Original OpenSciLogs artwork by Lindsay Cade, @CadeParade on Twitter.
Guest blog post by Paige Brown, SciLogs.com blogging manager and Ph.D. student in the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University.
The SciLogs blogging network is committed to transparent science storytelling that provides us with new knowledge about the world and ourselves. Today, we’re introducing a new experimental concept to SciLogs – OpenSciLogs, or “open notebook” science blogging that lives beyond the individual blog and the individual blogger.
As we write this, science blogs and other new digital and social media platforms for science writing are exploding while in-depth traditional media coverage of science, especially investigative science journalism, suffers. Unfortunately, many science bloggers and science writers for new digital media outlets go unpaid or underpaid. How can we support high quality science reporting “from the ground up,” in a way that prompts scientists and science writers in digital and social media environments – including the science blogosphere – to participate collectively in creating more in-depth science journalism across the web?
With OpenSciLogs, SciLogs.com blogging manager Paige Brown (@FromTheLabBench) and the SciLogs’ blogging community are taking a stab at answering this question. Each month (or so), an OpenSciLogs story project, led by a selected SciLogs.com blogger, will be introduced here and on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. If and once funded, the selected blogger will lead his or her OpenSciLogs story project with open participation from other science writers and readers, with regular blog updates, social media conversations, and most importantly a public and editable Google Doc. Each story project will be a living, breathing investigation into an important topic in science or science communication, published under a Creative Commons license.