PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 1837 September 2008 | Volume 6 | Issue 9 | e240
Community Page
S
cientific discovery occurs in the
lab one experiment at a time, but
science itself moves forward based
on a series of ongoing conversations,
from a Nobel Prize winner’s acceptance
speech to collegial chats at a pub.
When these conversations flow into
the mainstream, they nurture the
development of an informed public
who understand the value of funding
basic research and making evidence-
based voting decisions. It is in the
interests of scientists and academic
institutions alike to bring these
conversations into the public sphere.
With 39% of American Internet users
reading at least one of the over 112
million blogs on the Internet, blogs
represent a means of information
dispersal with unprecedented power
[1]. Science blogs have carved
out a small but influential niche,
with an estimated number of over
1,200 [2]. One of the most popular
science blogs, Pharyngula, began
as a classroom teaching tool and
now logs over 1.5 million visitors
and thousands of new comments
each month (http://scienceblogs.
com/pharyngula/). The blog aims
to provide a universal, interactive
rallying point for understanding and
discussing evolutionary development,
and is led by a professor of biology at
the University of Minnesota, Morris.
Pharyngula’s popularity demonstrates
how a small blog can rapidly skyrocket
in readership and should encourage
those concerned about science literacy
in America.
Furthermore, blogs can have a
substantial impact on traditional
academia by providing a quick forum
for public peer review of research. For
example, in 2005 Reed Cartwright,
postdoctoral fellow and blogger at De
Rerum Natura (http://dererumnatura.
us/), disagreed with the conclusions
of a paper in Nature [3] and posited
what he argued was a more probable
interpretation of the data on his
blog [4]. University of Washington
researcher Luca Comai was about to
publish a letter to the editor arguing
for the same alternate hypothesis when
he read Cartwright’s blog, and realized
he had been beaten to the punch. In
the end, the blogger and researcher
made their case in a jointly authored
paper in Plant Cell [5].
Because many science bloggers
are practicing scientists or experts
in their field, they can provide a
unique educational bridge between
academia and the public and distill
important experimental findings
into an accessible, interactive format.
Yet academic institutions have been
slow to appreciate blogs as valuable
mediums for facilitating scholarly
discussion, illustrated by the lack
of institutional blogs or blogs by
established academics. It is true
that few quality-control or vetting
mechanisms exist to help readers
evaluate a blog, which typically earns
its reputation based on the blogger’s
credentials and reader feedback. Yet
both academic institutions and blogs
aim to engage and educate the public
and advance scientific knowledge and
discussion. By combining the credibility
of institutions—trusted gate-keepers for
scientific truth—with the immediacy
and networking infrastructure of blogs,
we believe that these shared goals can
be better served with benefits to both
partners.
We propose a roadmap for turning
blogs into institutional educational
tools and present examples of
successful collaborations that can serve
as a model for such efforts. We offer
suggestions for improving upon the
traditionally used blog platform to
make it more palatable to institutional
hosts and more trustworthy to readers;
creating mechanisms for institutions to
provide appropriate (but not stifling)
oversight to blogs and to facilitate
high-quality interactions between
blogs, institutions, and readers;
and incorporating blogs into meta-
conversations within and between
institutions.
Building the Foundation from the
Bottom Up
The easiest way for an academic
institution to test the blogging waters
is to showcase existing blogs written
by faculty, students, or alumni. To
begin, an institution can either modify
its Web presence to include a hub for
intra-institutional blogs, or aggregate
links to blogs on similar topics. For
example, the Stanford Blog Directory,
which includes links to internal and
external blogs by Stanford-associated
faculty, staff, students, and alumni
(Figure 1), lists over 150 existing blogs
indexed by blogger-chosen keywords
and blogger affiliation (http://blog.
stanford.edu/). The directory was
spearheaded by Stanford Director of
Internet Media Outreach Ian Hsu, who
Advancing Science through Conversations:
Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the
Academy
Shelley A. Batts
*
, Nicholas J. Anthis, Tara C. Smith
Citation: Batts SA, Anthis NJ, Smith TC (2008)
Advancing science through conversations: Bridging
the gap between blogs and the academy. PLoS Biol
6(9): e240. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060240
Copyright: 2008 Batts et al. This is an open-access
article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original author and source
are credited.
Shelley A. Batts is in the Neuroscience Program
and Kresge Hearing Research Institute, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of
America. Nicholas J. Anthis is in the Department of
Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United
Kingdom. Tara C. Smith is in the Department of
Epidemiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa,
United States of America.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: shelleba@umich.edu
The Community Page is a forum for organizations
and societies to highlight their efforts to enhance the
dissemination and value of scientific knowledge.

PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 1838 September 2008 | Volume 6 | Issue 9 | e240
hoped that creating a common home
for Stanford blogs might encourage
faculty to use blogs as a medium for
communicating interesting research
to lay readers as well as their peers.
