Scott Edmunds

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*In [our previous
post](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/archiving-blogs-rogue-scholar-and-lessons-from-biome/)
we announced we are now archived in Rogue Scholar, a new service that
provides full-text search, long-term archiving, DOIs and metadata for
science blogs such as ours. In the process of going back through our
more than 300 posts over 12-years of blogging we thought we would
highlight our favourites. And also use this opportunity to show off our
shiny new Rogue Scholar DOIs.*

**Greetings, pop pickers  
**As we are big fans of top-of-the-pops style countdown lists here we
provide a chronological top-10 list of GigaBlogs, trying to balance our
most fun posts with ones demonstrating the variety of topics we've
covered over the years. These include updates from the journal and team,
meeting reports, important Editorial [policy
issues](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigascience-goes-cc4-a-handy-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-our-licenses/),
to our long-running series of [author
Q&A's](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/qa/), as well as [guest
posts](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/guest-post/) from authors,
reviewers and other interesting experts with something relevant to
announce and discuss.

  
**10. Start Me Up (2011)**

It makes sense to start this list at the beginning, with our first blog
post announcing the birth of GigaBlog in July 2011. This blog
pre-empting the [launch of
*GigaScience*](https://doi.org/10.59350/9p2mj-m6k12) journal by a year.
Posted for us by our then publishing team at BioMed Central our launch
post did quite a good job of predicting that '*future postings will
provide updates on the progress of the journal up to its formal
launch..., introduce the editors and editorial board, report on
conferences, and provide news on the many current issues surrounding the
handling and use of large-scale data and high-throughput biology'*.

Anderson G. *GigaScience*, Giga-database and now GigaBlog: new resources
for the big-data community. GigaBlog. Published online July 6 2011
<https://doi.org/10.59350/r3pva-55v87>

  
**9. Shake the disease (2011)**

The launch of the blog in the summer of 2011 was timely, with our new
GigaDB data sharing platform ending up right in the middle of the public
health battle against the deadly 2011 *E. coli* 0104:H4 outbreak that
killed over 50 people in Germany. The immediate and novel means of
sharing our first CC0 dataset with a DOI via twitter kick-started a
global crowdsourcing effort that was
[dubbed](http://twitter.com/#!/pathogenomenick/status/78768010382422016){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} by some to have made *E. coli* the first
"Tweenome". These efforts were highlighted in books (see
[BioCode](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/biocode-9780199687756))
and on the cover of the influential Royal Society ["Science as an open
enterprise"
report](https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/science-public-enterprise/report/),
and it would have been nice then to have been able to cite these
background posts with a DOI. The [legacy of this
project](https://doi.org/10.59350/e23t3-z0y06), and other related
approaches in scientific crowdsourcing (see
[OpenAshDieback](https://doi.org/10.59350/cvp3x-xzh82) in 2013), has
remained a major topic of interest for GigaBlog ever since.

Edmunds S. Notes from an *E. coli* "tweenome" -- lessons learned from
our first data DOI. GigaBlog. Published online August 3 2011
<https://doi.org/10.59350/5fpc8-mpp13>

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<h1 id="ein-fehler-ist-aufgetreten." class="message">Ein Fehler ist
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<div class="submessage">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttMnQIE-P-s"
target="_blank">Sieh dir dieses Video auf www.youtube.com an</a> oder
aktiviere JavaScript, falls es in deinem Browser deaktiviert sein
sollte.
</div>
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</figure>

  
**8. Everything Counts (2011-2014)**

After the launch of GigaDB and our first datasets with DOIs in 2011 a
lot of effort was expended in getting these launch GigaDB datasets cited
in any journals publishing work using them. These early experiments in
Data Citation pre-empted the publication of the [Data Citation
Principles](https://doi.org/10.25490/a97f-egyk) in 2014, and threw some
light on how publishers such as Nature Publishing Group would handle
data DOIs well in some of their journals (*Nature Biotech* allowing DOIs
to [be included in their supporting data
sections](https://doi.org/10.59350/9cw7c-jdz05) in 2011, and [cited in
the references of a paper in
2012](https://doi.org/10.59350/4ztha-2ph11)), and badly in others
(*Nature Genetics* [stripping out the DOIs of Panda
genomes](https://doi.org/10.59350/adwqn-zhg20)). These efforts
culminated in our [Polar Bear genome DOI cited in a
*Cell*](https://doi.org/10.59350/855r6-3zq41) cover story*,* providing
an useful examplar for future reference as Cell Press were until then
the only major biology publisher to [state in a
survey](http://f1000research.com/data-policies){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} that they would see the publication of data
with a DOI as potential prior publication. These experiments were our
first blog posts to be cited in the scientific literature, and it would
have been useful to have had Rogue Scholar DOIs that could have been
cited rather than the unstable blog URLs.

