1.
OpenSciLogs
Crowd-funding Participatory,
Open Notebook Science
Reporting
Paige Brown & Pratiti Diddi
Manship 7999

2.
Concepts
• Wiki Journalism
• Spreadability
• Changing Traditional Media Business
Model – Crowd Funding
• Open Notebook Science

3.
Design Brief for OpenSciLogs
Target Audience: Readers generally engaged with
science; other science bloggers and journalists
Tone: Open to new ideas and directions, transparent,
participatory
Platforms: SciLogs.com blog posts for updates and final
story; Google doc or other document file sharing for raw
materials, notes, references, links etc.; Social media for
audience engagement
Content: In-depth, critical analysis of a science or science
communication issue or topic that deserves more attention,
that readers express an interest in, etc.
Conversation: The goal is to spark conversation and
participation in the ongoing story, not to keep materials,
quotes, or story ideas close for fear of „scooping.‟

4.
Specific Design Concepts &
Rules
1. Crowd-funding of in-depth “open notebook” science reporting
“story project” by one SciLogs blogger every 30 days.
2. Selected blogger, once funded, begins the reporting phase. For
each story project, the funded blogger provides all raw data, notes,
source information and source contact information (if permission
granted from source) in a public Google Doc (or similar public
document sharing tool), on an ongoing basis.
3. For each story project, the selected blogger is strongly encouraged
to have another blogger, journalist or editor fact-check (for a share
of the funding or authorship.)
4. For the duration of each story project, the lead blogger posts
weekly short blog updates.
5. Anyone can contribute story ideas, story content and/or multimedia
to each OpenSciLogs story project, and are encouraged to claim
partial authorship.

5.
Inspiration for
OpenSciLogs
And inspiration from
MC 7999 of course!
Special Topics:
Future of Digital Media
Spring 2014
Dr. Lance Porter
Word Doc Track Changes

6.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-evolution-of-popular-
science/x/7060786#home
And feel
free to help
us out 

7.
Success?
We‟ve had several people contribute to our first
#OpenSciLogs story Google Doc: ow.ly/w8Pqo (students
and scientists)

8.
A Future Platform?
Each story lives on a
sub-page that is editable by
logging in (Track Changes)
When not logged-in,
story page takes
inspiration from
Medium format
A Front page with
Live “story” tiles