Posts on peer-reviewed research

Writing about peer reviewed research is something most reputable scientific bloggers engage in at some time or another. I feel it may be a good way to make rather technical scientific results more palatable to the interested layman, and put more of these results in the public domain.

Other advantages may be to bring more papers to the attention of over-worked colleagues, and provide the blogger with a platform to more or less systematically analyze and summarize the papers he or she is reading.

There is an interesting discussion on this subject at Cognitive Daily. The suggestion is to create a logo or badge that would signify "This post is about peer reviewed research", and also to set up a web-site which references all such peer-review posts. The objectives of this movement seem to be:

1. to create a consistent way to alert readers about the peer-reviewed nature of the subject being covered in the post they are reading;
2. to bring together in a single site references to all these posts;
3. give bloggers kudos for their commitment to high quality science posts.

Personally, I think a peer-reviewed research label is an excellent idea, and would be more than willing (time permitting of course) to write peer-review posts. Writing succinctly and clearly about other people's research will in any case be excellent practice for writing succinctly and clearly about my own!

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