About
What is ScienceSeeker?
There are thousands of science blogs and news sites around the world, written by active scientists, journalists, professors, students, and interested laypeople. But until now, there hasn't been a good way for readers to sort through all of them. There are dozens of blog collectives, many sites that organize some of the information in the blogs, but none that attempt to encompass the entire range of science reporting, analysis, and discussion taking place at an astonishing pace, worldwide.
ScienceSeeker is a project of ScienceOnline designed to fill that void. We have collected over 1,200 blogs and other science news sources in one place, and invite you to submit even more. Our goal is to be the world's most comprehensive aggregator of science discussions, all organized by topic.
The project is open-source and community-developed. Anyone can use our code to create a similar site about any topic. The same code is now used to host Mathblogging.org. The open-source project is called SubjectSeeker and more information on the project can be found here.
What ScienceSeeker Does
This site is a work in progress. Sources are categorized according to a fixed list of topics. You can see lists of posts from those sources, but since many scientists have wide-ranging interests, some of the topics might not quite fit. You can see the specific topics a writer has chosen for her posts by clicking on the "…" bubble next to each post, and you can click on those topics to find other posts on the same topic. We have other ways of arranging posts as well: just the best posts, chosen by experts; posts about peer-reviewed research; popular posts on Twitter. Users can recommend posts and write notes explaining what they like about those posts.
You can search for posts, blogs, or other sources using keywords you specify, and you can create a custom feed to follow using a feedreader like Google Reader, or use the ScienceSeeker Widget to place that feed on your own site.
Readers can follow ScienceSeeker by visiting the site, subscribing to a custom feed, or following us on social media sites. We have four Twitter feeds (Editors' Picks, Recent Posts, ScienceSeeker Notes, and the official ScienceSeeker Twitter account). You can also Like our Facebook page, or follow our updates on Google+.
Our underwriters
The site you see today wouldn't exist without a generous grant from the National Association of Science Writers. We are grateful for their support.
How you can help build ScienceSeeker
In the future we want to build more interactivity with social networks. We want readers and bloggers to play a bigger role in the direction the site takes. We want the topics to be chosen by the writers themselves, and we want to chart the relationships between topics as they develop. And we want you to be involved, too—both in helping us decide what to do next, and helping us make those new ideas happen. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact us.
The ScienceSeeker Team
Development
Jessica Perry Hekman, DVM, MS is the Technical Director for ScienceSeeker. Jessica worked as a software engineer in online publishing for 12 years, helping transform print publications into digital versions. In 2007 she returned to school full time to earn her DVM and MS degrees, and got to see scientific publishing from the other side of the fence. She is currently working as a veterinary shelter medicine intern, and hopes to continue to find ways to integrate her two careers.
Gabriel Aponte is the lead developer for ScienceSeeker. Since joining our team in 2011, he has been responsible for the vast majority of code running the site, and has also contributed several key design elements. His involvement with ScienceSeeker is driven by his interest in science and projects to improve the representation of science on the web.
Dave Munger, Managing Editor of ScienceSeeker, is a writer living in Davidson, North Carolina. Dave was the co-founder and editor of Research Blogging. He has also been a columnist for SeedMagazine.com and written several college writing textbooks. For five years, Dave was the primary writer for the psychology blog Cognitive Daily, which was chosen three times to appear in the Open Laboratory, an annual anthology of the top science blog posts on the web. It has appeared on numerous top ten lists including ranking seventh on Nature's 50 popular science blogs list. Dave is also an avid runner who has completed four marathons and co-owns a race timing company, Davidson Timing. Contact Dave at dsmunger@gmail.com.
ScienceSeeker Associate Editor Jason G. Goldman is a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His research focuses on the evolution and architecture of the mind, and how early experiences affect innate knowledge systems. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, BBC Future, The Guardian, The Best Science Writing Online 2012, and elsewhere. He edited the 2010 edition of The Open Laboratory.
