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This is an annotated list of weblogs I have found that are used by researchers and academics as a part of their research practice. I'm gathering these links to find out more about how blogs are used in academia and research. If you know of any research blogs I haven't listed please let me know about them. If you're in the list and disagree with the way I've described you write and tell me why, and I'll probably change it. I would like the annotations to explain what kind of research each blogger does and how the weblog is used in that research. Torill Mortensen and I have written a paper on blogs in research together, Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool (February 2002, PDF). These kinds of weblogs are also called knowlegde logs, or k-logs or klogs. There's a mailing list about this called k-logs. A weblog about weblogginghttp://www.royby.com/research/weblog.php Roy Hornsby is doing honours research about weblogging, and keeps this blog to help in the process. He writes in email 10/2/03: I began this blog as a presentation project for "Communication and Cyber Theory" at Griffith University, Gold Coast and I intend to maintain it as a research blog for my honours project. The scope and aim of this project keeps changing in my head over this summer break but basically, the crux of it is that I am interested in better understanding the philosophical underpinnings that surround cyberculture with particular reference to the phenomenon that is weblogging. I majored in CyberStudies and Philosophy in my undergrad. I find that weblogging is an easy way to keep my references in some sort of order, something that I am hoping will hold me in good stead over the coming two semesters. Additionally, I have made a point of teaching myself a bit of PHP and mySQL this summer and am benefiting from the easy storage and retrieval capabilities inherent. I have also installed a PHP based bookmarking system and image gallery on this site. Last year I taught "Digital Production Methods", a digital animation course and "Creating Interactivity", a creative writing/hypertext course at Griffith Uni. Added to list: 10 Feb 2003 09:15 Honours in Politics/Historyhttp://junket.iinet.net.au/honours/ A group of Australian honours students doing research in Politics and/or History share a group weblog discussing their projects and the general joys and woes of beginning to do research. Added to list: 10 Feb 2003 09:21 N=1: Population of onehttp://dagwood.dgrc.crc.ca/~sylvie/weblog/myblog.html Sylvie Noel is a Canadan HCI scientist (HCI stands for Human Computer Interface), and she writes: I am using this blog as a diary of my research activities. My secondary goal is to show people what scientists do in their daily routine. (email 22/1/03) Added to list: 10 Feb 2003 09:25 Invisible ShoeboxMeredith Badger is doing her Masters by project at RMIT in Melbourne, looking at blogs, narrative voice and how this voice is affected (in both good and bad ways) by the medium. She writes, "I'm with the department of Animation and Interactive media so I have an interest in using the blog as a "scrapbook" for stories and animation ideas I might have." Her blog includes several great cartoon dialogues between "Grumpygirl" and a questioning ant, discussing the nature of blogs. Recently the ant, who has funding to write a Master's thesis on "why humans blog", has been permitted to blog in its own sidebar to the main blog. Added to list: 23 Aug 2002 10:20 CS-ED communityCS-ED stands for Computer Science Education, and this is a site that is attempting to build a network of computer science education researchers, using blogs, "in an attempt to begin building a virtual community of researchers writing about their research process and progress", writes Matt Jadud in an email 14/1/03. They've just started up and will be pitching it in particular to doctoral students at the ACM Computer Science Education conference (SIGSCE) this month. Added to list: 10 Feb 2003 09:18 Internet Time BlogResearch notes arranged by theme, by Jay Cross, who's into "harnessing technology" for adult learning. Mixture of comments on other's writing, links to relevant sites and comments of his own writing. He's just finishing a book on e-learning that will be out in October. Added to list: 4 Jun 2002 13:38 Det perfekte tomrumhttp://www.gustavholmberg.com/tomrum/ "Perfect absence" might be a translation of this Swedish blog's title. It's written by Gustav Homberg, who's a historian of science and ideas. He writes "Jag är en idé- och vetenskapshistoriker. Mina intressen rör naturvetenskapernas historia (speciellt astronomi och fysik ur ett praktikperspektiv), medicinhistoria, teknikhistoria, forskningspolitik." Added to list: 11 Sep 2002 10:50 Knowlegde Eldoradohttp://www.jainnet.com/knowledgeeldorado/ A weblog about "Collaboration, Groupware, Communities, Peer-to-Peer, Grids, Clusters, Knowledge Management" by Veer Chand Bothra. Not sure if this is a "research blog", to be honest. I'm already having trouble with my own category here... But it's interesting and is certainly very relevant to the concept of research blogs. Veer Bothra is also the creator of Blogstreet, a site which maps blogs in "neighbourhoods". Added to list: 15 Jun 2002 22:37 Seb's Open Researchhttp://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/ "Pointers and thoughts on the evolution of scholarly communication, collected by Sébastien Paquet." Seb also has links to several research diaries and blogs. Added to list: 23 Aug 2002 10:51 Lessig Bloghttp://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/ Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford (you know, cyberlaw, open source, copyright and all that stuff, he's famous), started blogging this month. So far, his blog is a way for him to take place in discussions. Added to list: 23 Aug 2002 10:57 Narrative Technologieshttp://www.imaginaryyear.com/Book2/narratech.html Jeremy P. Bushnell writes a serialised web story called Imaginary Year. This weblog supplements the