Some 13 years in the past, I speculated concerning the longevity of the kind of science communication then (and nonetheless now) represented by Blogs. I famous one new mission known as ArchivePress that was trying into offering options equal to what scientific journals have performed for some 350 years of science communication. The hyperlink to ArchivePress now not works, however particulars of the mission can nonetheless be discovered right here. Since then the know-how and infrastructure has moved on, with a brand new spine offered by way of persistent identifiers (PIDs) within the type of DOIs. The PID ecosystem is now intensive and so a revival of the idea has not too long ago been launched known as The Rogue Scholar. Right here I check out a few of is options and illustrate these with utility to this weblog.

To cite its goals “The Rogue Scholar improves your science weblog in necessary methods, together with full-text search, long-term archiving, DOIs and metadata”. Lets take these 4 methods and examine them with how scientific journals operate.

1. Full textual content search. The normal journal is full-text listed by its writer, however after all there are numerous science publishers on the market they usually deal with indexing solely their very own journals. There are an estimated 30,000+ science journals, lined by business abstracting companies comparable to SciFinder. A search engine that aggregates full textual content searches throughout (most?) journals is Google after all. Sort a full textual content search string, enclosing it in quotes to get a literal search of the whole string,^‡ and you might be fairly more likely to discover the journal article. Do that for your self and report again if it doesn’t work. When you attempt scholar.google.com as a substitute, it won’t work (even utilizing the Superior search/Precise phrase constraint). Strive then some textual content from a weblog^† and once more with scholar.google.com it won’t work however with Google it does (I’ve not tried different engines like google).
   • • Now attempt eg the weblog search utilizing RogueScholar and also you get the profitable outcome proven beneath.
       
     • Full “superior mode” looking is after all second nature to chemists, who apply quite a lot of fielded or constrained searches are a part of their common routine (together with eg chemical substructure looking), however you usually want specialist abstracting and indexing companies comparable to Scifinder for this. However RogueScholar will supply constrained searches I perceive at some stage, primarily based on “metadata” and so I’ll take this matter subsequent.
2. MetaData and DOIs. When a journal article is revealed, a part of the method is to collect metadata concerning the article and submit it to a metadata aggregating company comparable to CrossRef. In change, the latter supply a DOI which features as a novel and protracted identifier for that article. The metadata phrases can be utilized in a constrained search with CrossRef, and with DataCite for FAIR information. RogueScholar does precisely the identical, it gathers metadata from a registered weblog put up, together with ORCID identifiers related to the put up, registers it and allows looking. Strive e.g. 0000-0003-3315-3524 as a search time period and see what you get. This additionally works for DOIs (attempt 10.59350/65c45-3ew97 as a search time period). So right here too, we will see parity rising with standard journal publishing.
3. The ultimate element is long-term archiving. Once more journals have been doing this for a very long time (on paper) and within the final 30 years or so in digital type. Blogs have till now lacked this and right here once more RogueScholar is promising such long run archiving in its subsequent iteration.
   • This really raises one attention-grabbing, albeit troublesome, facet of blogs – one nonetheless that will in truth be considerably distinctive to this specific weblog. The subject of my very first put up right here again in 2008 was how interactive 3D molecular fashions might be included within the put up itself to assist the reader discover the chemical factors I used to be attempting to make. Again then I regarded it as one thing that would not be so simply performed as a part of journal articles[1] (though you do see it these days), however that characteristic definitely presents a problem to long run archival! I don’t see an answer for this one on the horizon.

Rogue Scholar remains to be a really younger service, and little question will evolve quickly from this level, so I’ll revisit in say six months time to see the way it has come alongside. In the meantime, attempt it out and see what you suppose. And since science blogs can now be assigned a DOI on the identical stage as journal articles, they can also be part of the so-called universe of “Data or PID graphs“[2].

^‡ For instance “In 2022, bicyclo[3.1.1]heptanes had been proposed to imitate the fragment of meta-substituted benzenes in biologically lively compounds”
^† “The schematic illustration of a chemical response mechanism is commonly drawn utilizing a palette of arrows connecting or annotating the varied molecular constructions concerned. These might be chosen from a chemical arrows palette, taken for this objective from the generally used construction drawing program Chemdraw.”

This put up has DOI: 10.59350/8m2d8-47b52