Edmunds S. The Latest Weapon in Publishing Data: the Polar Bear.
GigaBlog. Published online May 14 2014
<https://doi.org/10.59350/855r6-3zq41>

  
**7. Kung Fu Fighting (2013)**

[Author Q&A's](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/?s=Q%26A) are a long
running feature in GigaBlog, and its hard to pick which ones we should
have highlighted here (honourable mentions to the author Q&As of the
[Aldabra giant tortoise](https://doi.org/10.59350/z12m9-sb904) genome
and [iGenomics tricorder-like
sequencing](https://doi.org/10.59350/k342q-jaq41) on a smartphone tool),
but one paper in particular has probably sparked the most continued
interest. Although the subject of [discussion in the
Q&A](https://doi.org/10.59350/97rsw-6p734) was more because of the
unusual "real-time" peer review process, rather than the paper itself.
 One of our most highly cited papers,
[Assemblathon2](https://doi.org/10.1186/2047-217X-2-10) was initially
submitted to a [preprint
server](http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.5406){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} and as the named reviewers blogged and
commented on their reviews of the paper, this (then) novel approach
provided a huge amount of subsequent feedback and follow-up blogs. Titus
Brown's [blogging and
comments](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/thoughts-on-assemblathon-2.html){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} that Assemblathon2 is a damning indictment of
computational biology was [highlighted in Nature
News](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/07/genome-assembly-contest-prompts-soul-searching.html){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}, and even spawned a [\#titusischucknorris
social media
meme](https://x.com/search?q=%23titusischucknorris){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}.

Edmunds S. Extended Q&A with Assemblathon2 Author Keith Bradnam.
GigaBlog. Published online August 20 2013
<https://doi.org/10.59350/vmb4z-g1e81>

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sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" width="750" height="181" />
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**6. Policy of Truth (2013)**

While less likely to go viral and spawn hashtags, one solid use for a
blog is its ability to provide a housekeeping role. Providing a platform
for announcements and discussions of policy that are too long for social
media posts, but otherwise too easily lost in the depths of the journal
website. We've made a number of such postings, and these are easily
cited and used to link out and expand upon points in our Instructions
for Authors. For really important and detailed policy points then
publishing an Editorial makes more sense than a blog, but these type of
pre-emptive blogposts can be a sounding board and almost act like a
preprint version of the article (see out [authorship
policy](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/authorship_guidelines)
change announcement in [blog](https://doi.org/10.59350/cmngq-mz362) and
[Editorial](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giy122) form). Probably
the most useful and prescient of these announcements has been the [one
clarifying and making consistent](https://doi.org/10.59350/ctrks-7fz91)
all of our open data and content (including for this blog) sharing
policies by putting them under creative commons open licenses. Again,
having a DOI for these announcements makes them a more easily citeable
statement.

Edmunds S. GigaScience goes CC4. A handy cut out and keep guide to our
licenses. GigaBlog. Published online December 20 2013
<https://doi.org/10.59350/ctrks-7fz91>

  
**5. Legend (2015)**

Back to the example of [author
Q&A's](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/qa/) we can't miss out the
Q&A with Chris Chang, author of our highest cited paper for [Second
Generation PLINK](https://doi.org/10.1186/s13742-015-0047-8). Near
single-handedly updating with 1,000 fold speed increases one of the most
highly used tools in statistical genetics, all while working in coffee
shops. And using skills  honed working in such diverse areas as maths
olympiads, medical technology start-ups and games design. The man is a
legend, with a fanbase lurking in certain corners of the internet eager
to get this sort of behind-the-scenes insight.

