Welcome PLoGs

All this introducing new blogging networks is keeping me from writing about science. It has to end, I tell you, it has to end! (Either that, or I’m going to start ignoring you lot. Seriously.)

Hot on the heals of the Guardian newspaper science blogs is the announcement of an excellent science blog network at PLoS. (For non-biologists, PLoS = Public Library of Science, is an open-access publisher of a range of biology-related research journals.)

The in-jokes are abounding. They’re not blogs, they’re PLoGs. Jason Goldman thinks that PLoS blogs sciblings should be called PLoGsters. Sounds faintly criminal to me. (Others say plogger. I prefer PLoGster: plogging scans much too close to plodding, and these writers aren’t dull.)

The initial cast, as you might expect, is excellent.

Scientists who blog (with snippets nicked from their on-line bios*):

• GenomeBoy, who says his genome has been sequenced
• Gobbledygook – Martin Fenner, a medical doctor and cancer researcher
• Neuroanthropology from a two-person tag team
• Obesity Panacea from, erm, another two-person tag team. (Is there a theme here?)
• Take As Directed David Kroll, who may be better known as AbelPharmaboy to those who visited his previous digs (Terra Sigillata) at scienceblogs
• The Language of Bad Physics from Sarah Kavassalis

The scientists are matched with a cast of science journalists:

• Body Politic – Melinda Moyer, who has a long list of top magazine publications to her name
• NeuroTribes – Steve Silverman, who also writes at Wired
• Speakeasy Science from Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and a professor of journalism, Deborah Blum. (Also author of The Poisoner’s Handbook and other books.)
• The Gleaming Retort – John Rennie, former editor-in-chief of Scientific American
• Wonderland – Emily Anthes, ditto as for Moyer!

Not to leave out the older blogs at PLoS, now in their new setting: PLoS.org, everyONE and Speaking of Medicine.

They’re on twitter, too: tweet to @plosblogs or use the #plogs hashtag. Like scientopia, there is no advertising on their site. (I like the clean design of their site, too.)

Now I’m going to have to update my Other science blogs page again. But Razib Khan, who must have inside news, says there are more to come…

Footnotes

* Excuse my not naming everyone. This is a rush job: one-liners rule…

Other articles on Code for life:

Major newspaper opts for science blogging

Who blogs on what, and why

GoPubMed – PubMed browsing using ontologies

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Coiling bacterial DNA