the notable posts in each major subject, publishing the results on news page in the platform. Other services like PubGet [http://pubget.com] index the RB database as well, so every time readers search for a periodical article, they can as well locate blog posts discussing the article, and RB also uses sharing tools for divulgation through RSS feeds and social media applications (app) as Twitter.

Quality Control

Participating bloggers agree to use the "Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research" icons and the aggregator at ResearchBlogging.org only when they are writing a thoughtful, original blog post well-nigh peer-reviewed research. Simply a linking to or quoting a news article or press release is non considered sufficient for inclusion on RB.

Blogs tin be a powerful tool for broadcasting of scientific information and RB is one of the tools that promote a self-regulated quality control of weblog posts. Bloggers must demonstrate to the RB editors and readers that they regularly produce posts that run into the criteria to apply a "blog bluecoat" [28]. RB editors ensure that newly-registered blogs follow guidelines based on weeks of discussion at ResearchBlogging.org customs to safeguard the quality of the aggregator platform. The site continues to receive further recommendations and suggestions for modifications to these guidelines, which are subject to ongoing revision so as to maintain the spirit of good scholarship. The quality of the posts listed on RB site is monitored by the blogger members. If a post doesn't follow the guidelines, it is removed from RB database, and borderline cases may be discussed publicly on the RB blog as well.

The following excerpt, taken straight from the RB site, describes the most important guidelines for inclusion:

1. The "Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research" icons are to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about peer-reviewed enquiry;

2. Similarly, when a blogger is registered with ResearchBlogging.org and uses our system to generate a citation for purposes of aggregation by our site, the commendation is to be used solely to denote individual blog posts about the peer-reviewed research listed in the commendation;

3. While in that location is no hard-and-fast definition of "peer-review," peer reviewed research should meet the post-obit guidelines:

   • *Reviewed by experts in field

   • *Edited

   • *Archived

   • *Published with clearly stated publication standards

   • *Viewed as trustworthy by experts in field

   • *In the case of certain curated archives such every bit arXiv.org, the "intention" for research to be reviewed may be seen as an adequate proxy for peer review

4. Posts using the icon or RB citation code should offer a complete formal commendation of the work(s) being discussed;

5. The post writer should take read and understood the entire work cited;

6. The web log mail service should study accurately and thoughtfully on the research it presents;

7. Where possible, the post should link to the original source and/or provide a Document Object Identifier (DOI) or other universal reference number;

8. The post should incorporate original work by the mail writer — while some quoting of others is acceptable, the majority of the post should be the author's own work;

9. Users and readers may report potential corruption of the icons and aggregation system by flagging the post on RB site. Reported abuses may be brought to the attention of readers and discussed publicly online.

There are previous studies about Research Blogging, focusing in its characterization equally areas covered, periodical titles cited, bloggers' gender and anonymity and other aspects [thirty], [31]. Our written report expands to a closer look to RB, in order to get insights into its contribution to the changes which we verify in scientific advice.

Methods

Information collection and treatment

We conducted an exploratory study, with a quantitative approach to guide the search into posts by the Enquiry Blogging Website. The search was performed in January 2012 and included the entire menses bachelor in RB since its inception, considering the posts published between November 1, 2007 and December 31, 2011. Nosotros chose to analyze only posts actively discussing peer-reviewed manufactures published in scientific journals, and excluded posts that merely listed references with no discussion. Citations in posted entries with references to books, conference proceedings, guidelines and other online or offline sources were disregarded. We also disregarded those without an active online address and no longer available – only vi blogs with a total of 12 posts.

Data were extracted, nosotros hand-searched reference lists from retrieved posts to verify inconsistencies, and so the treated information were summarized in order to generate quantitative descriptions of the following:

• *number of blogs

• *categories by RB topic

• *distribution among the seven languages adopted by RB

• *number of posts

• *commendation distribution (number of manufactures cited past postal service, periodical titles, in restricted journals and in OA journals)

• *reach past number of views.

In addition to generating automatic references on RB past searching for the DOI from scholarly papers, bloggers tin can create references manually when DOI is unknown, and thus they do not follow a single standard to refer to the journals, e.thousand. the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states appears in full, abbreviated past Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, and by PNAS. This was the instance of some journals in the extracted sample, and this sort of lapse in standardization is a common problem in information mining for informetric inquiry [32], thus any sample obtained automatically must be checked for find inconsistencies and be previously treated to a valid analysis. Hither nosotros ostend the titles past the consultation to Ulrich'south Periodicals Directory Online [http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com].