(For inclusion in the directory, Hsu
requires only that a blog be written
by a member of the university and
not violate Stanford’s information
technology terms.) This setup benefits
both the institution, which gets free
publicity for its researchers’ work, and
academic bloggers, who have a built-in
readership funneled straight from the
institution’s Web page. At this point,
however, the Stanford Blog Directory
has no mechanisms through which
readers can engage in an academic
conversation on the hub itself, except
for a “featured blogs” category. To
create a more dynamic conversation,
the site could add a centralized search
feature, updated links to the latest
posts, or hubs linking blog posts about
recent research to news stories and the
journal article itself.
Universities can also take a bottom-
up approach by encouraging blogs
centered around an institute, as in
the case of Rudd Sound Bites, the
group blog of Yale University’s Rudd
Center for Food Policy and Obesity
Research (http://www.ruddsoundbites.
typepad.com/). The blog, though not
officially sponsored by the university,
is written by Center faculty and staff,
with submitted entries going to a
central manager for minor editing
and approval. The ChemTools blog
listing, which provides links to the
blogs of chemists and biochemists
at the University of Southampton, is
likewise self-managed and independent
of the university ( http://chemtools.
chem.soton.ac.uk/projects/blog/).
The Berkeley Lab Energy and
Environmental Research Blog, a joint
blog between the US Department
of Energy and Berkeley Lab at the
University of California, provides a
model for a partnership between a
government agency and an institution
of higher learning (http://bleer.lbl.
gov/). The blog provides a mechanism
to bridge a shared mission; in this
case, to report news and research
about climate shift and energy, and
their impact on policy. The Oxford
Internet Institute, which studies the
impact of online technology, hosts a
network of blogs written by students
and fellows at the institute and allows
considerable intellectual freedom
(http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/). Although
all blog posts appear on the main
page, which is on a University of
Oxford URL, anyone affiliated with
the institute can feed their blog onto
the institute blog without moderation.
Appropriately, blogs are prominent
features on the Web site for the Lab
for Social Computing at the Rochester
Institute of Technology and provide
an accessible interface for readers to
learn about the mission of the center
(http://social.it.rit.edu/).
Some bloggers see institutionally
based blogging as a way to advance
an institution’s academic mission.
For Roger Pielke, Jr., blogger at
Prometheus (http://sciencepolicy.
colorado.edu/prometheus/), a
science policy blog affiliated with
the University of Colorado Center
for Science and Technology Policy
Research, “blogging has become really
inseparable from academic life in a lot
of respects.” Pielke says he acquired
numerous collaborators via the blog,
and authored several publications,
including two recent high-impact
papers published this year that were
directly informed by discussions
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060240.g001
Figure 1. Screenshot of the Hub of the Stanford Blog Directory
A central, university-sponsored hub provides links to all institution-affiliated blogs that petition to join.

PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 1839 September 2008 | Volume 6 | Issue 9 | e240
on Prometheus [6,7]. Prometheus
gets about 25,000 visits each month
by bringing in outside voices and
providing an outlet for laypeople to
ask institute members questions. Pielke
believes that grounding the blog in
an academic institution improves its
legitimacy and reach.
Bridging the Gap from the Top
Down
Institutions might also try a “top-down”
approach, following the model of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s
(MIT) Technology Review (http://
www.technologyreview.com/Blog/),
which has online, print, editorial, and
blog content for laypeople, scientists,
and alumni. When deciding to add
expert blogs to their Web presence,
Technology Review actively recruited
current MIT assistant professor Ed
Boyden to write a recurring blog on
topics he thought were both interesting
and could benefit from the fast and
brutally honest discussion that the Web
can provide. Although Technology
Review posts are read by editors before
being published, Boyden attests that
his posts have never been substantially
changed. He states that “blogging
allows me to fulfill the academic
mission in another way which narrowly
focused journals cannot.”
Scholarly journal articles are not
intellectually accessible to most of the
population, and are often behind an
expensive pay-wall. Conversely, science
blogs are freely accessible, interactive,
and are generally written for a lay
audience. Although only a small
percentage of the 38% of 12- to 17-year-
olds who read blogs may be reading
science blogs, blogs clearly have the
potential to reach an age group where
excitement about a future career
in science could be ignited [8]. An
excellent example of an educational,
fun, and accessible science blog is The
Panda’s Thumb, where evolutionary
biologists tackle questions about
evolution in easy-to-understand ways,
and science teachers are an important
part of their audience (http://www.
pandasthumb.org/).
In considering a top-down initiative,
the institution’s representative
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060240.g002
Figure 2. Screenshot of the Home Page of ResearchBlogging.org
Blog posts that embed the project’s coded badge are aggregated at this central site, with the peer-reviewed paper clearly cited.

PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 1840 September 2008 | Volume 6 | Issue 9 | e240
and the potential blogger should
have a frank discussion about the
expectations of the blog’s format,
content, goals, commenting policies,
time commitment, level of acceptable
bias, what perks or drawbacks the
author might experience, and how the
institution plans to provide oversight to
the blog. While Technology Review does
ask that a faculty blogger sign a contract,
it is flexible and serves mainly to outline
common goals and potential (modest)
financial rewards to the blogger.
