There has been a lot of discussion over the merits of academics blogging (see here, here, here, here, here and here). The positive arguments seem to be that:

1. It’s good outreach, allowing a flexible platform for communication of science
2. Blogs allow rapid responses and reporting on research
3. Online profiles are important and blogs can be a strong foothold in internet-space
4. Writing for a non-technical audience is good practice for science communication

The negative arguments seem to be that:

1. It doesn’t count in academic terms (it’s not a paper, a grant, or a lecture)
2. Sometimes tenure panels might see blogging as a waste of time
3. There’s the danger of “upsetting” people.

Well I think it counts (even if my colleagues disagree), we don’t have tenure in the UK, and I don’t mind upsetting people, so there’s no good reason for me not to blog! I was letting it drop off a bit, but all this discussion has encouraged me to start up again. One of the problems is that I lacked a blogging strategy, which meant that I only shared what I (A) found interesting, and (B) found time to write about. Most of my problem was that I found interesting topics and spent too much time on too few, too niche issues. That’s going to change. Here’s the plan:

• I’m going to post lay summaries of each of my publications.  That’s 25 to start with, and I’ll add more as I go along. I see that as a vital part of science communication, and I’ll link them back to my publications page on my website.
• I have recently been immersing myself in Twitter which has led to my discovering a lot more interesting (and sometimes plain weird) papers and articles. This will be a key (near-bottomless) source for new ideas, but I’ll try to keep to a theme.
• The main topicsare going to be
  • General science things
  • Entomology news and views
  • Education and technology
  • Specific posts about my research
• Finally, I’m going to write in short form now – no more monthly long reads. 500 words max, and always with an image or video. It was the length and detail that was killing my productivity, and nobody reads those longreads, anyway!

I am hoping that that is going to provide a sustainable flow of content over the next few months, and I’ll reevaluate at Christmas.  Happy reading!

Image credit: Cortega9, CC-BY-SA 3.0, http://bit.ly/1oiVIwr