What is your (science) blogging writing style, Maxine Clarke?

I met Maxine online first when she commented my post on the The problem of online “supporting information” in peer-review articles and then interviewed her on Nature policies concerning the same problem. Then I met Maxine offline in London and learnt a lot on how every issue of Nature is born and other insights I hope I can share with my readers here later. The following is Maxine’s answer to my stylish question and I would also like to offer her culture rich personal bookblog, Petrona.

My professional blogs (Nautilus, Peer to Peer and From the Blogosphere) are addressed to a particular group of people: scientists who read, review and publish, or would like to publish, in our journals. Therefore, the style I try to achieve is helpful, informative and stimulating, yet not didactic or dull. I aim to highlight the benefits of publishing at Nature Publishing Group and provide assistance to those wishing to do so, in a way that is not too directly promotional, but which is constructive to authors and interesting to them and other readers, as well as encouraging their feedback. Therefore I write about news concerning journal policies and format, as well as announcements of new journals, projects, conferences and online tools of interest to authors and reviewers. I also highlight when journal content is free for some reason, because this means that the authors of those articles are achieving greater “reach” for their articles (as well as making it possible for more people to read them, by my announcement). I also highlight news from the wider world of science communication, for example about quality indicators (citations tools and impact factors, for example), ethics, peer-review and so on, in the hope of stimulating community discussion of these issues, as this can help us decide on our journals’ evolution. Finally, I blog to provide an approachable forum for potential authors to ask questions about our publication policies, and to have them answered quickly in a way that can also benefit others, as they can see the responses.

Next blogterviewee is the number one scientific aging blogger, Chris Patil of Ouroboros.

Earlier:

Deepak Singh

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