Providing Quality Control
How an institution gauges the
success of the blog will depend on
many factors. In the blogosphere,
peer evaluation is often carried out
informally, as readerships—and
reputations—are built largely upon
links from other blogs. As a blog’s
clout grows, so does its Technorati
rank (http://www.technorati.com/)
and precedence in related Google
searches. These in turn lead back to the
institution, which would not have access
to some of these powerful avenues for
traffic without blogs. Institutions may
wish to implement more formal vetting
mechanisms, however, such as periodic
review by institutional moderators or
peer review by official committees of
blog-literate individuals, established
scientists, and bloggers. Institutions
might use one of a variety of
mechanisms to confer a visible token of
this review—such as a “blog badge”—in
order to both reward quality bloggers
and help readers identify trusted blogs.
A blog badge is simply a small picture
or icon that is prominently featured on
the blog and represents an award or
achievement. Such badges are usually
given as awards (such as the “Weblog
Awards” [http://weblogawards.org/]
or the “MedBlog Awards” [http://www.
medgadget.com/archives/2007/12/
the_2007_medical_weblog_awards_
sponsored_by_scrubsgallerycom.
html]), and are awarded to particular
outstanding blogs in a variety of
categories, such as “Best Group
Blog,” “Most Informative,” and “Best
Translation of Published Research.”
Traditional blogging awards are
conferred by a committee who invites
submissions until a deadline, reviews
them, and then posts the winners on
their Web site. The winners can then
download the badge to post on their
blog. Institutions might find it useful,
and bloggers might find it motivating,
if institutional blog badges were
conferred for particularly insightful
posts or as a token for passing their test
or review periods. Accumulating these
badges would be a public and official
way for the institution to reward and
validate the blogger, while conferring
authority to the blog by letting readers
know it has met the criterion for
institutional peer review. While it is
true that this system might be abused
by sites posting the badge without
actually winning the award or passing
review, badge recipients are always
listed on the awards Web site and it is
difficult to fool the countless eyes of
the ever-observant Internet for long.
Bloggers can also use badges to self-
identify academically relevant blogging.
ResearchBlogging.org, for example,
automatically aggregates only blog
posts about peer-reviewed research
(Figure 2; http://researchblogging.
org/) by searching preregistered blogs
for a piece of code that’s included in
an automatically generated reference
bloggers can place in posts about
peer-reviewed research. The site also
offers an optional icon for bloggers to
identify these posts to their readers.
Since starting up in January 2008,
ResearchBlogging.org has approved
over 400 science blogs. To be included
on the site, a blog must demonstrate
to the site’s organizers via a submitted
form that it regularly produces posts
that would meet the criteria for use of
the icon. Once included, it’s then up
to the blogger to decide which posts
meet a set of detailed guidelines for
use of the icon. Dave Munger, the
initiative’s cofounder and president,
describes the project as largely self-
regulating. Readers are encouraged
to report abuses of the icon, which
may lead to the permanent removal
of a blog. This happened in the case
of an anti-evolution blog that had co-
opted the system, attempting to use the
icon while posting non-peer-reviewed
“studies” about creationism. A reader
reported the abuse, and after a review
by the moderators, the blog was denied
future use of ResearchBlogging.org.
This system illustrates that with a bit
of technical savvy, a few guidelines,
and an involved readership, the self-
regulating style of the blogosphere can
be harnessed in new ways that could
prove useful for institutional science
outreach.
Nearly all existing blogging initiatives
have started from the bottom up, rather
than under the guidance and authority
of the institution. This may be reflective
of the free-flowing, decentralized nature
of blogs themselves. But if groups
of bloggers were to create their own
initiatives and then seek institutional
recognition, they might be able to
engage in conversations about science
on their own terms while continually
proving to the institution—as they
already strive to prove to their readers
and peers—that the conversations
they are engaging in are worthwhile.
As part of a thriving online scientific
community sustained by unprecedented
connectivity, immediacy, interactivity,
and reach, bloggers can help academic
institutions take advantage of a
powerful tool for the dissemination of
scientific information and facilitation
of conversations about science. In
addition to providing a bridge between
science communication and the public,
institutional blogs could facilitate
collaborations of scientists separated
by distances as small as a few buildings
or as large as the Pacific Ocean. We
believe that the ideal relationship, be
it blogger- or institution-initiated, is
one where blogs are used as forges for
developing ideas and forums for the
discussion of accurate, interesting, and
up-to-date scientific information, with
the institution creating links between
blogs while conferring authority. By
initiating frank and open-minded
conversations about shared goals, blogs
and institutions can work together to
advance the quality and scope of the
ongoing global conversation about
science we all participate in and depend
upon.

Acknowledgments
Author contributions. Most text was written
by SAB and NJA, with significant ideas and
editing work from TCS.
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