The full feeds versus partial feeds is an old debate. Have a look at the 2.7 million Google hits for this simple query. Most of the debate however, concentrates on the presumed effects on visitors to the actual blog and -missed?- advertising revenue.
This afternoon I was having an interesting discussion with a representative from a library organization and we were discussing the theme of findability and accessibility of scientific information. My point of view was that blogging about science and scientific articles would at least increase the findability of these articles. However, this is only true when the feeds of the blog are full feeds. The discovery of very new, young or even premature information on the web should be complemented nowadays with searches on blog search engines and news search engines. These search engines are on most occasions not exactly what their name suggests. In most instances they are rss feed search engines, i.e. they only index rss feeds.
The consequences are simple. When a blog is using partial feeds only the headline is indexed by blog search engines. Have for instance a look at the Technorati results for the IAALD blog, or from Google Blog search, or at Ask blog search. These represent the top three blog search engines at the moment. The discoverablity of content with these search engines for content from the IAALD blog is miserable, whereas it has some excellent content.
Where the discussion of full text feeds versus partial feeds so far has concentrated on arguments of pro-bloggers who are worried about their advertising revenue. For scientists, the argument of discoverablity is far more important and they should always opt for full feeds to syndicate their content as widely as possible.
It sounds strange but a lot of people have not yet realized this.
Latest Comments