Welcome Scientopia, a new science blogging network

Today is an exciting day in the science blogiverse. There is a new science blogging network, a self-managed bloggers’ cooperative – Scientopia (from the press release):

Scientopia.org will launch a new blogging collective to educate and entertain anyone interested in eclectic voices of science on Monday 2 August at 1000 EDT.

Scientopia.org unites multifarious voices from the scientific community to discuss anything and everything that catches their fancy. There are a lot of science blogs out there, and a lot of science blogging networks. When the networks run with commercial interests in mind, the priorities of the bloggers and readers can get lost. Some bloggers began to wonder: what would happen if the bloggers and their readers came first? From this discussion sprung Scientopia.org.

We invite the world to ponder, argue, converse, and laugh along with us.

Each blog is produced by an individual or group that retains complete editorial control of its own content. Some bloggers are moving from other networks; others are creating new blogs.

This will be very exciting to watch. They are launching with 24 blogs with 30 bloggers, about half of whom were at some point in the past blogging at Scienceblogs.com, and thus have the “stamp of approval” by a media company. The others, by virtue of being invited to join the collective, automatically also get that ‘stamp of approval’ from their peers.

This is already a pretty large network and will be adding new bloggers later, so it will be interesting to see how the experiment works with the bottom-up instead of top-down approach to management. They have devised good mechanisms for dealing with various foreseeable problems, and for things like deciding collectively about invitations and acceptance of new bloggers.

The Scientopia network is more than a collection of individuals: it’s a scientific community. It serves the common goals of sharing our love of science, while respecting the diverse interests of its members. At Scientopia, the community — of bloggers and readers, engaging with science and each other — is not a side effect. It’s the whole point.

The theme of a few of my recent posts – that the science blogosphere is changing from one large volcanic island to a whole archipelago of equally interesting and powerful islands – seems to be unveiling as predicted. Unlike networks run by companies, the coop could act fast as they did not need committee meetings, CEO approvals, endless Excel sheets and such – they took only three weeks from the original idea to launch.

And while many excellent science bloggers remain on Scienceblogs.com (and if you have thin skin for discussions of politics and religion you can always skip the “Politics” category or subscribe only to the “Select” feed and be floored as to how much kick-ass science blogging there is at Sb), the appearance of another big network full of well-known personalities of the science blogosphere, provides us all with another place to go.

Scientopia also has its own Twitter account and you should subscribe to their RSS feed.

The bloggers who are starting at Scientopia at the day of the launch are probably most or all already very familiar to you. Here are their old and new URLs so you can check them all out:

Janet D. Stemwedel has moved Adventures in Ethics and Science from here to here.

Ethan Rop will launch a new blog – Attack Polymerase.

Former blogger from Neurotopia, Scicurious, has moved Neurotic Physiology from here to here.

Elizabeth Brown, Dorothea Salo, and Sarah Shreeves have moved their Book of Trogool from here to here.

Candid Engineer has moved from here to here.

Arlenna has moved Chemical BiLOLogy from here to here.

Jason Goldman will continue to blog at The Thoughtful Animal on Scienceblogs, but has also teamed up with the awesome Melody Dye for a new blog Child’s Play.

Christina Pikas has moved Christina’s LIS Rant from here to here.

DrugMonkey and PhysioProf (while keeping their personal rants here and here), have moved DrugMonkey Blog from here to here.

Rob Knop, who used to be on Scienceblogs ages ago (see) has moved Galactic Interactions from here to here.

Mark Chu-Carroll has moved Good Math/Bad Math from here to here.

Professor in Training has moved from here to here.

Prof-Like Substance has moved from here to the newly renamed The Spandrel Shop.

Sanitized for Your Protection is a new blog by Rebecca Montague.

Greg Gbur, better know around the blogoshere as ‘drskyskull’ or ‘gg’ has moved Skulls in the Stars from here to here.

Dr.Isis will continue to blog on her site at Scienceblogs.com but has also started a new blog – The Brain Confounds Everything.

Mike Dunford has moved The Questionable Authority from here to here.

Krystal D’Costa of Anthropology in Practice has added her second blog – The Urban Ethnographer.

Grrrlscientist who you probably know from her old Sb blog, and perhaps from her NN blog Maniraptora, has teamed up with her husband Bob O’Hara (who you may know from Deep Thoughts and Silliness) to start a new (ad)venture: This Scientific Life.

Suzanne Franks has moved Thus Spake Zuska from here via here to here.

Once upon a time, Voltage Gate was also on Scienceblogs. Heather, Jeremy and Jennifer have now moved it from here to here.

PalMD has moved White Coat Underground from here through here to his brand new digs here.

PH Lane is moving from Golden Thoughts to WhizBang.

As you may notice, my blog is not on that list. While this network looks great, I have decided to remain solo for a while and promote all the new and renewed networks springing up, and promote good science blogging in general. Good luck to all my bloggy friends on this endeavor.