Background
(page in progress)Do scientists even use blogs?
Yes! If you browse some of the pages linked from my del.icio.us meta science blogging tag, you'll see lots about this. If you want to be more systematic, look at two pretty recent surveys.
1) Chu, R.Y and Guo, S (2006). 2006 APS Industrial Membership Survey Final Report, September 12, 2006. College Park, MD: American Institute of Physics. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from here.Page 7: 5% of respondents network by writing or replying to blogs.
2) Mark Ware Consulting. (2008). Peer review in scholarly journals: Perspective of the scholarly community – an international study. Bristol, UK: Author. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from here.
Pages 8-9 (pdf pages 15-16): 13% read blogs regularly, 3% have a blog (the sample was authors who have published in peer-reviewed literature - includes social sciences and humanities). For respondents under age 36, 22% read blogs regularly and 7% have own blog
Why should I care?
What do we need to know?
How can we learn this?
How can we use this to help science or make the world a better place?
