The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) blogosphere comprises four science blogging networks, one of which is actually a network of numerous networks. NPG’s networks provide platforms for the unique voices of more than a hundred science bloggers. These bloggers include scientists, professional writers, science communicators, students and science enthusiasts with expertise in different fields and dispersed in numerous continents. With such a diverse mix, it is fair to say that the NPG blogosphere has something for every reader.
NPG’s four science blogging networks are:
- nature.com’s editorial blogs;
- Nature Education’s Scitable blogs;
- Scientific American’s science blogging network;
- SciLogs, spearheaded by Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German edition of Scientific American, which groups science blogging networks of different languages.
So, how do these four networks fit under the NPG family anyway?
A primer
NPG is owned by The Macmillan Group, one of the so-called “Big Six” publishers in the world (although with the upcoming merger of Penguin and Random House, I’d guess it’s now the “Big Five”, but I digress). The Macmillan Group is in turn owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a giant German publishing house.
NPG publishes over fifty science journals which include its popular Nature-branded journals such as Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Chemistry, to name but a few, as well as external publications like the The Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Pediatric Research and others. In addition, the popular science magazine, Scientific American, has been part of NPG since 2008 (although it has been under the ownership of Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group for much longer). Along with Scientific American, also comes the publication’s fourteen international editions.
In addition to its publications, NPG created its own educational division, Nature Education in 2007. Nature Education focuses on producing educational content for students. One of Nature Education’s ventures is Scitable, a free learning platform for students which consists of reviewed educational content and a science blogging network.
The four networks
nature.com’s editorial blogs
Some of the Nature journals have their own editorial blogs, run by the journals’ editors. Plus some of NPG’s regional websites, like Nature Middle East and Nature India also have their own blogs and the Communities team also host both this blog and the Soapbox Science guest blog. These blogs are all hosted on the same platform at blogs.nature.com. Content-wise, they typically target readers who are well-versed in science.
The Nature News blog, for instance, written by Nature’s news team, typically publishes three to four blog posts a day. These posts provide comprehensive coverage of what’s happening in the world of science, be it in the lab where research is done or in governments where policies are discussed. More focused coverage on specific fields is offered by other editorial blogs: Nature Medicine’s blog, Spoonful of Medicine, covers medicine; the Action Potential blog is operated by neuroscience editors at Nature; Nature Chemistry’s blog, The Sceptical Chymist, covers chemistry. But contrarily to the news style that the Nature News blog adopts, other editorial blogs may be more chatty and conversational, allowing editors to muse about the latest papers. Plus, who knew that Nature editors could be funny?
“Allow me to translate: “WE CREATED “THE MATRIX” FOR FISH.” – Noah Gray, Nature neuroscience editor, blogging in Action Potential about a cool study published in Nature.
While the editorial blogs cover the world of science based on the various disciplines, nature.com’s regional blogs, such as House of Wisdom and Indigenus, are edited by editors of its regional websites (Nature Middle East and Nature India respectively). Those blogs cover the science that’s happening in their parts of the world.
Nature Education’s Scitable blogs
Targeting a completely different audience is the Scitable science blogging network. Scitable is a platform for undergraduate students and its blogging network complements this by predominantly featuring blog posts which showcase the “wow” aspects of science. From the ingenious uses of technology in research, the quirky world of animals, to health, the environment and education, the Scitable network is relevant to scientists-in-the-making and science enthusiasts. Scitable’s bloggers come from the different echelons of science: high school students, undergraduates, postgraduates to the emerging researchers, providing readers with different perspectives from the science world.
Scientific American’s science blogging network
Launched over a year ago, Scientific American’s science blogging network, regroups an impressive set of well-known science bloggers and journalists. Featuring commodity names like Bora Zivkovic, Christie Wilcox, Jennifer Ouellette and Scicurious, along with the publication’s own editors, the network quickly became one of the most well-known destinations in the science blogosphere. The network targets an audience of science enthusiasts and the less-savvy science readers with bloggers writing popular science pieces, many of whom relay recent research into simple, jargon-less prose. Echoing the magazine’s scope, the network covers a very wide variety of topics ranging from astronomy to zoology.
The SciLogs network
While Scientific American has its own science blogging network, a number of its international editions have their own science blogging networks too. Those networks are all grouped under the SciLogs name. Coordinating the SciLogs network is Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German edition of Scientific American.
Three of Scientific American’s fourteen international editions have their SciLogs network. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, in addition to coordinating the entire endeavour, runs SciLogs.de; Investigacion Y Ciencia, the Spanish edition operates SciLogs.es; the Dutch and Belgian edition has SciLogs.be. The latest addition is an English-language SciLogs network, SciLogs.com, which launched three months ago and added as many as fifteen bloggers to its ranks two weeks ago.
While the SciLogs networks typically target an audience of scientists and science enthusiasts, with many of their bloggers being actual scientists, SciLogs.com’s bloggers write for a more varied audience, targeting scientists, science enthusiasts and the layperson. To achieve this, SciLogs.com hosts a varied bunch of bloggers which includes both scientists and professional and upcoming science writers. The scientist bloggers tend to discuss specific areas of science in detail, prompting discussions amongst their peers. The science writers on the other hand blog for a more general audience, covering many different topics such as space science and space flight, the awesomeness of animals, climate change, robotics, science communication and much more.
Why four networks? Why not just one big network?
Bloggers cover topics they feel strongly about and elicit discussions. That’s what they do. And around discussions, communities form. Those communities are important. Communities can spread discussions to more people both online and in the real world and can elicit more ideas, views and opinions—that is knowledge—furthering the scopes of the discussions the bloggers initially started.
NPG’s four networks all have the same ultimate aim: to promulgate science. But thanks to its diversity of networks, NPG is able to build communities of different audiences, from the scientist to the layperson. Therein lies the importance of each of NPG’s networks. Each one of them appeals to a different set of readers, to a different audience.
The communities that form around the four networks are not completely separate from one another though. Readers of the Scitable blogs may also read the popular science blogs of Scientific American while scientists reading the more in-depth SciLogs.com blogs may well keep in touch with the latest science by reading nature.com’s editorial blogs. Regardless, each network has its own ways of promulgating science.
Building different networks also makes sense on a more technical perspective; different networks allow for better support and management of bloggers and readers.
And of course, four networks is equivalent to four times the fun!