Managing Online Community
This is my first post here as the new Online Community Coordinator at PLoS ONE and I would like to use it just as a brief introduction – who am I and what will my job be.
My scientific background is in chronobiology, animal physiology and behavior. I have organized the first Science Blogging Conference and edited the first Science Blogging Anthology. I also run my own personal blog, A Blog Around The Clock and that is where PLoS and I found each other – the story is quite interesting in itself.
My main goal is to increase the number of comments, ratings and annotations on the PLoS ONE papers, without compromising their quality. I have some ideas how to go about it, and so do the other members of the PLoS team, but I am always interested in hearing others (comments section of this post is a perfect place for just such ideas you may have). Scientists are generally shy about posting stuff online, but a growing number of science bloggers shows that it is possible for them to change their habits! So, please help me in this difficult task 😉
Also, as a blogger with some experience, it naturally fell unto me to become the person in charge of the day-to-day function and the future development of this blog. So, watch this space – over the next several weeks and months I will be gradually implementing changes in the look and feel of this blog, the functionalities and overall tone. I hope you will find the changes intriguing and refreshing and will make this place a regular destination in your daily online activity. Again, I will appreciate all the feedback that you can give me in the comments here.
I recall Chris S promising a blog post to answer Mike’s questions about PLoS and Open Science… if Chris hasn’t yet gotten around to it (not meant as criticism, we’re all busy!), perhaps you could talk to your overlords and then write here about the PLoS view of open notebooks, data on blogs and other forms of Open Science/Science 2.0?
As PLoS journals are in many ways the flagship of Open Access it would be good to have an official PLoS stance on Open Science.
Chris posted a short reply here:
http://www.staging.plos.org/cms/node/246#comment-328
and promised a longer reply later. We are actually working on the wording of our official policy on this so we can have it displayed on our site on an appropriate page (‘For Authors’?)
Congrads. Bora!
One PluS contribution for PLoS -open science blog.
Hope that there’ll be space for other authors/coperation here in the future (:
Best,
Danica
Well one idea, which has probably been thought of in any case, is to really push people to put in _all_ the raw data as supporting information. Scientists may be shy about commenting but they are hardcore pedants so give them some raw data and they will complain about the details of the data analysis until the cows come home.
On another note an effective means of aggregatings all the discussions someone is involved in and a good notification system. I am struggling to keep up with all the blogs I have left comments on. If I add a few papers a week to that I will go mad very quickly. The experienced bloggers will be fine with this but the audience you are trying to reach out to will presumably be mostly confused newbies like me.