The project “Infra Wiss Blogs” by ECDF professor Heinz Pampel, professor at the Institute for Library and Information Science at Humboldt University in Berlin, and his colleagues was launched to support blogging researchers and information infrastructure institutions in developing solutions for the long-term accessibility of scientific blogs in Germany. To this end, the project organizes and moderates a discussion process for the creation of a distributed system for the long-term storage and accessibility of scientific blogs. 

Blogs are an integral part of digital science communication. They serve as a platform for internal science communication, as a diary for documenting research work in the spirit of open science, or as a showcase for communicating scientific findings to the public. However, a major challenge for science blogs arises from unresolved issues regarding the permanent preservation of blog posts and the frequent lack of evidence in library information systems. These and other issues relating to ensuring the long-term accessibility of science blogs are hampering the future viability of this type of publication.

The DFG-funded project “Infra Wiss Blogs” will run until June 2026. Due to the complexity and scope of the desideratum addressed – de.hypotheses alone hosts over 400 science blogs from Germany – the establishment of an appropriate information infrastructure for research can only be achieved through cooperation. To this end, communication forums on this topic are being organized for the first time on the basis of extensive surveys, bringing together science and infrastructure and thus promoting networking among the actors involved. In this way, coordination will take place on the design of a distributed, organizational, technological, and cooperative infrastructure for the long-term preservation of scientific blogs. The focus will be on coordinating actors, processes, and standards. In addition, the project will be accompanied by information science from a socio-technical perspective.

As part of the project, the first workshop entitled “Outlook for the future infrastructure for scientific blogs in Germany” took place at the Einstein Center Digital Future on December 6, 2024. The aim of the workshop was to bring together scientific bloggers and experts from information infrastructure institutions to exchange experiences, wishes, and challenges relating to scientific blogs and their long-term accessibility.