Two of the original topics nowadays in RB, Wellness and Medicine, were joined into a unmarried topic, Wellness Sciences, and their information values were added to facilitate the analysis nether a single category. For counts of views, we consider unique views for each mail, and a view for each commodity cited in this post; i.eastward. two manufactures in one post were considered to be viewed two times, while i view was assigned to the mail. For all other analysis, we consider elementary counts. The admission status of periodicals in search for Open Access journals was accessed by consultation to the Directory of Open up Access Journals (DOAJ) [http://world wide web.doaj.org, last accessed in Jan 2012].

Statistical analysis and comparing amidst metrics

We counted the web log citations and post visualizations for each scientific periodical cited in the RB database. We obtained vii scientometric measurements for the journals available at Journal Commendation Reports (JCR) from Thomson Reuters, namely: Journal Impact Gene, Total Articles, Total Citations, Half-Life, Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor Score and Article Impact. We evaluated the correlations amid RB count variables and JCR metrics through the Spearman'southward ρ statistic. The significance of the correlations was accessed through a permutation examination (ix,999 permutations) and were evaluated at the level of α = 0.05. Additionally, to investigate if Open Access policy would influence citations (i.e. OA articles were more cited than expected), nosotros compared the proportion of OA weblog citations to the proportion of OA manufactures in the sample through a binomial exam. These analyses were performed in the R programing environment 5. 2.14.2 [33].

Results

Our results below were extracted from the raw data which are bachelor in Supporting Data [Spreadsheet S1], in accordance with the scenario for science 2.0, with data spreading and sharing [34].

Totals by Blogs and Posts by RB topics and Journal Titles by Surface area

During the period analyzed, the Research Blogging website nerveless, registered, indexed and shared 26,969 posts by 1,236 blogs considering all entries in total [Fig. one]. The RB topic with the well-nigh posts was Biology, with 9,787 posts (36%), followed by Health Sciences (hither combined with Health and Medicine), with 4,177 posts (15%). Psychology had 3,401 posts (13%), Neuroscience had 2,495 (9%), Social Science one,108 (iv%), Anthropology 1,058 (iv%), Chemistry 879 (3%), Physics 835 (3%), Geosciences 518 (2%), Research/Scholarship 438 (2%), Astronomy 407 (2%), Computer science/Engineering science 239 (1%), Ecology/Conservation 221 (i%), Philosophy 152 (1%) and finally Mathematics with 77 posts. The Other RB topic category had 1,177 posts (iv%) [Fig. 2].

Research Blogging Posts over time.

RB posts indexed since its creation.

Post distribution by Research Blogging topic category.

Posts classified past self-assigned categories available within RB site.

Linguistic communication

The near mutual language was English language with ane,008 blogs and 22,660 posts, followed by Portuguese, with 65 blogs and ane,013 posted entries. Castilian had 52 blogs with i,456 posts, German had 36 blogs and 742 posts, Italian had 32 blogs with 449 posts, Shine had 24 blogs and 512 posts, and Chinese had xix blogs with 137 posted entries [Fig. three and Tabular array i].

Research Blogging post distribution by language.

English is supported since RB inception in 2007. The other languages were added gradually (High german, August 2008; Spanish, May 2009; Portuguese, June 2009; Chinese, August 2009; Polish, Apr 2010; Italian, December 2010).

Table ane

Inquiry Blogging post topic by language.

Topic/Language	English	Chinese	High german	Italian	Polish	Portuguese	Spanish	Total
Anthropology	923	0	sixteen	0	86	1	32	1058
Astronomy	306	0	xc	viii	0	3	0	407
Biology	8222	11	385	141	64	270	694	9787
Chemistry	518	37	47	25	98	154	0	879
Computer Science/Engineering	208	24	three	2	0	2	0	239
Environmental/Conservation	188	0	0	ten	0	seven	xvi	221
Geosciences	441	0	six	0	56	0	15	518
Wellness Sciences	3790	0	4	15	37	252	79	4177
Mathematics	25	0	19	33	0	0	0	77
Neuroscience	1856	2	0	3	eleven	132	491	2495
Philosophy	61	0	xiv	1	0	9	67	152
Physics	517	16	73	174	3	15	37	835
Psychology	3133	36	11	28	49	127	17	3401
Research/Scholarship	425	2	9	0	0	2	0	438
Social Science	1082	9	10	i	three	iii	0	1108
Other	965	0	55	8	105	36	8	1177
Full	22660	137	742	449	512	1013	1456	26969

