Via Pedro and Bill, I learned about Jeremiah Faith’s attempts at Open Notebook Science. I will not dwell on that aspect, but rather something else that Jeremiah wrote about; advertising in science.
Scientists are poor marketers and whether you are in academia or industry, marketing takes effort and some skill. Not all scientists want to start a company, but they need recognition. Recognition from their peers and the scientific community at large. Historically, publications and a presence on the conference/lecture circuit are some of the main ways that scientists get themselves recognition. But what about the opportunities provided by the modern web? Jeremiah makes a strong case for Adwords, and the cost effectiveness of the adwords approach to science. Quite selfishly, I wish more scientists would do that. I have a feeling my Adsense revenue would go up significantly 
. Like Jean-Claude, I would suggest other approaches as well. After all, in the end it is about eyeballs. Unlike more mainstream blogging and other similar activities, scientific blogging is about attracting eyeballs from your user community, so using targeted advertising, which is likely to get picked up by the appropriate blogs and scientific outlets is a good start. Writing a good, compelling blog, which provides useful insight into your research is another. I would argue that for a young scientist it is an excellent idea to blog and actively participate in online conversations. As long as you can articulate your thoughts and ideas, you are going to be in good shape.
One of the problems I see today is the lack of a quality scientific ad exchange. As someone running Adsense, I wish that the ads being served were more relevant to my audience. They are not bad, but if they actually were along the lines that Jeremiah or Jean-Claude talk about, I suspect there would be even greater value. Advertising should serve a purpose. If you could find a cool paper or two, or a graduate program, or job positions, or some cool software developed by a company or an academic by clicking on an ad, it would be a win-win situation for the advertiser, the publisher and the consumer.
4 Comments
You said
“After all, in the end it is about eyeballs. Unlike more mainstream blogging and other similar activities, scientific blogging is about attracting eyeballs from your user community”
I don’t think this is completely true. Some science blogs are about attracting eyeballs, but these have to write to the lowest common denominator and consequently the level of scientific discourse will tend to be low.
Science blogs with detailed scientific analysis and raw data may have no subscribers and be of interest to only a few people (or machines) in the world. But if the information is accurate and new and if it is found by a Google search by those few people when they need it, I would consider these successful.
Science needs both.
You said
“After all, in the end it is about eyeballs. Unlike more mainstream blogging and other similar activities, scientific blogging is about attracting eyeballs from your user community”
I don't think this is completely true. Some science blogs are about attracting eyeballs, but these have to write to the lowest common denominator and consequently the level of scientific discourse will tend to be low.
Science blogs with detailed scientific analysis and raw data may have no subscribers and be of interest to only a few people (or machines) in the world. But if the information is accurate and new and if it is found by a Google search by those few people when they need it, I would consider these successful.
Science needs both.
Re-reading that part, I didn’t quite write it very well. All blogs are about attracting eyeballs to some extent. What I meant to write was that unlike mainstream blogs where eyeballs are for the lowest common denominator, in science blogs you ahve a very specific target audience. If you can reach that audience, then you are successful.
In the end you need to be good at driving search traffic to your blog. It might be just a few people, but even for those people, some of the same techniques that search engine marketers use for more mainstream blogs could be quite powerful.
Re-reading that part, I didn't quite write it very well. All blogs are about attracting eyeballs to some extent. What I meant to write was that unlike mainstream blogs where eyeballs are for the lowest common denominator, in science blogs you ahve a very specific target audience. If you can reach that audience, then you are successful.
In the end you need to be good at driving search traffic to your blog. It might be just a few people, but even for those people, some of the same techniques that search engine marketers use for more mainstream blogs could be quite powerful.