story, and "focuses on storytelling forms, communications technology, electronic writing, interface and experience design, media ecology, hypertext, literary theory, and narrative strategies for the information age." Interesting reading the thoughts about a fiction at the same time as reading it, which of course here is also at the same time as it's being written. Added to list: 23 Aug 2002 10:42 a weblog on km & e-learningI hesitate to include this because it's not not exactly a blog written by a researcher or researchers researching a topic. Or is it? It's part of a site dedicated to knowledge management and e-learning, and this blog tracks new in the field. And Jesper Hundebøl, who writes it, asked to be included in this list, so I guess he thinks of it as a research blog. In which case it probably is. The topic is very relevant to anyone interested in research blogs, anyway. Added to list: 23 Aug 2002 10:38 The Future Dr Karlsbjerghttp://www.karlsbjerg.net/blog/ Jan Karlsbjerg is a Danish PhD student working on The field in which I'm doing my PhD is called "information systems" which is sometimes considered a sub-field of computer science and sometimes considered a sub-field of management. In my case it's a subfield of computer science (since that's my background, I have an M.Sc. in computer engineering). The topic of my PhD is "information infrastructures". .His blog includes lots of personal chatty posts, but also has a to do list of academic tasks, such as "review article" and "write abstract", and links to his academic work. I don't have a blog because I'm a PhD student, but because I'm a techie. I do think some of my entries are relevant for my research, but it's a sort of peripheral relevance. I.e. I'll see an example of something that is related to my work in general, and I'll use the blog to make a note of it for myself, primarily, but also for others to see. Almost all of my research writing, processing, thinking, etc. I do offline, in a diary-like text on my laptop or in emails to my supervisor and colleagues. Like you wrote somewhere (I even quoted it in my own weblog, I think): When something is finished, it is no longer "promising". I think of posts on my blog as finished, because they are published in an open forum. This is different from sending an email to my supervisor or colleagues with my opinion or reasoning on something, because the Internet has a great deal of immediacy and permanency to it. Added to list: 28 May 2002 18:23 MarkBernstein.orgMark Bernstein is the Chief Scientist of Eastgate, a hypertext and weblog theorist and the developer of the weblog tool Tinderbox, among other things. In his blog he participates in discussions and exchanges with other researchers, critics, thinkers and developers, sketches ideas, refers to news in the field and reports on the progress of development projects. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 Mark CraneMark Crane is working on a PhD, and uses two blogs for bookmarking sites and storing quotes. Focus is on the intersection between technology and literacies. Markzilla has more writing in addition to the links. Added to list: 26 Jun 2002 14:49 Greg Restall: ConsequentlyGreg Restall is a philosopher just moving from Sydney to Melbourne next week. In Melbourne he'll be working as an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Melbourne. His site is a mixture of a home page and a blog, where blog forms a slim column on the page. When I had a look today the blog section had a fair bit of personal notes (mostly about moving) but also a post about a book he'd read with a short comment. His research interests include logic; truth and ontology; God, infinity and paradox. Consequently.org was brought to my attention by Rory Ewins, who particularly recommends Restall's series on Great Moments in Logic. Looking at those archives, the bloggishness of the site comes completely to the fore - this hybrid blog/home page is quite nice, really. Added to list: 21 Jun 2002 10:39 Off the Desktophttp://converge.cti.dtu.dk/news/ Michael Rose's "weblog for news and discussion related to information appliances and convergence and anything else I find interesting." Rose is a researcher at the Centre for Tele-Information in Denmark who works with user interface and information access aspects of networked digital appliances and on multimedia authoring Added to list: 20 Jun 2002 10:38 Breathtaking Advances in CFDhttp://manila.mems.rice.edu/developer/ Marek Behr blogs his research in Computational Fluid Dynamics. I can't really understand most of his posts (which is OK since I'm not supposed to be an expert on that) but there are regular posts, clearly often discussing problems run into, and often with images and tables as clarifications. Uses archives a lot, connecting new posts with links to previous attempts and so on. "Our blog is right now mostly useful to my research group and few collaborators, rather than being a widely-read "community" blog, although I hope that this would change some day." Added to list: 14 Jun 2002 16:57 Educators using Manila blogshttp://www.teachnology.org:81/teachnology/discuss/msgReader$98 List with descriptions of how they use them. See also this list of weblogs used in courses. Which is obviously related to research blogs but this list is more specifically about blogs that are used as part of a research process. Added to list: 14 Jun 2002 16:54 The great war, experience and writinghttp://www.whatalovelywar.co.uk/war/ Esther MacCallum-Stewart is writing a thesis on The Great War and Popular Culture. She uses her blog to gather links to resources, to discuss books she's reading (often in a series of posts written during the reading rather than as a review or commentary written after the fact) and to gather thoughts and information about thesis-writing itself. She has another, more personal blog called Ten Seconds to Midnight, with Jude, and a sci fi blog, since she also teaches sci fi. