Case Studies/80Beats Blog
“80beats is DISCOVER's news aggregator, weaving together the choicest tidbits from the best articles on the day's most compelling topics” — 80Beats website
Overview
Discover is a highly regarded popular science magazine that has been publishing since 1980. Along side republished content from the print editions, the Discover website publishes an images and video gallery, a podcast series and a blog portal that includes 10 science-focused blogs.
80beats is one of Discover’s blogs. Written by Andrew Moseman and Smriti Rao and edited by Eliza Strickland, the blog posts ‘journalistic mashups’, synthesising science news from a range of sources into short, punchy entries. The authors indicate a direct quote from other sources with blue text and linking to the source in square brackets after the quote.
80beats is available on the Discover website, is syndicated via RSS and is circulated as a daily email newsletter.
License Usage
Entries on 80beats are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence. The content does not become available on the CC licence terms until 30 days after it was published have passed. During this period Discover asserts full copyright over the entries. Notice of this licensing arrangement is made in the left column of the blog. The notice also specifies that the images on 80beats are not the property of Discover and are therefore not under the licence.
Motivations
80Beats was encouraged to release its material under a Creative Commons licence because they make use of the work of many other excellent publications in putting together the blog and so believe it is only proper to offer up their content in turn for use by others. A Creative Commons Share Alike licence will also help to fulfil Discover Magazine’s aim of encouraging an interest in science by allowing people to use material on the blog and share it with friends. The use of a CC licence demonstrates the importance of people having access to, as well as an interest in, the rapidly developing world of science.
