Social media tools and academic publishing, a presentation by Alan Cann

The following video is a presentation by Alan J. Cann for Editing in the Digital World, 11th EASE General Assembly and Conference Tallinn, Estonia, 8-10 June 2012.

Abstract of the presentation as published in the conference programme:

Social media tools and academic publishing

Alan J. Cann, Internet Consulting Editor, Annals of Botany; Department of Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

As publishing moves from print-focused (slow, inflexible, expensive) to content-focused (digital delivery, article-level metrics/discussion), there is an increasing need for publishers to communicate with their audiences in ‘adjacent spaces’ beyond the traditional medium of the journal or book. Social technologies will continue to evolve rapidly for the foreseeable future, so publishers need to acquire sufficient expertise to remain agile in this area in the face of future developments. I will describe the Annals of Botany low-cost online social media strategy, which is extending the reach of the journal to new audiences and new demographic groups. This includees blogs as distribution hubs for content via RSS, Twitter and Facebook, and emerging tools such as Flipboard which allow content discovery on new platforms such as tablet computers.

And here you have a link to the AoB Blog.

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Microbiology blogs: a list of 20 great blogs for microbe lovers

Bertalan Meskó (@Berci) has compiled a list of microbiology blogs that you may find useful: Microbiology in the Blogosphere.

Envious, I decided to make my own list of microbiology blogs. After checking my Google Reader, I came up with a collection of 20 great blogs. I know there are many more out there, so please feel free to add a comment and suggest any microbiology blogs that may be missing from my list.

So, here they come, in strict alphabetical order:

1 - Aetiology by Tara C. Smith (@aetiology): "Discussing causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena."



2 - Bactérioblog [in French] by Benjamin (@bacterioblog):"Le blog des bactéries et de l'évolution".



3 - BacterioFiles by Jesse Noar (@BacterioFiles): "The podcast for microbe lovers: reporting on exciting news about bacteria, archaea, and sometimes even eukaryotic microbes and viruses".



4 - Cornell Mushroom Blog by a collective of faculty, staff and students from Cornell University: "Even in the fullness of their horrific evilness, fungi are cool. That’s what we’re all about here."



5 - Curiosidades de la Microbiología [in Spanish] by Manuel Sánchez (@Manuel_SanchezA) (no relation!): "Este blog está dedicado a la Microbiología pero en general cualquier tema científico de interés tambien puede aparecer".



6 - Life of a Lab Rat ("occasional insights into the life of a lab rat") and Lab Rat ("Exploring the life and times of bacteria") by S. E. Gould (@labratting).



7 - Memoirs of a Defective Brain by The Defective Brain: "Science as told by malfunctioning neurones. A blog of Life, labs and bacteria."



8 - Microbichitos [in Spanish] by Miguel Vicente: "Los microbios no los vemos, pero sus efectos, para bien o para mal nos afectan a diario." Previously, Miguel used to blog at Esos pequeños bichitos.



9 - MicrobiologyBytes by Alan Cann (@MicroBytes): "The latest news about microbiology".



10 - MIKROB(io)LOG [in Slovenian] by Franc Nekrep (@fvnek): "srečevali se bomo mikrobiologi: študenti, učitelji, kolegi iz stroke pa seveda VSI LJUDJE DOBRE VOLJE..."



11 - MycoRant by Philip McIntosh (@MycoRant): "Philip has been writing, researching, publishing and doing other things in the realm of fungi since 1993".



12 - Mystery Rays from Outer Space by Ian York (@iayork): "This blog is intended to be a place for commentary on immunology, virology, and random other stuff that catches my eye."



13 - Skeptic Wonder ("protists, memes and random musings") and The Ocelloid ("Through the eye of a microbe") by Psi Wavefunction (@PsiWavefunction).



14 - Small Things Considered by Elio Schaechter, Merry Youle and collaborators: "The purpose of this blog is to share my appreciation for the width and depth of the microbial activities on this planet".



15 - The Artful Amoeba by Jennifer Frazer (@JenniferFrazer): "a blog about the weird wonderfulness of life on Earth". Older posts can be found here.



16 - The Febrile Muse by CMDoran (@TheFebrileMuse): "Portrayal of Infectious Diseases in Literature and the Arts".