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 philosophical investigationsBilled thusly: Christopher Robinson & Joseph Duemer read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Joseph Duemer also has an individual blog. Added to list: 4 Jun 2002 13:31 bookismJoseph Duemer is a poet and literary scholar who calls his blog his "reading journal" in the link from his main website. Added to list: 4 Jun 2002 13:30 AKMAhttp://www.seabury.edu/faculty/akma/blog.html The Rev. A. K. M. Adam is an associate professor of New Testament at the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. His professional work is on postmodern theology, but in his blog he uses his interpretative skills to discuss the web and weblogs. Sometimes refers to his teaching and his academic work. Added to list: 4 Jun 2002 11:30 vloghttp://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog Adrian Miles is a hypertext theorist and interactive desktop video artist who writes about technical and artistic challenges in making his Vogs, pedagogy, hypertext theory, writing and blogging. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 SquishKatherine Parrish is involved in research on weblogs in education, on MOOs, and on randomly generated poetry. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:27 Bloggertydochttp://web.mit.edu/elins/www/tinderblog/ Elin Sjursen has just finished her MA at MIT, and writes about digital poetics, games and digital culture. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:52 sixth editionhttp://6thedition.blogspot.com/ http://6thedition.blogspot.com/ Added to list: 3 Jun 2002 12:01 This Public Addresshttp://www.visibledarkness.com/blog/ Jeff Ward is unspecific about his academic field and/or position and any research-for-work he may do. His blog is obviously influenced by an extended knowledge of rhetoric and Renaissance and Romantic literature. He uses this in discussions of blogs, links and the web, also using theoreticians like Bourdieu. Similar feel to Tom Matrullo. Added to list: 28 May 2002 23:13 Ludology.orgGonzalo Frasca is a video games theorist and developer. He frequently posts ideas, often series of ideas, that are later developed into short essays. His blog also functions as the hub of a community, offering infomation about conferences and other useful news to the still new but rapidly growing academic discipline of game studies. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:53 Gender and ComputingHilde Corneliussen is working on a PhD on gender issues in computing but her blog has turned out to be mostly about gender issues in society in general. She rarely refers to her research directly, but her research interests are apparent in the way she discusses current events. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:50 fragment.nlFrank Schaap is an ethnographist working on gender representation online, and his blog deals with this topic fairly specifically. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:50 Klastrup's Cataclysmshttp://www.it-c.dk/people/klastrup/ Lisbeth Klastrup is working on a PhD on virtual worlds, and she uses her blog to note papers and ideas she comes across, to participate in discussions and to suggest ideas. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 texturlhttp://cif.rochester.edu/~barr/texturl/ Brandon Barr is working on a PhD but this is not discussed much in his blog, at least not directly. His posts have for instance referred to papers he has written, relating them to a currently ongoing discussion, or they suggest ideas which are extended in further posts. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:45 PetermePeter Merholz is an information architect who develops and thinks about self-adapting systems and community management. He often discusses books and essays he has read or conference presentations he has heard. His blog has comments and there are often discussions among his readers in the comments. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:27 jill/txtJill Walker is writing a PhD on digital narrative and is also a blog and hypertext theorist. She's also me, so I'll just start writing I, OK? I started blogging to keep notes and keep track of stuff I found on the web, and to make myself formulate opinions and voicing them in public. I now use my blog to catch and try out ideas. Writing my dissertation I now find that I often use blogposts to build a chapter, and that a lot of my blogging is directly moved into my dissertation, and edited there. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 thinking with my fingersTorill Mortensen is a games, MUDs, blogs and media researcher who is finishing a PhD. Her blog is used to test ideas, participate in discussions, discuss the writing process and the experience of writing a dissertation and of writing a blog. Posts daily, often several times daily. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 SurfTrailhttp://www.media.uio.no/personer/andersf/blog/ Anders Fagerjord is working on a PhD on the web, hypertext and convergence at the University of Oslo, and uses his blog to make notes of his thoughts as he surfs. Posts a few times a week. Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:26 OverstatedCameron Marlow is the developer of Blogdex, and sometimes discusses his research in his personal blog Added to list: 25 May 2002 21:27 This is an annotated list of weblogs I have found that are used by researchers and academics as a part of their research practice. I'm gathering these links to find out more about how blogs are used in academia and research. If you know of any research blogs I haven't listed please let me know about them. If you're in the list and disagree with the way I've described you write and tell me why, and I'll probably change it. I would like the annotations to explain what kind of research each blogger does and how the weblog is used in that research. Torill Mortensen and I have written a paper on blogs in research together, Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool (February 2002, PDF). These kinds of weblogs are also called knowlegde logs, or k-logs or klogs. There's a mailing list about this called k-logs. |