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Publishing tidal wave

Friday, 18 May 2007

The tide is slowly turning in the mainstream media vs blogging debate. The trend is not unlike that which other industry sectors like music and journalism have experienced in the recent past. As blogging has shifted from the realm of quirky early adopters to a mainstream social networking force, the powers that be have also had to adapt their perspectives on the phenomena. This often results in a full circle shift from overt disapproval (it has no credibility, it is all about copyright infringement, it will pass, etc) to warm embrace. The story of a blog post about a scientific paper on how alcohol augments the antioxidant properties of fruit is a great illustration of this trend.

Here is how it played out:

Shelley Batts, Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, read an article in the BBC about how "Alchohol makes fruit healthier" and decided to look into the science a bit further
She published a blog post on science blog site Retrospectacle. Shelley generally found that the headlines were representitive of the science and wrote about it. In her post she included two charts that were included in the press releases advertising the original paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture entitled "Natural volatile treatments increase free-radical scavenging capacity of strawberries and blackberries".
When the publisher of the journal, John Wiley & Sons, found out they threatened legal action against Shelley unless she removed the charts from the post. Shelley advertised this threat on her post and was advised by comment feedback to reproduce the results in her own graphs as this "clearly falls under fair use". In Shelley's words: "At the suggestions of commenters, I have reproduced the data charts and graph in Excel. While not as pretty, you'll get the point much better than nothing at all. And I'm not stepping on any legal toes."
Perceiving her use of the graphs as fair use, the blog community rebelled against John Wiley with spectacular and swift vigor. Loosely organised around posts on Retrospectacle, academic bloggers piled on here, here, here and plenty more here and here.
WC Fields once said "If you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool". The publisher took these words to heart and retreated in the face of the blogging tidal wave from the copyright infringement stance.
And in the words of that great sporting motivator Vince Lombardi: "Once you learn to quit it becomes a habit" and so it appears the tide is turning ...
Or maybe not. In the words of one academic commentator: "This situation makes the scientific blogosphere look like it is willing to rant and emote before all the factors are considered. In short to behave like the political blogosphere, intoxicated by delusions of power and grandeur. Can we not do better?"