Page 238 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese Edition of Journal of Library Science in China 2015 Vol.41 237

academic information seeking behavior in the context of microblogs so as to obtain longitudinal
research data, which would complement the results presented here.

Characteristics and inspirations of academic blog communication
1 ∗
Jingda DING & Xin XU

Academic blogs have become a rapid mode for scholarly communication. However, compared
with the traditional academic journal, blog has not been well recognized or understood. Therefore,
research of the characteristics of academic blog communication is helpful to effectively implement
quality control and management of academic blogs.
Using the world’s largest Chinese science community, blog.sciencenet.cn as the study sample,
the whole dataset from that community is collected in 2013, including 5 425 blogs, 64 880 blog
posts, 278 640 comments from 14 823 users, 389 783 recommendations from 9 020 users, and
38 856 010 visits. On the basis of descriptive statistics and K-S tests of each kind of sample
data, using SPSS software, the methods of Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman are chosen to test the
differences and analyze the correlations. Other methods are also applied, such as comparison with
traditional document communication, induction, inference and so on.
The following conclusions are obtained: First, the blogger’s academic status (or rank, such as
Associate Professor, Full Professor) has a significant impact on academic blog communication. The
higher the academic status of the bloggers, the more posts they make, and the greater the number
of communication exchanges with the blog (comments, references, and visits). The test also shows
significant impact differences between different academic statuses. Hence, it suggests that author
authority, such as professional title, could be used to judge and filter the mass academic blogs.
Second, academic blog communication presents significant discipline differences, which inspires
the design of some relevant indexes to measure and compare the influence of blogs of different
disciplines. One example is the blog comment indicator (BCI). Third, different types of academic
blog communication are correlated and conform to the power-law distribution, which indicates
that the academic blog community shows the phenomenon of“small world”and core bloggers
exist within it. Fourth, the academic blog displays interdisciplinary communication, exhibiting
wide cross-disciplinary exchange and diffusion. Consequently, the blog diffusion indexes (BDIs)
are proposed, which measure the extent of interdisciplinary academic blog communication. Fifth,
the academic blog community is also contextual (such as instant discussion, videos, pictures,
etc.) and collaborative in contrast with formal scholarly literature communication, which fosters
an environment of knowledge innovation. Finally, formal scholarly literature communication can
also supply and motivate the academic blog communication. For example, formal publications

* Correspondence should be addressed to Jingda DING, Email: djdhyn@126.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-4075-8604