Citations

Within the analyzed menstruum 19,000 RB posts cited and linked 26,154 scientific papers published in 3,350 different journals [Fig. four]. The most-covered field of study expanse by journal titles was the Health Sciences, with 1,071 titles, followed past Applied Social Sciences with 796 titles. Biological Sciences had 599 journal titles, Exact & World Sciences, 530 titles while the Multidisciplinary surface area had 308 titles and the Humanities 46 journal titles [Fig. 5].The journals cited 1,000 times or more were Science (1,829 times), Nature (1,803), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA – PNAS (one,372) and PLoS ONE (1,156): all general purpose periodicals [Table 2]. This result is similar to the sequence found past Shema, Bar-Ilan & Thelwall [30] in a small-scale sample of RB posts, putting these four offset journal titles in a "Gold Circle" on the Research Blogging website. The citation tendency does not follow a close relation to Touch Factors (IF), and all 3 groups of most cited journals have some periodicals with loftier IFs and some with IFs of less than 10.

Research Blogging posts and citations.

Only posts citing peer-reviewed inquiry from periodicals were considered.

Journal titles past bailiwick areas.

Table two

Most cited Journals at Research Blogging posts.

Group	Citations	Journal Title	IF	Times Cited
Commencement	ane,000 times or more	Science	31.364	1,829
		Nature	36.101	1,803
		PNAS	9.771	1,372
		PLoS ONE OA	4.411	1,156
Second	201 to 350 times	Proceedings of the Imperial Society B: Biological Sciences	five.064	342
		Psychological Science OA	4.699	284
		New England Periodical of Medicine	53.484	257
		Current Biology	10.025	249
		BMJ	13.660	246
		PLoS Biological science OA	12.469	242
Third	101 to 200 times	Periodical of Personality and Social Psychology	5.205	195
		JAMA	xxx	154
		Journal of Neuroscience	vii.271	154
		Physical Review Letters	seven.621	154
		Cell	32.401	151
		The Lancet	33.633	151
		Nature Neuroscience	14.191	137
		Biology Letters	3.651	129
		Pediatrics OA	5.391	125
		Animal Behaviour	3.101	115
		Astronomical Journal	4.555	112
		American Naturalist	4.736	111
		Evolution	5.659	111
		Journal of Evolutionary Biology	3.656	105
		PLoS Medicine OA	xv.617	105
		Journal of Experimental Social Psychology	2.202	102
		Journal of the American Chemical Society	ix.023	101
		PLoS Pathogens OA	nine.079	101
4th	51 to 100 times	36 titles	—	—
Fifth	xx to 50 times	134 titles	—	—
Sixth	v to 19 times	581 titles	—	—
Seventh	two to 4 times	1,059 titles	—	—
8th	One time	1,512 titles	—	—

The second about-cited group of journals spanned from 201 to 350 citations and include six journal titles; the third most-cited group was those with betwixt 101 and 200 citations — 18 titles. There were 36 journals with 51 to 100 citations, 134 journals with 20 to 50 citations, 581 journals with 5 to 19 citations, 1,059 journals with 2 to iv citations, and ane,512 journals with one citation.

From the 3,350 journals listed in the RB database, ane,822 had scientometric data available at JCR. The correlation matrix shows a moderately modular structure [Fig. 6]. The lowest correlations were associated with Article One-half-Life, showing a mean correlation of 0.xviii with other metrics and non-significant correlations with both RB count variables. The Total Number of Articles also seems to have by and large low correlations with other metrics, with values ranging from 0,16 to 0,26, except for Total Commendation and Eigenfactor Score (0.74 and 0.75, respectively). Autonomously from those variables, all JCR metrics shows correlations among themselves that ranges from 0.54 to 0.97 (0.94, excluding 5year based IF), with an average of 0.58, even if we exclude the 5year based IF. In dissimilarity, RB counts have correlations with the JCR metrics (except Full Articles and Half-Life) that ranges from 0,32 to 0,42, with a mean correlation of 0.37. RB counts showed an average correlation of 0.27 with Full Manufactures. The correlation betwixt RB citations and RB counts was 0.88.

Correlation matrix betwixt RB counts and JCR metrics, depicting the magnitude of correlation betwixt variables.

All non-significant correlations were set to aught.

