Rogue Scholar launches a free personal plan

The Rogue Scholar science blog archive today has launched a new free Personal Plan: similar to the Starter Plan launched last year, but only for personal (single-author) blogs, and with no limitations on the number of blog posts that can be archived and registered with a DOI per year.

In the first Rogue Scholar Advisory Board meeting last month, I was encouraged to work on clarifying the kinds of science blogs Rogue Scholar wants to focus on in terms of available services and outreach activities. There are several kinds of science blogs for which Rogue Scholar is a particularly good fit, and I wanted to start with a category that is not only very popular among science blogs participating in Rogue Scholar (currently more than half of all participating blogs), but also dear to my heart: the personal science blog.

The personal science blog is written by a single author (with occasional guest posts), expressing his/her expertise and views. The author might be affiliated with an academic institution (as in my first five years of blogging), work for an organization that provides services for the scholarly community (as in the next nine years of my blogging), or is self-employed (as in the last two years of my blogging). Personal blogs often write about the kind of content or in formats that don't fit other channels of scholarly communication (e.g. journal article, preprint, or working paper), and long-term maintenance of a personal blog can be a particular challenge. However personal blogs are a very valuable resource, and their discovery and long-term maintenance should be supported.

How can Rogue Scholar offer a free service that costs money to build and maintain? By making this free service cost-effective by using open source software, automation, and collaboration, by also offering paid services, and by continuing to accept one-time or recurring donations. Submit your personal blog to Rogue Scholar here, support Rogue Scholar with a donation here, or subscribe to the Front Matter newsletter with regular updates about the Rogue Scholar service here.

References

Fenner, M. (2024). Introducing the Rogue Scholar Advisory Board. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/9yf86-p8541