Share your Journey

This is reposted from the Southern Fried Science Network’s newest project – Journeys.

Science begins in the field. Every year a vast migration occurs as biologist, ecologists, chemists, geologists, social scientists, anthropologists, physicists, oceanographers, and others leave the safe comfort or their laboratories and venture out into the field. They travel by foot, bike, boat, car, and plane searching for simultaneously the most abundant and most elusive prey – data. Some will return to the same foraging ground year after year, some will explore new worlds, never to return. For the veterans, who have participated in this great migration for decades, this is just another chapter in a long a storied career. For the young, who have just begun their training, this is a new adventure, one fraught with frustration, peril, perseverance, and discovery. These are their Journeys.

Journeys is a group blog written by scientists and other researchers in the field. Each writer has a Journal where they post updates, stories, discoveries, and observations in the course of conducting fieldwork. All scientists – from undergraduate to senior faculty and industry and independent researchers – are invited to share their Journey.

How is this different from the hundreds of expedition blogs already out there?

Every year dozens, if not hundreds, of expedition blogs appear on the internet. The blogs exist for the duration of a research campaign, and then fade into obscurity. While both Journeys and expedition blogs share the same goal – sharing the experience of fieldwork with the public – expedition blogs suffer from several inherent handicaps.

• Short Duration – it can take a year or more for even a really good blog to build up a solid and consistent readership. Expedition blogs rarely persist for more than a few months before they go silent. This prevents expedition blogs from reaching the largest audience possible. By collecting expedition blogs into a single place, with persistent posting, Journeys ensures that your story reaches the largest possible audience.
• Narrow Focus – Expedition blogs are usually centered on a single research goal. Their focus is narrow, making it difficult for readers not looking for that specific topic to find the blog. By allying with many different expedition blogs across a host of fields and topics, Journeys ensures that your story reaches the broadest possible audience.
• Lack of Networking – The Southern Fried Science Network is the largest network of (mostly) Marine Science Blogs on the internet. This provides for potentially enormous reach across the science blogging community. Expedition blogs shouldn’t have to deal with the social media aspect of blogging – you’re in the field, after all. Journeys provides that support through a network of active, experienced, and passionate science bloggers.

With Journeys we hope to bypass those challenges and integrate each expedition blog into the larger adventure of science in the field.

You can follow Journeys by subscribing to our RSS feed, following @The_Gam on twitter, checking here, or checking in with any of the blogs on the Southern Fried Science Network.

If you want to write for Journeys, please follow the instructions on this page.

~Andrew Thaler