I’ve been watching the reflection on the Science Blogs diaspora and the wider conversation on what next for the Science Blogosphere with some interest because I remain both hopeful and not very confident that someone somewhere is really going crack the problem of effectively using the social web for advancing science.

Cameron Neylon

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I've been watching the reflection on the Science Blogs diaspora and the
wider conversation on what next for the Science Blogosphere with some
interest because I remain both hopeful and sceptical that someone
somewhere is really going crack the problem of effectively using the
social web for advancing science. I don't really have anything to add to
[Bora's masterful
summary](http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2010/07/scienceblogs_and_me_and_the_ch.php)
of the larger picture but I wanted to pick out something that was
interesting to me and that I haven't seen anyone else mention.

Much of the reflection has focussed around what
[ScienceBlogs](http://scienceblogs.com/ "ScienceBlogs"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage"}, and indeed [Nature
Network](http://network.nature.com/ "Nature Network"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage"} is, or was, good for as a place to blog. Most have
mentioned the importance of the platform in helping to get started and
many have mentioned the crucial role that the linking from more
prominent blogs played in getting them an audience. What I think no-one
has noted is how much the world of online writing has changed since many
of these people started blogging. There has been consolidation in the
form of networks and the growth of the internet as a credible media
platform with credible and well known writers. At the same time, the
expectations of those writers, in terms of their ability to express
themselves through multimedia, campaigns, widgets, and other services
has outstripped the ability of those providing networks to keep up. I
don't think it's an accident that many of the criticisms of ScienceBlogs
seem to be similar toÂ [those of Nature
Network](http://blogs.nature.com/rpg/2010/07/24/on-nature-network) when
it comes to technical issues.

What strikes me is a distinctÂ parallelÂ between the networks and
scientific journals (and indeed newspapers). One of the great
attractions of the networks, even two or three years ago, was that the
technical details of providing a good quality user experience were taken
care of for you. The *publication* process was still technically a bit
difficult for many people who just wanted to get on and write. Someone
else was taking care of this for you. Equally the credibility provided
by ScienceBlogs or the Nature name were and still are a big draw. The
same way a journal provides credibility, the assumption that there is a
process back there that is assuring quality in some way.

The world, and certainly the web, has moved on. The publication step is
easy -- as it is now much easier on the wider web. The key thing that
remains is the link economy. Good writing on the web lives and dies by
the links, the eyeballs that come to it, the *[expert
attention](http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/the-economics-of-scientific-collaboration/)*
that is brought there by trusted curators. Scientists still largely
trust journals to apportion up their valuable attention, and people will
still trust the front page of ScienceBlogs and others to deliver quality
content. But what the web teaches us over and over again is that a
single criterion for authority, to quality curation, to editing is not
enough. In the same way that a journal's impact factor cannot tell you
anything about the quality of an individual paper, a blog collective or
network doesn't tell you anything much about an individual author, blog,
or piece of writing.

The future of writing on the web will be more diverse, more federated,
and more driven by trusted and selective editors and discoverers who
will bring specific types of quality content into my attention stream.
Those looking for "the next science blogging network" will be waiting a
while because there won't be one, at least not one that is successful.
There will be consolidation, there will larger numbers of people writing
for commercial media outlets, both old and new, but there won't be a
network because the network will the web. What there will be, somehow,
sometime, and I hope soon will be a framework in which we can build
social relationships that help us discover content of interest from any
source, and that supports people to act as editors and curators to
republish and aggregate that content in new and interesting ways. That
won't just change the way people blog about science, but will change the
way people communicate, discover, critique, and actually *do* science.

Like [Paulo Nuin
said](http://blindscientist.genedrift.org/2010/07/23/my-take-on-the-future-scientific-blog-community-long-post/),
the future of scientific blogging is what it has always been. It's just
writing. It's always just been writing. That's not the interesting bit.
The interesting bit is that how we find what we want to read is changing
radically...again. That's where the next big thing is. If someone
figures out please tell me. I promise I'll link to you.

*Title of this post is liberally borrowed from [some of Richard
Grant's](http://network.nature.com/blogs/posts/search?q=nature+of+networking)
of which [the most
recent](http://blogs.nature.com/rpg/2010/07/24/on-nature-network) was
the final push it took for me to actually write it.*

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Image by cameronneylon via Flickr  I’ve been watching the reflection on the Science Blogs diaspora and the wider conversation on what next for the Science Blogosphere with some interest because I remain both hopeful and sceptical that someone somewhere is really going crack the problem of effectively using the social web for advancing science.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

The Nature of Science Blog Networks