Julianne Chatelain is conducting usability reviews of the ScienceSeeker site. If you'd like to help us by providing targeted usability feedback, please send your contact details to knowx3 at gmail dot com. Julianne managed her first formal usability review in 1984, has contributed to textbooks in the field, and has presented case studies and techniques at conference series such as Usability Professionals Association, ACM Hypertext, and Digital Arts and Culture. Her most recent degree is a 2005 graduate diploma in Interactive Multimedia from the University of Technology, Sydney, and information about her consulting practice can be found at juliannechatelain.com.
Editors
Jordan Gaines is our Social Media Editor. She is responsible for updating our Facebook page and managing our Twitter accounts (@SciSeeker, @SciSeekEds, @SciSeekNotes, and @SciSeekFeed). Jordan is a science writer, journal reviewer, and Ph.D. candidate at Penn State College of Medicine, where she studies sleep (in humans!). She blogs at Gaines, on Brains which explores current neuroscience research, translated into lay terms. Her writing has been featured on Scientific American, Psychology Today, Brain Blogger, LabSpaces, and Scientopia. In her "free time," Jordan enjoys reading, rowing, playing clarinet, and volunteering at her local Humane Society. Follow on Twitter @GainesOnBrains.
Cristy Gelling is a postdoctoral cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh working on the human genetic disease alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency using her favorite domesticated organism, bakers' yeast. She writes articles for Bitesize Bio that she hopes are useful for other lab rats, she blogs about science and her last days in the lab at The Blobologist, and when she's feeling motivated she harasses her friends in Pittsburgh into writing about science at Steel City Science. She's either from Australia or from New Zealand, depending on who's asking the question. She selects the top posts on biology, chemistry, and academic life.
Mark Hahnel is the founder of figshare. He recently got his PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College London, having previously studied genetics in both Newcastle and Leeds. He is genuinely passionate about open science and the potential it has to revolutionise the research community.
Peter Krautzberger studied mathematics in Munich and Berlin and recently spent two years at the University of Michigan as a DFG postdoctoral fellow. He founded mathblogging.org, the math copy-cat of scienceblogging.org, as well boolesrings.org, a network of academic homepages using wordpress. He picks the best posts in the field of mathematics.
Raphael Ndem is our Photo Editor, and manages our Google+ page, which you can access via plus.scienceseeker.org. Raphael is a tech enthusiast who appreciates the wonders of computers & gadgets. Completing a BSc and MSc in Biomedical Science at a young age furthered his interests in the field of biology, and degree projects involved the use of bioinformatics tools for predicting the secondary structures, and trans-membrane regions of proteins, which allowed him to apply his passion for technology in biomedicine. When not managing the audio or lighting for amatuer theatre productions, he regularly shares ideas and posts related to his interests on Google+.
Andrew Watt is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne where he is investigating diagnostic measures for Alzheimer's disease, and a few other neurodegenerative conditions. He has a background in genetics and psychology and has even dabbled in documentary film-making, although that was quite some time ago now. For many years Andrew has had a, some would say unhealthy, fascination with the human brain. And in an effort to share his fascination he created A Hippo on Campus, a blog where he investigates contemporary research from the fields of neuropsychology, neurobiology, and beyond. He makes his editor's picks in medicine, neuroscience, and psychology.
Allie Wilkinson is a freelance science writer and multimedia specialist with a background in environmental studies and conservation biology. She also founded This Is What A Scientist Looks Like, an ongoing community photo project to challenge the stereotypical perception of a scientist. You can follow her on her blog Oh, For the Love of Science! and Twitter. Allie will be making her editor's picks on biology, conservation, ecology, environmental sciences, evolution, marine biology, and geosciences.
Contributors
Past Editors
- Matthew Francis: Astronomy and Physics, 2012.
- Sarah Chow: Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Ecology / Conservation, Health, Medicine, and Philosophy, 2012