17 - The Gene Gym by Jim Caryl (@mentalindigest): "Bad bugs, drugs and antibiotic resistance, all in a day's work at The Gene Gym, brought to you from the gym floor by a researcher (fitness instructor) in bacterial evolution".



18 - The Tree of Life by Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics), "evolutionary biologist, microbiologist and genomics researcher, Open Access and Open Science advocate".



19 - ViroBlogy by Ed Rybicki (@edrybicki): "Up-to-date Virology-related posts, mainly for students at the University of Cape Town".



20 - Virology blog by Vincent Racaniello (@profvrr): "about viruses and viral disease".




Note: I don't speak French or Slovenian, but that's what Google Translate is for, isn't it?

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Social media for microbiology education and research

Vincent Racaniello is a well-known Professor of Microbiology at Columbia University Medical Center, New York. As a complement to his research and his classes on virology, he successfully uses different social media tools (blogging, podcasting, microblogging) to spread the love for viruses -- I mean, to teach the public about viruses (the kind that make you sick... or not).

The following video is a recording of a great talk he gave at the Spring 2010 meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in Edinburgh, UK. In this presentation he explains -- in simple terms -- how he uses blogging, podcasting, and other social media tools for the popularization of virology.

I'm wondering if the talk could convince a few of the microbiologists in the audience to jump on the social media bandwagon...? Anyone?


The video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, and can be watched also at BioCrowd or at Virology Blog.


Image credits: "Jump on the social media bandwagon" by Matt Hamm. Source: Flickr. Image used under an Attribution-Noncommercial Creative Commons license.

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Research Blogging

From now on, some of my posts (only those discussing peer-reviewed research) will be indexed by Research Blogging, a community-run non-profit organization. Their web site allows readers to find and share blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Additionally, I will edit the code of some of my previous posts, in order to adapt them to the indexing requirements. However, the content of the re-edited posts will remain the same (even with mistakes!).

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Science Linked: Bacteria

Antonio Marques, author of the blog Science in Review, has just presented the results of the Group Writing Project entitled Science Linked: BACTERIA. Here is the list with all the submissions:

• Adventures in Bacteria, at Brightest_Kidz


• Artificial Life has Been Created at Evolution


• Viruses versus Bacteria at Sciencebase


• Slowburn Treatment for Chronic Disease at Sciencebase


• The Froth of the Liquid Jade at Twisted Bacteria


• An Unfortunate Truth about Bioethanol (from Corn) at Chemistry for a Sustainable World


• Environmental Friendly Fuel: Cyanobacteria as Ethanol Producers at Science in Review

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Bacterial sex: quarantined!

You might have noticed several feeds on the sidebar. One of them (Connotea: csrsanchez''s bookmarks) lists the last five references added to my Connotea library. Last Tuesday I added a new reference: Bacterial solutions to the problem of sex, from PLoS Biology. "The problem of sex" refers to the difficulties to find a fully satisfactory explanation to why sexual reproduction appeared and what its consequences were (from a scientific, evolutionary perspective). After a couple of days, I noticed that the reference did not come out on my sidebar, while later-added entries did. The explanation is that the sexy reference was quarantined by Connotea, due to the repeated use of the word "sex", I guess. This is not a complaint, I understand the use of automatic filters to avoid submission of inappropriate links (and, of course, Connotea has all the right to define "inappropriateness" in the use of its FREE service). Given that automatic filters may be widespread in academic sites and e-mail servers, I was just wondering how annoying the filters may be for anybody doing research in fields concerning anything sexual...

NOTE added on Sept. 27: After remodeling the sidebar, I've changed the feed name from "Connotea: csrsanchez''s bookmarks" to "My Connotea library".

NOTE added on Oct. 10: Problem fixed! (see comments).

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Your favorite life science blogs?

The Scientist is making a survey to find the most popular life science blogs: Vote for your favorite life science blogs. Anyone can vote and add a comment. This is an opportunity to discover new interesting blogs, too!

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Feeds and clouds

I'm playing around with some widgets here. I have added a couple of new feeds from Connotea to the side bar: my own bookmarks, and Connotea bookmarks tagged with "microbiology" (social bookmarks). Perhaps you find something that suits your taste.