Open Access Journals

The results showed that eleven.7% of the citations (iii,054 of 26,154) came from Open up Access journals, a value four times larger than that observed in Wikipedia citations - two.viii% [16]. These citations come from the 7.2% OA journals nowadays in our sample (241 of 3,350). The differences between the proportion of OA citations and OA articles bachelor were significant under a binomial test (p = 2.079e−144). Unlike in Wikipedia citations, six of the most cited journals were OA [Tabular array 2]: PLoS 1 in Start group (with more than i,000 citations), Psychological Science and PLoS Biology in Second group (with betwixt 201 and 350 citations) and PLoS Medicine, Pediatrics and PLoS Pathogens in 3rd grouping (with 101 to 200 citations). Likewise, when visits were considered, three of the x most visited article links were of OA journals: PLoS One, Psychological Scientific discipline and PLoS Biological science.

Accomplish

As explained in Methods, for view count nosotros considered unique views for each postal service, and a view for each article cited in this post, i.eastward. to two articles in one post were two separate views, 1 for each article [Fig. 7], and only one view for the post. As expected, results showed that more cited journals obtained higher numbers of overall views, but this is too true for some less cited journals, which obtained high number of views likewise [Fig. eight]. The contrary trend was institute to individual article from journals often cited that in some cases did not obtain a high number of views. When we analyzed the views for unique articles - not journals - some surprising views were seen: the about-viewed article was from the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, which has an IF of only 0.71. Information technology received 62,217 views, well ahead of 2d place, an article in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (IF 5.064), which had xv,265 views.

Full article views per yr.

Commodity views (in thousands) are represented according to citing posts at Research Blogging. Most recent articles have less time to accumulate views.

Human relationship between RB Full Views and Citations.

The trend-line was estimated through exponential fitting betwixt the count data through not-linear squares and the correlation was estimated through Spearman rank-based statistic ρ.

Give-and-take

Blogs and Posts by RB topics

Both the registered blog totals and full number of posts are dominated by Biological science (36% of posts). Health Sciences appears in a afar 2d position (15%), an interesting result since the surface area of Wellness Sciences dominates scientific communication, in a number of traditional publications [35], as well verified hither when we analyze the cites by the periodical titles [Fig. v]. Other categories have minor representation, with 13% (Psychology) and nine% (Neuroscience). Still others form a long tail of the site, with the remaining eleven categories taking less than 4 percent of the total number of posts on RB [Fig. 2]. Information technology's possible that the topic distribution is due to the early dominance of Biological science. Perchance other disciplines saw RB equally primarily a Biological science/Health site and opted out.

Frequency of posts per year

The frequency of posts grew vigorously from the establishment of Enquiry Blogging in November 2007, with the number of posts in 2009 doubling over 2008 [Fig. 1]. Later a peak in 2010, in 2011 the number of posts declined to levels similar 2009. This increment in 2010 may be related to Research Blogging Awards 2010, since nominations started early on February and winners were announced early on March, 2010. Following this menses, despite the addition of new blogs and languages, the number of posts and views accept returned to values equal to or smaller than 2009. We consider the equivalency in posts from 2011 and 2009 an actual subtract in web log posts, since this number results from more blogs and languages that adopted RB during these two years. During the second half of 2011, the automatic assemblage tool of RB was non functional, which may take led to this decrease. This difference could be in part explained by a shift in science divulgation in recent years from blogs to other online platforms, such as social networks (eastward.g. Twitter and Facebook). These tools accept different purposes and functionalities, and mainly in the case of science writing would exist more a adept complement for spreading scientific web log posts [36] and to collect and share stories and resources [37],[38] rather than construction and discussion equally observed in blogs, indicating that these new tools are more related to social networks acting in spread and sharing information, linking to contents (including to the blogs), whereas blogs would exist considered every bit information repositories. With faster means of propagation and word of topics in these new tools, the subtract in postal service numbers may correspond shorter comments on articles left out of blogs and posted in social media instead, and that posts are less frequent but used to cover research more than thoroughly.

Languages and RB Topics covered

The dominant language on RB is English, with 1,008 blogs posting 22,660 entries, followed by Portuguese (65 blogs and 1,013 posts), Spanish (52 blogs and one,456 posts), High german (36 blogs and 742 posts), Italian (32 blogs and 449 posts), Polish (24 blogs and 512 posts), and Chinese (19 blogs and 137 posts) [Fig. 3, Table 1].

English language has been supported for the longest menstruation at RB, having been a part of the system since its inception in 2007. The other languages were added gradually (German language, Baronial 2008; Spanish, May 2009; Portuguese, June 2009; Chinese, August 2009; Shine, April 2010; Italian, December 2010), and there is some correlation between when a language was added and the number of posts in that language. Nonetheless, perhaps because more science publishing and blogging occurs in English, or because the RB interface is in English, English continues to substantially outpace the other languages.

