Best Science Blogging of the Year

Okay we’re a little late with this, so be quick if you want to participate: it’s time for the Quark, the 3quarksdaily annual prize for science blogging. The deadline for nominations is tomorrow (Tuesday) night, so hurry up and nominate if you are so moved! This year’s judge is Lisa Randall — great to see a top-notch physicist in there.

Part of the process involves a vote by readers, which I think is something that just doesn’t work on the internet. Bloggers with large followings and sufficient shamelessness to prod them into voting will always dominate over the negligible number of readers who actually read every post and try to make a fair decision. But so be it — it’s not stopping me from nominating one of my own posts! (I can’t imagine that anyone else keeps track of all the science blogging I’ve done over the last year.) But it would be great if the winner came from one of the other awesome bloggers out there. Just to pick a few semi-randomly, let me steer potential nominators to have a look at some of my favorite blogs:

• The Big Blog Theory
• Swans On Tea
• Skulls in the Stars
• Starts With a Bang
• Cocktail Party Physics
• Résonaances
• In the Dark
• Built on Facts

Sorry to all the great blogs I’m not including, this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list. If you think I’m missing something, go nominate it! And then upbraid me in the comments here for my lack of fairness and good taste.

And while we’re on the subject, Open Lab 2011 is also open for nominations. This is an ongoing process through 2011, so there’s no hurry — keep your eyes peeled for good blogging out there. Many submissions will be chosen to be collected into a published anthology, and this year they have a serious publisher — Scientific American Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The editor will be the lovely and talented Jennifer Ouellette, so being included carries an extra cachet this year.