Originally published on eve.gd on 22 February 2014, last updated 6 September 2026.
Read this post on the web (with images, PDF and citation details)
When checking out my Google Scholar profile today, I noticed that, if a blog post is cited, it will be counted as an article by Google Scholar. This is interesting for several perhaps conflicting reasons:
1. These items are (often) not digitally preserved and have unstable URLs
2. These items are not peer reviewed (does this matter? probably not)
3. These items are not "amplified" by traditional publishers
4. These items are not locatable through traditional library discoverability channels
5. These items are not deposited in institutional repositories (and eprints has no "blog post" option) [this would aid with point #1 if it did]
These are just observations, not criticisms and certainly not meant to start another meta discussion. I was just intrigued that Google just went and counted it. If the preservation options were sorted, this would be an extremely interesting development...
However, a little further digging reveals that I'm not the only one thinking about this. C. Titus Brown wrote a python script to use the FigShare API to deposit a blog post on their site, to assign it a DOI (which is not to do with citeability) and to get it safely preserved in the CLOCKSS archive.
deposit a blog post
which is not to do with citeability
safely preserved in the CLOCKSS archive
Edit:
Here's a proposed mock-up of how this could work (if you felt like translating posts into JATS XML):
Cite this article
Please include the DOI in your citation: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.942283
You can view this post's XML with lens.
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.942283
view this post's XML with lens
This reference list has been generated, in many cases, through an automated process and may therefore contain errors or incomplete metadata. It is provided purely as assistance for finding the items mentioned within this post.
1. Boettiger, Carl, ‘DOI != citable’, Lab Notebook, 3 June 2013 <http://carlboettiger.info/2013/06/03/DOI-citable.html#comment-919771037>
2. Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Google Scholar will count a blog post as an article if it's cited: a preservation suggesstion’, figshare, figshare, 22 February 2014 <https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.942283>
3. JISCMail thread on CLOCKSS archive preservation <https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A3=ind1204&L=LIS-SERIALS&E=quoted-printable&P=112364&B=--bcaec54c52b2580cc104bd854894&T=text%2Fhtml;%20charset=windows-1252&pending=>
4. ‘Posting blog entries to figshare’ <http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/posting-blog-entries-to-figshare.html>
http://carlboettiger.info/2013/06/03/DOI-citable.html#comment-919771037
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.942283
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A3=ind1204&L=LIS-SERIALS&E=quoted-printable&P=112364&B=--bcaec54c52b2580cc104bd854894&T=text%2Fhtml;%20charset=windows-1252&pending=
http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/posting-blog-entries-to-figshare.html