Scholarly blogs: an analysis of infrastructural aspects based on German scholarly blogs
Catharina Ochsner, Heinz Pampel, Jonas Höfting, Laura Rothfritz
Abstract
Purpose Scholarly blogs serve as a medium for sharing scholarly output both inside and outside of academia. However, questions arise concerning the assurance of the long-term accessibility of scholarly blogs and their contents. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the scholarly blogging landscape in Germany and examine how scholarly blogs are integrated into digital research and information infrastructures. Design/methodology/approach Following a review of the literature, in this paper, we map the landscape of scholarly blogs in Germany. Therefore we (1) collected a sample of 866 German scholarly blogs, (2) developed analysis criteria and (3) collected data of each blog according to the analysis criteria. We present and discuss our data analysis in turn. Findings Our findings confirm the lack of integration of scholarly blogs into existing digital research and information infrastructure but also uncover efforts that facilitate and build research and information infrastructure around scholarly blogging. We recommend stakeholders with the potential to further facilitate the long-term accessibility and preservation of scholarly blogs. Originality/value Our study presents novel, original and large-scale findings on German scholarly blogs and their integration into digital research and information infrastructures that are relevant to information professionals and blogging scholars.