Wondering what’s with these check-mark icons that have started popping up on my posts? They’re part of my new membership in the Research Blogging community, which aggregates ‘blog posts about peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Members use the Research Blogging online tool to create citations for papers they’re blogging about, and they copy the citation code into the relevant post to create a stylish reference list. The citation code includes tags that are picked up by Research Blogging’s web crawler, which then links the page containing the citation to Research Blogging’s relevant topic pages (such as biology) and RSS feed. Posts that I submit to Research Blogging will also be marked with the aggregator’s icon, so someone arriving directly at Denim & Tweed can quickly scan for posts about peer-reviewed papers. It’s a great way to find out what other science bloggers are reading, and it’s boosted my traffic to values that are statistically distinguishable from zero. If you like reading about science, or if you blog about it, Research Blogging is extremely useful.