Edmunds S. GWAS Reloaded: extended Q&A with PLINK1.9 author Chris Chang.
GlgaBlog. Published online February 26 2015
<https://doi.org/10.59350/r16sj-m5t73>

  
**4. Build Me Up Buttercup (2015)**

One of the goals of *GigaScience* is to help promote more open ways of
carrying out science, and after our experience with crowdsourcing the
"[tweenome](https://doi.org/10.59350/5fpc8-mpp13)" (see above), we got
further involved in the concept of "Community Genomics" through
[publishing](https://doi.org/10.1186/2047-217X-1-14) the "the Peoples
Parrot". The [first crowdfunded
genome](https://doi.org/10.59350/k4hpv-gw093), the Puerto Rican Parrot
is an iconic symbol of its home, and taking a grassroots approach the
authors appealed directly to the parrot lovers on the island, mobilizing
support and raising the sequencing costs of its genome through art and
fashion shows promoting parrot conservation. With the rise of
crowdfunding platforms other genome and
[microbiome](https://doi.org/10.59350/qhthe-qdk84) projects followed in
these footsteps (including our own [Bauhinia Genome
Project](http://bauhiniagenome.hk/)), and we covered and promoted many
of these projects [in
GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/crowdfunding/). This
culminated in us [organising a
session](https://doi.org/10.59350/cykcb-kz692) at BGI's annual
International Conference on Genomics (ICG) in Shenzhen bringing together
many of the people and successful projects that have pioneered this new
area of open science. The talks filmed and hosted on our [Giga-TV
youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@GigaScienceJournal).

Edmunds S. Community Genomes on GigaTV. GigaBlog. Published online 10
December 2015. <https://doi.org/10.59350/cykcb-kz692>

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**3. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey (2016)**

Sometimes blogs can be helpful in providing context on why something
isn't happening, rather than just making announcements on things that
are happening. One such example is when *GigaScience* received its first
Journal Impact Factor (jIF), and having signed [DORA (the Declaration of
Research Assessment)](https://sfdora.org/) we [wanted to make
clea](https://doi.org/10.59350/8wafm-6yc04)r that we would not be
posting the details of this on our website and marketing materials.
Explaining our rationale that using such a one dimensional,
non-transparent, readily gameable, two-years past indication as a
stand-in for "impact", [more often than not, promotes bad scientific
practices](http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/01/even-without-retractions-top-journals-publish-the-least-reliable-science/).

Edmunds S. The lowest common denominator: marketing science with jIF.
GigaBlog. Published online July 8 2016
<https://doi.org/10.59350/8wafm-6yc04>

**2. Some Great Reward (2017-2020)**

Trying to think of new ways to promote more open ways of carrying out
science [in 2017](https://doi.org/10.59350/detph-5pw14) and
[2018](https://doi.org/10.59350/s6zx9-6x797) we decided to go one step
further and organise our own competition and prize track at the ICG
conference. With the aim to promote submission of new, cutting edge
research to the journal, we received and published some great
submissions, and the talks are all available to watch in [our Giga-TV
channel](https://www.youtube.com/@GigaScienceJournal). First place
received a \$1000 prize, the 2017 winner was particularly memorable,
[presenting the genome of venomous
Solenodon](https://doi.org/10.59350/epn4h-x9f52), a "giant rat with
Freddy Krueger claws" that the last survivor of a branch of mammals that
appeared at the time of the dinosaurs. With the pandemic changing
conference accessibility, in 2020 we decided to change the GigaScience
Prize to focus on "Outstanding Data Sharing during the COVID-19
Pandemic". There could be [only one winner for
this](https://doi.org/10.59350/7bck3-17n78), Prof Zhang Yongzhen's
outstanding efforts in sharing the first whole genome sequence of the
deadly COVID-19 virus on January 5th, 2020. Prof Zhang being able to
[receive the prize in
person](https://youtu.be/KdG1B6cdg2U?si=8tVgte8MkHpxKDKX) at the ICG
conference held that year in Wuhan.

Edmunds S. COVID-19 Data-Sharing Hero Wins GigaScience Prize. GigaBlog.
Published online November 11 2020 <https://doi.org/10.59350/7bck3-17n78>

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<div id="player">

</div>
<div class="player-unavailable">
<h1 id="ein-fehler-ist-aufgetreten." class="message">Ein Fehler ist
aufgetreten.</h1>
<div class="submessage">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdG1B6cdg2U"
target="_blank">Sieh dir dieses Video auf www.youtube.com an</a> oder
aktiviere JavaScript, falls es in deinem Browser deaktiviert sein
sollte.
</div>
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</div>
</div>
</figure>

  
**1.More Than Words (2022)**

With the [launch of our second journal
*GigaByte*](https://doi.org/10.59350/2mk34-k7g94) recent posts have
covered the many novel features the journal and its papers have
showcased, these features culminating in our [winning last years the
ALPSP Innovation in Publishing
Award](https://doi.org/10.59350/h12h1-x5d50). In another first for the
novel *GigaByte* publication platform developed by River Valley
Technologies, our favourite feature highlighted was first time
multilingual articles have been simultaneously published in English,
Spanish and Ukrainian. This showcasing the ability to proof multiple
languages in parallel, and even display these in the [PubMed Central
version of the paper](https://doi.org/10.59350/btxxm-sr025). These new
features keep flowing thick and fast, so keep following GigaBlog (and
Rogue Scholar) for further updates, news, Q&A's and more.

