23 Research Things - Thing 1 - Blogging

Blogging is not something that comes to me naturally. Ask me to share a link on twitter or facebook and comment on it and I am ready to do that in a heart-beat. I believe that researchers have a lot to offer when it comes to blogging. It was a bit of a challenge for a non-tech-savvy person like me to firstly find a blogging platform that suited my needs! And now here it is...

When encouraging a researcher to start blogging, the first thing I would encourage them to do is to 'follow' existing bloggers. The main reason for this is for them to see it as a means of informal networking opportunities. The other benefit of blogging for researchers is to have an idea and information exchange opportunity from people with similar research interests around the world! Once researchers set up a regular pattern to read blogs of their particular interests, it may encourage them to either contribute or set up a blog for themselves where they can explore personal and professional growth.

Some of the blogs that I follow have often shown interesting articles about the experiences of a PhD student, experiences and lessons learnt from research processes, informative blogs on publishing, copyright and open access. These blogs enable me to broaden my knowledge in the process of researching and publishing.

A couple of the the blogs that I follow are:

• the thesis whisperer
• scholarly kitchen