Science media company Seed Media Group (SMG), US, has launched a new technology that will help scientists make use of the explosion of discussions in the blogosphere surrounding published peer-reviewed science. The discussions are currently scattered across the web and are difficult to find, navigate and track. As a result, potentially valuable scientific information is virtually invisible to other scientists.
The new technology from SMG seeks to address this problem by providing scientists with tools to clearly label and tag blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Labeled posts are then aggregated, indexed, displayed and disseminated, effectively making blogging more functional to the advancement of science.
SMG's technology powers ResearchBlogging.org, a site created by ScienceBlogs blogger Dave Munger in collaboration with leading members of the scientific blogging community. An earlier version of the site was launched in January 2008, and 400 bloggers have registered with ResearchBlogging to date and are making use of the new tools. The latest version of the site, developed by SMG, has an array of new features, including multiple language support, topic-specific RSS feeds and customised user homepages.
Seed Media's portfolio spans magazines, online and social media. It formed ScienceBlogs in an alliance with German magazine publisher Hubert Burda Media in September 2007. ScienceBlogs is projected as the largest online science community.
