1 How is Research Blogged? A Content Analysis Approach Hadas Shema*, Judit Bar-Ilan* and Mike Thelwall** * dassysh@gmail.com; Judit.Bar-Ilan@.biu.ac.il Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 52900 (Israel) ** m.thelwall@wlv.ac.uk School of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1LY (UK). Abstract Blogs that cite academic articles have emerged as a potential source for alternative impact metrics for the visibility of the blogged articles. Nevertheless, in order to more fully evaluate the value of blog citations, it is necessary to investigate whether research blogs focus on particular types of articles or give new perspectives into scientific discourse. Thus, we studied the characteristics of peer-reviewed references in blogs and the typical content of blog posts to get insights into the bloggers’ motivations. The sample consisted of 391 blog posts from 2010-2012 in Researchblogging.org’s Health category. The bloggers mostly cited recent research articles or reviews from top multidisciplinary and general medical journals. Using content analysis methods, we created a general classification scheme for blog post content with ten major topic categories, each with several subcategories. The results suggest that health research bloggers rarely self-cite and the vast majority of their blog posts (90%) include a general discussion of the issue covered in the article, with over a quarter providing health-related advice based on the article(s) covered. These factors suggest a genuine attempt to engage with a wider non- academic audience. Nevertheless, almost 30% of the posts included some criticism of the issues being discussed. Given that explicit criticism is rare in academic articles, this suggests that blogs are a more natural home for this important scientific activity. Introduction Peer-reviewed journal-based citations are the basis of today’s bibliometric indicators. They are used as a proxy for the impact of scholarly works and are “the most common means of bestowing credit and recognition in science” (Cronin, 1984, p. 2 ¶ 3). In his early work about citation norms Kaplan (1965) regarded citation practices as “in large part a social device for coping with problems of property rights and priority claims” (p. 181, ¶ 3). Gilbert (1977) argued that by citing influential works, researchers add authority and persuasive power to their own works. The importance of citations in science evaluation and their ambiguity have made the motivations behind them a popular research subject.