Edmunds S. The first English-Spanish-Ukrainian Publication. How to
publish multilingual articles with GigaByte. GigaBlog. Published online
Published November 28 2022 <https://doi.org/10.59350/v4emk-5r363>

The post [Archiving blogs, pt. 2: The GigaBlog Top of the
Pops](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/top-of-the-pops/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


<em>
 In our previous post we announced we are now archived in Rogue Scholar, a new service that provides full-text search, long-term archiving, DOIs and metadata for science blogs such as ours. In the process of going back through our more than 300 posts over 12-years of blogging we thought we would highlight our favourites.
</em>

Archiving blogs, pt. 2: The GigaBlog Top of the Pops

*GigaBlog is now [archived](https://rogue-scholar.org/blogs/gigablog) in
[Rogue Scholar](https://rogue-scholar.org/), a new service that provides
what it calls "science blogging on steroids" through including full-text
search, long-term archiving, DOIs and metadata for science blogs such as
ours.*

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-09-at-1.04.47-PM-1024x745.png"
class="wp-image-5459" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-09-at-1.04.47-PM-1024x745.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-09-at-1.04.47-PM-300x218.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-09-at-1.04.47-PM-768x559.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-09-at-1.04.47-PM-1536x1118.png 1536w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-09-at-1.04.47-PM.png 1838w"
sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" width="768" height="559" />
</figure>

While this July we celebrated the 11^th^ anniversary of the launch of
our first articles [at ISMB in
Lyon](https://doi.org/10.59350/59yfe-63e94), it was actually the 12^th^
anniversary of the [launch of
GigaBlog](https://doi.org/10.59350/r3pva-55v87), the blog of GigaScience
Press. As outlined in our [first ever GigaBlog
post](https://doi.org/10.59350/r3pva-55v87), it was hoped that the blog
was a forum to supplement and enhance the content of the journal, saying
"Postings will provide updates on the progress of the journal, introduce
the GigaScience team and Editorial Board, report on conferences, and
provide news on the many current issues surrounding the handling and use
of large-scale data and high-throughput biology". Once the journal
launched we had plenty of interesting content to highlight in our
long-running series of [author
Q&A's](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/qa/), as well as [guest
posts](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/guest-post/) from authors,
reviewers and other interesting experts with something relevant to get
off their chests. We also used the blog as a platform to expand upon
important Editorial [policy
issues](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigascience-goes-cc4-a-handy-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-our-licenses/)
and changes, and also as a forum for announcements and updates from open
science projects. With over 300 postings in 12 years we have collected
many favourites over that time that we will highlight in a future post.
We've built quite a readership over the years, many posts picking up
thousands of accesses and receiving positive feedback and comments from
readers. Eating our own Open Access dogfood, since 2013 we've made sure
our blog content was [also under an open CC-BY
license](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigascience-goes-cc4-a-handy-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-our-licenses/http:/gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigascience-goes-cc4-a-handy-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-our-licenses/)
purely requiring attribution, encouraging and streamlining the process
for people interested in re-using or quoting our content (which has come
in handy pre-empting and streamlining the process of [integrating of our
content](https://rogue-scholar.org/blogs/gigablog) in Rogue Scholar).

We know from experience now keeping a blog live and running for 12 years
is not an easy task. Especially with multiple blog platform migrations
in that time requiring a lot of work in fixing formatting, links and
images. In the first 5 years of our history *GigaScience* was
co-published by BioMed Central, and when they changed blogging platform
that broke many of the links in our posts that had to be manually fixed.
When we moved to Oxford University Press, as the blog was hosted in
WordPress we managed to export the WordPress XML file and deploy to our
own WordPress installation so we wouldn't have to depend on third
parties and could control the blog ourselves. Again many links and
images were broken despite BMC being helpful with many redirects, and
there were inconsistencies in tags and other metadata caused by this
move that required a lot of fixes from that move. If we were less
motivated in maintaining the efforts of all of the authors it would have
been easier to let the blog die and maybe again. These travails made the
launch of the fantastic Rogue Scholar by Martin Fenner such an
attractive solution to the blog stability issue.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Rogue-Scholar-Front-Page.png"
class="wp-image-5461" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Rogue-Scholar-Front-Page.png 700w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Rogue-Scholar-Front-Page-300x189.png 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" width="700" height="442" />
</figure>