There are too some interesting regional patterns. The general potency of Biology is not the same in all languages. In Italian, there are more posts in Physics than Biology (174∶141), in Chinese there are more posts about Chemistry (37), Psychology (36) and Computer science/Applied science (24) than Biology (11). Smoothen demonstrated an equilibrated distribution of topics [Table 1]. These regional peculiarities show an interesting avenue for hereafter comparisons in scientific communication among unlike cultures.

Citations

Our correlation assay shows that in that location is full general decoupling of web log metrics and other classical scientific metrics (Fig. 6). This is exemplified by the fact that, generally, the correlation between RB counts and JCR metrics are lower than those observed amid the majority of JCR metrics, with the exception of Commodity Half Life and Total Articles. This suggests that the main factors influencing journal commendation in the blogosphere are not the same that decide periodical merit, as evaluated through JCR metrics, fifty-fifty though bookish merit have a substantial influence on blog commendation, every bit reveled by the presence of significant correlations among almost all JCR metrics and RB counts.

The presence of this imperfect association betwixt classical metrics and blog citation tin exist exemplified by the fact that loftier IFs are present in near-cited journals only are not a prerequisite or predictive of periodical citations in posts [Table 2]. So, rather more than existence more oftentimes cited due to high relevance due to IF, the "Aureate Circle" may also be favored considering information technology consists of multidisciplinary journals, while those with fewer citations are specialized journals, with a more than restricted audience. We consider the wide variety of journals that were discussed to exist a positive characteristic of RB, although almost half of the titles was only referenced once in the study time period.

These findings in general draw attention to the importance of new article level metrics and other scientometrics tools for measuring the relevance of papers exterior traditional publications [nineteen]–[21]. Also, every bit articles cited in Wikipedia tend to be more relevant than equivalents, an indicative that the option of Wiki citations favors relevant research [sixteen], it may be interesting to follow if citations in weblog posts are predictive of time to come article relevance.

Another interesting finding was that increasingly blogs cite more articles in the same postal service. One post had 29 citations, eighteen of which refer to manufactures that are role of a series derived from a project proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) [39]. This difference supports the argument that blogs promote a deeper understanding of the subjects they cover and the hypothesis that bloggers are writing less oftentimes, but dealing with more relevant information. In fact, while the number of posts and citations fell in absolute terms in 2011 [Fig. 2, ​ 3], the number of citations per post did not. This number has increased from 1.38 in 2010 to ane.48 in 2011, which may betoken that bloggers are beginning to add more content to each post. Also, blogs tend to cite more types of sources than just peer-reviewed articles, leading to questions about online metrics: Are mentions of published scientific enquiry at blogs or Wikipedia as valid equally citations? Should nosotros reconsider what nosotros commonly understand by citation: an commodity talking nigh some other article? These are important questions, since the process of scientific advice is historically based on procedures which don't necessarily have analogs in a digital and 2.0 context, where we are looking for new, valid metrics for assessing the reach and impact of scientific discipline and enquiry [40].

Open Admission journals

At that place is a large, ongoing effort to promote and disseminate Open Admission scientific journals, motivated by the thought that scientific information must flow freely to generate more than knowledge [41]. Our findings show that the number of OA journals cited by RB posts is much larger than observed for Wikipedia citations [xvi], suggesting that web log authors accept favored OA content, and blog readers have proportionally more access to the original commodity discussed at the posts. Recently, at that place has been an increasing concern in publication policy and public admission to research results [42], [43], and academic bloggers are especially engaged in these matters [44], which may reflect in OA trends. The large presence of paid content journals indicates that bloggers even so maintain some of the characteristics of traditional scientific soapbox as a preference for high-impact and multidisciplinary journals, following findings in others studies about RB [12], [30]. On the other hand, we propose that they perform an important social function past exposing and explaining scientific content that is inaccessible to the general public due to the constraints of paid access scientific journals in a transition context permeated by the endeavor to the greater access to scientific knowledge.

Accomplish

The results approve the methodologies of Commodity-Level Metrics that consider the private article to determine its value and reach, in contrast to periodical-level measures of research quality that have traditionally been fabricated available until now [xix], as an alternative class to verify the quality, importance, and relevance to scientific literature, more immediately than the IF allows. One of the criteria of article-level metrics - the number of views to the article - allows verify the article relevance soon after the publication dissimilar journal-level measures based in IF.