Besides, my previous tag cloud (from Technorati, see below, left image) was not very satisfactory: by clicking on a tag you were directed to a Technorati page that didn't always show the expected result (consisting of all my posts tagged with the said label). So I'm using now a tag cloud for Blogger (below, right): if you click on a tag, it will show you directly the expected posts. Font sizes and colors are customizable. Thanks to phydeaux3!

[These are just plain images. The real ("clickable") feeds and the tag cloud are located on the sidebar]

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Thinking Blogger Awards (en español)

"The Translator" de Rosetta Rants es el culpable de haberme nominado para un Thinking Blogger Award (Premio al ¿Blogger Pensador?). Como suelo leer blogs tanto en inglés como en español, voy a seguir esta cadena (blog meme suena bien en inglés, pero en castellano suena a memez) de forma bilingüe (la versión en inglés está aquí).

Éstos son cinco blogs (entre otros) que me hacen pensar:

1. Small Things Considered, de Moselio (Elio) Schaechter [en inglés]. El Blog de los Microorganismos.
2. Xkcd, de Randall Munroe [en inglés]. Un cómic con fantasía, sarcasmo, matemáticas y lenguaje.
3. El PaleoFreak, de El PaleoFreak (no tuvo infancia, tuvo prehistoria). Comentarios sobre evolución.
4. MalaCiencia, de Alfonso de Terán Riva. Disparates, barbaridades y patadas a la ciencia, en noticias, películas o incluso en el saber general.
5. Malatraducción, de Laertes. Sobre las traducciones al español de libros (principalmente), películas y tebeos.

¡Enhorabuena, habéis ganado un "Thinking Blogger Award"!

Si quieres participar, asegúrate de pasar esta lista de normas a los blogs que nominas. Las normas de participación son sencillas:

1. Si eres nominado (y sólo en ese caso), escribe una entrada en tu blog con enlaces a 5 blogs que te hacen pensar.
2. Incluye un enlace a la entrada donde te han nominado y otro a la entrada original, de forma que cualquiera pueda encontrar fácilmente el origen concreto del meme.
3. Opcional: muestra con orgullo la placa del "Thinking Blogger Award" con un enlace a la entrada que has escrito en tu blog (aquí tienes una versión dorada si la plateada no queda bien en tu blog).

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Thinking Blogger Awards

The Translator at Rosetta Rants should be blamed for nominating me for a Thinking Blogger Award. As I use to read blogs in either English or Spanish, I'm continuing the blog meme in a bilingual fashion (a Spanish version of this post can be found here).

These are five blogs (among others) that make me think:

1. Small Things Considered, by Moselio (Elio) Schaechter. The Microbe Blog.
2. Xkcd, by Randall Munroe. A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
3. El PaleoFreak [in Spanish], by El PaleoFreak (he didn't have a childhood but a prehistory). Comments on evolution.
4. MalaCiencia [in Spanish], by Alfonso de Terán Riva. Pieces of science nonsense found in news, films or common knowledge.
5. Malatraducción [in Spanish/English], by Laertes. On Spanish translations of (mostly) books, films and comics.
   

Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blogger Award!

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post and the original post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative gold version if silver doesn't fit your blog).

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Congratulations! It's a Scintilla!

The guys at Nature Publishing Group are trying hard to build "the definitive" Web 2.0 for scientists: Connotea (online reference management service), Nature Network (online meeting place for scientists), and now Scintilla.

Scintilla is an aggregator of science weblogs, news stories and publication databases, with two remarkable features. First, sources are manually selected to be related only to science. And second, you can rate and recommend stories to other people (which can be organized in groups according to their interests, for instance microbiology). Some comments are available on Nascent, bbgm and MicrobiologyBytes.

(Twisted note no. 1) Nature Network (network.nature.com) is not the same as Nature Network (www.naturenetwork.net [live imagery and sound from cameras set up in Nature throughout the world]), which is also different to Nature Network (www.naturenetwork.org [platform to help developing countries for economic development and environmental protection]).

(Twisted note no. 2) Please don't confuse Scintilla (scintilla.nature.com) with Scintilla (www.scintilla.com [jewelry]), or even with Scintilla (www.scintilla.org [free source code editing component]). OK?

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