{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "chem-bla-ics", "description": "Chemblaics (pronounced chem-bla-ics) is the science that uses open science and computers to solve problems in chemistry, biochemistry and related fields.", "home_page_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/", "feed_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2026/01/17/chemical-blogs-history.json", "icon": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/assets/images/chem-bla-ics_logo.png", "language": "en", "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286", "_orcid": "0000-0001-7542-0286" } ], "items": [ { "id": "https://doi.org/10.59350/v13h7-7av66", "url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2026/01/17/chemical-blogs-history.html", "title": "Chemical blogs history", "content_html": "

Like many awesome internet phenomena, blogging started in the late nineties.\nNature authors and\neditors recognized the effort early. In 2006 there were already\nmore than 45 million blogs, and at least 50 science blogs made it in the top 50,000 and\n5 in the top 3,500.

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I started blogging in 2005, around the time many others did, among which many chemists.\nin 2006 I started a website called Chemical blogspace\nusing the Postgenomic.com software. Chemical blogspace extracted which journal articles\nwere discussed (yeah, there is a causal relationship with altmetrics!),\nand I added recognition of chemicals,\nso that you could follow blog posts talking about a specific chemical.\nI visited Euan Adie and others in 2007.\nI had to sunset Chemical blogspace several years later, in a time where blogging seems to\nbe on its return, overtaken by microblogging platforms like Twitter (which died in 2022).

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We know now that it didn’t really go away, however. If we look at Rogue Scholar\nwe see there is plenty of activity, indeed.\nI am very interested in restarting something like Chemical blogspace, based on Rogue Scholar.\nThe nice things of Chemical blogspace was that it created a virtual community, and in\nthe end it aggregated and indexed more than 250 chemistry blogs. I would love to see\nmany of them archived on Rogue Scholar, but the blog authors have to\nrecommend their blog personally here.

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You can also just visit many of these blogs to relive the dynamics at the time:

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A lot has happened since then. There are new platforms.\nBlogger and Wordpress are still the bigger platform, but Hugo, Jekyll, and Quarto are modern, open source\nalternatives. Markdown may have helped\nwith the revival of blogging, making it easier than ever.

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What is your current favorite chemistry blog? Love to hear from you!

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References

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It’s good to blog. (2009). Nature, 457(7233), 1058–1058. https://doi.org/10.1038/4571058a CrossRef Scholia
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Schmidt, G. (2008). To blog or not to blog? Nature Geoscience, 1(4), 208–208. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo170 CrossRef Scholia
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The web as originally intended. (2005). Nature Cell Biology, 7(9), 845–845. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb0905-845b CrossRef Scholia
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Top five science blogs. (2006). Nature, 442(7098), 9–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/442009a CrossRef Scholia
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Welcome climate bloggers. (2004). Nature, 432(7020), 933–933. https://doi.org/10.1038/432933a CrossRef Scholia
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", "summary": "Like many awesome internet phenomena, blogging started in the late nineties. Nature authors and editors recognized the effort early. In 2006 there were already more than 45 million blogs, and at least 50 science blogs made it in the top 50,000 and 5 in the top 3,500.", "date_published": "2026-01-17T00:00:00+00:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-20T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": ["blog","nature"], "_references": [ { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/4571058a", "doi": "10.1038/4571058a" } , { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo170", "doi": "10.1038/ngeo170" } , { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb0905-845b", "doi": "10.1038/ncb0905-845b" } , { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/442009a", "doi": "10.1038/442009a" } , { "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/432933a", "doi": "10.1038/432933a" } ], "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286" } ] } ] }