Treating blog posts like journal articles and giving them DOIs mean
these links are stable and can be redirected in the future whenever the
underlying posts migrate somewhere else. Rogue Scholar also includes
features like [Fediverse
integration](https://doi.org/10.53731/f1mhr-wps22), and GigaBlog will be
getting its own Mastodon feed (to join the
[GigaScience](https://mastodon.social/@GigaScience) and
*[GigaByte](https://mas.to/@GigaByte)* feeds already setup).

Collecting and linking the DOIs to important metadata, this makes the
posts citeable and trackable via ingestion into CrossRef. As well as
saving the blog links and metadata the textual content is also archived
and indexed, [offering full-text
search](https://doi.org/10.53731/6r1dx-wdp04), capture of [tags and
images](https://doi.org/10.53731/7pqhx-z0y63), and any references also
shared with CrossRef. Rogue Scholar does all of this by harvesting our
content and metadata using RSS, and Martin seemingly effortlessly
handled all of the setup for us. The service is currently free for up to
50 posts per year, and the only thing we had to do on top of that was
pay \$1 per post for our archival posts. Currently there are nearly 50
[science blogs hosted](https://rogue-scholar.org/blogs), including many
that we've been following over the years from active scientists,
scholarly comms experts and other journal blogs such as ours. If you
have a blog you'd like to archive [contact
Martin](https://jvinjjenjik.typeform.com/to/uxgAsHPl) and join the
growing Rogue Scholarly network.

**How not to maintain blog content: the *biome* experience**  
Maintaining a blog is not easy work, but the continuing popularity of
the medium shows that there is value in this form of communication. Even
if science blogging networks have risen and fallen (goodbye [Guardian
Science Blog
Network](https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/aug/31/farewell-to-the-guardians-science-blog-network)),
and many informative and hilarious science blogs we loved to follow have
bitten the dust (please come back
[Opinionomics](https://biomickwatson.wordpress.com/) and [The Science
Web](https://thescienceweb.wordpress.com/)). Science blogging providing
the space for scientists and those involved in scholarship to better
communicate what they are doing and how the scientific process works,
addressing a key issue of improving openness and inclusivity in science.
This need was highlighted by [UNESCO in their Open Science
Recommendation](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379949) (see
our [Editorial on this](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac067)),
who said that this type of Open Science  "opens the processes of
scienti­fic knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal
actors beyond the traditional scientifi­c community".

There's obviously value to these efforts, and [publishers claim their
role is to "add
value"](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/02/06/focusing-value-102-things-journal-publishers-2018-update/),
so publishers has risen to the challenge and set up a plethora of blogs
and blogging networks covering their journals. While many of these blogs
are just going through motions, reposting press releases and making
short administrative announcements, some put the effort in to write and
commission insightful posts that build upon and throw additional context
and background upon their published content. One such effort was our
former co-publishers BioMed Central "*biome*", leveraging their blogging
platform but positioned as a journal that "brings together a selection
of new insights from across the entire spectrum of biology and
medicine".

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-08-09-at-2.31.05-PM.png"
class="wp-image-5456" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-08-09-at-2.31.05-PM.png 974w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-08-09-at-2.31.05-PM-300x104.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-08-09-at-2.31.05-PM-768x267.png 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px" width="731" height="254"
alt="Rogue Scholar blog" />
</figure>

This included Research synopses, author spotlights and videos (e.g. our
EBM [Carole Goble on Open Source
software](https://youtu.be/AEagfED5XO8?si=GbJsSg1k7elJEiD5)), featured
articles and more. As BioMed Central (now just "BMC") has an evolving
portfolio of some 300 peer-reviewed journals this provided a great means
of highlighting important and interesting content that might otherwise
get buried in the firehose of the hundreds of articles published each
day.