In addition, as P. Janiszewski points out, commendation on blogs may amend the achieve of enquiry:

Put another way, the same research which I published in a prestigious medical journal and fabricated basically no impact, was then viewed by over 12,000 sets of eyes because I decided to discuss it online. And it doesn't end there [45].

The systematic indexing and citation registering adopted by RB is an efficient filter for published research and its dissemination, allowing article views and access statistics agree with blog coverage metric [xx].

Future directions

Extracting data from RB posts is a challenge, mainly due to the heterogeneous pattern of journals entries by the bloggers, every bit previously explained. Besides regarding RB farther improvements, it will exist useful to permit its data to exist mined past integrating features like its Twitter app with tools similar CrowdoMeter [46],[47], improving the categorization of the citations in RB posts, and integrating other tools to promote a joint effort with the scientific community. Additionally, it would be informative to deeper evaluate the regional patterns observed betwixt languages, allowing comparisons in scientific communication amongst unlike cultures.

The emergence and rise of more recent online technologies and services based in social media tools such every bit Twitter may mean that blogs, one of the oldest digital platforms, are losing ground in numbers. Nosotros believe that blogging is still an of import way to requite visibility to science in a more complete and detailed format. It tin can offering an alternative view of science, one that is more transparent, comprehensive, and comprehensible, while increasing interest, usage and reach of scientific publications; it continues to hold an important identify amidst other new technologies. Platforms like RB not only spread but as well tape and alphabetize published inquiry, as well as having an of import social function by bringing restricted publications of scientific discipline to the full general public.

Besides, it points to a new path of scientific information spreading. The previous (and somehow still ongoing) path was: i) scientific data published in traditional scientific journals; 2) printing releases; iii) scientific data divulged (non e'er authentic) in the mass media. An important new ongoing path is: one) scientific data published in traditional scientific journals and also in open access scientific journals; ii) peer-reviewed posts published in science blogs, which provides updated and accurate scientific information in more accessible language to a non-scientific public. Considering this, it would exist a relevant challenge to develop and/or improve new metrics related to tools like RB in lodge to better evaluate its effective contribution to scientific data reach.

In this sense, our correlation analyses suggest that RB citations and views indeed evaluate dissimilar aspects of scientific production. The fact that the correlations between RB counts and JCR metrics is lower then the correlations among JCR variables (with the exception of Total Articles and Article Half-Life) suggests that the overall factors influencing the traditional metrics are non the principal factors in defining blogging citations and views. If the pattern found here for JCR metrics are consistent with large-scale studies of correlation betwixt dissimilar metrics [48], than this could be an indicative that RB-based metrics are evaluating a different feature of periodical quality, merit or impact. Even if RB counts are connected to Usage metrics (e.m. Closeness Centrality, Degree Axis, Journal Use Probability), the hateful correlation between those and Citation metrics is very high (according to Bollen et al [48], it ranges 0.68 to 0.73, with the exception of Usage Bear upon Gene, with a value of 0.27), strongly suggesting that RB counts are evaluating a unlike aspect of research quality. Specific investigations of the relationship between Usage metrics and RB counts are warrant in guild to evaluate the true relation of these metrics. Overall, RB metrics correlations are consequent with findings for other altmetrics [49], indicating that they should exist viewed every bit such.

Fifty-fifty though RB counts would non exist bachelor to all journals (not all journals are cited in blogs), they even so state something about the social impact of those that were cited, and could exist of use to journal editors that wish to develop policies to increase their periodical outreach. Large publishers (such equally Nature group) are already doing this through the establishment of a blogosphere linked to their publications. RB is different in this sense because information technology is not directly connected to any scientific publishing grouping and could exist seen as a relatively contained source of scientometric data, and a more reliable base for policy-making.

Supporting Information

Spreadsheet S1

Inquiry Blogging Reports raw information. Excel spreadsheet with Research Blogging data from Nov 1, 2007 until December 31, 2011. Sheet S1-A: RB Web log Report with web log name, web log URL, status, Inquiry Blogging topic, number of posts and blog linguistic communication. Canvas S1-B: RB Citations Written report with publication appointment, mail championship, number of views, blog proper noun, DOI, journal title and Research Blogging topic.

(XLSX)

Acknowledgments

We thank Rogério Mugnaini (Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades, USP) and Gilson L. Volpato (Departamento de Fisiologia, Instituto de Biociências, Caunesp, UNESP) for encouragement and kind advice on data analysis and discussion.

Funding Statement

The authors have no support or funding to report.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520957/

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