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__Added in edit: __the original version of this post implied that the Nature editorial was recent, when it was in fact published in February this year; I was sent a link to it today and assumed it was new. I've edited the post to reflect this.One of the major reasons for concern from presenters and conference organisers about the notion of conference bloggers is that having unpublished work discussed online may violate the embargo policies of journals and damage their chances of publication.
We do have clarification of this issue from one major journal. Nature has an editorial posted back in February that continues its long-term theme of encouraging scientists to engage in the blogosphere, and also includes this important statement:> At the same time, however, our cardinal rule has always been to promote scientific communication. We have therefore never sought to prevent scientists from presenting their work at conferences, or from depositing first drafts of submitted papers on preprint servers. So Nature journalists or those from any other publication should hear results presented at a meeting, or find them on a preprint server, the findings are fair game for coverage -- even if that coverage is ahead of the paper's publication. This is not considered a breaking of Nature's embargo. Nor is it a violation if scientists respond to journalists' queries in ensuring that the facts are correct -- so long as they don't actively promote media coverage.
Sounds good to me, and I hope to see similar clarification from other journals in the near future.