<figure
class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio">
<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="iframe">
<div id="player">

</div>
<div class="player-unavailable">
<h1 id="ein-fehler-ist-aufgetreten." class="message">Ein Fehler ist
aufgetreten.</h1>
<div class="submessage">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEagfED5XO8"
target="_blank">Sieh dir dieses Video auf www.youtube.com an</a> oder
aktiviere JavaScript, falls es in deinem Browser deaktiviert sein
sollte.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</figure>

As one of the journals in their portfolio when biome launched in 2013 we
embraced the chance to use this excellent forum, and we and our authors
and Editorial Board Members contributed lots of content. Biome ran for
two years, was promoted with print versions at conferences, and
definitely helped engage and widen our and other BMC journals
readership. Then in 2015 without warning or any explanation biome was
pulled by BMC and deleted from the web. As this was carried out suddenly
and without announcement there was no way to salvage and copy over any
of the content, and this is now lost in the void (or at least
[everywhere but the Internet Archive Wayback
Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https:/www.biomedcentral.com/biome/))
forever.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Biome-June1-1024x775.png"
class="wp-image-5457" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Biome-June1-1024x775.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Biome-June1-300x227.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Biome-June1-768x581.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Biome-June1.png 1045w"
sizes="(max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px" width="840" height="635" />
<figcaption><em>That was the biome that was. Historic screencap of how
it looked before deletion. CC-BY BMC</em></figcaption>
</figure>

While there is no legal obligation for publishers to maintain science
blogs in the same manner as their scientific articles (for example BMC
and GigaScience Press subscribe to [CLOCKSS](https://clockss.org/) to
enable dark archiving of content in case of journal closure), it's still
bad practice that the supposed guardians of the scientific "version of
record" cannot maintain and archive their own records and blog back
content. Especially as this was branded as "biome journal" rather than
plain vanilla blog, and we and others contributed a lot of time and
effort into providing content for it. While the reason given for closure
were never given, as BioMed Central had been acquired by a much larger
publisher servicing large amounts of debt, the profit-margin
requirements of servicing private equity firms who own them, and
[multiple failed
IPOs](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/05/15/springer-nature-ipo-withdrawn/),
their priorities in how much additional "value" they need to add to the
scientific community are probably now different to when they were a
smaller publisher. See also the [sorry
tale](https://www.facebook.com/gulliver.turtle) of their previously
["turtley
cool"](https://steelgraham.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/on-how-to-sneak-in-a-biomed-central-open-access-turtle-into-the-gherkin-london-part-one/)
OA mascot Gulliver Turtle.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Gulliver-life.png"
class="wp-image-5462" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Gulliver-life.png 700w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Gulliver-life-300x117.png 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 843px) 100vw, 843px" width="843" height="329" />
<figcaption>OA mascot Gulliver was a popular attendee at scientific
conferences, but after the BMC’s acquisition there were many rumours
about his sudden disappearance.</figcaption>
</figure>

If [Rogue Scholar](https://rogue-scholar.org/) had existed in 2015 this
may have been a different story, as it provides a great example of what
should be the standard for science blogs now, and Martin has also
provided a much more streamlined and simple method of carrying out the
archiving and DOI registration process. We'd like to thank Martin for
his excellent work here, and would encourage other science blogs to use
Rogue Scholar (and also [support his
efforts](https://ko-fi.com/rogue_scholar/goal?g=32) to provide archival
DOIs for the many useful blogs he's already included). Going forward if
readers ever want to link to our cite our posts we would also recommend
the use of the Rogue Scholar DOIs rather than the blog URLs to future
proof their long term accessibility.

## **References** {#references .wp-block-heading}

Anderson G. *GigaScience*, Giga-database and now GigaBlog: new resources
for the big-data community. GigaBlog. Published online July 6 2011
<https://doi.org/10.59350/r3pva-55v87>

Edmunds SC et al., A Decade of *GigaScience*: Milestones in Open
Science. Gigascience. 2022 Jul **12**;11:giac067.
<https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac067>

The post [Archiving blogs: Rogue Scholar and lessons from
Biome](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/archiving-blogs-rogue-scholar-and-lessons-from-biome/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


<em>
 GigaBlog is now archived in Rogue Scholar, a new service that provides what it calls “science blogging on steroids” through including full-text search, long-term archiving, DOIs and metadata for science blogs such as ours.
</em>
While this July we celebrated the 11
<sup>
 th
</sup>
anniversary of the launch of our first articles at ISMB in Lyon, it was actually the 12
<sup>
 th
</sup>
anniversary of the launch of GigaBlog, the blog of GigaScience

Rogue Scholar Posts

Archiving blogs, pt. 2: The GigaBlog Top of the Pops

Archiving blogs: Rogue Scholar and lessons from Biome