Comments on: The academic contributions of blogging?

By: Crooked Timber » » “Nature” on blogs

Crooked Timber » » “Nature” on blogs — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 23:20:58 +0000

[...] The latter is of particular interest here and something we have written about before. (If I had more time I’d link to even more relevant posts, it’s been a popular topic around here, not surprisingly.) This being the last week of the quarter I am running around like crazy and have little time to comment. The short summary of some current thoughts I have on this are as follows. Traditional academic outlets rarely offer the opportunity to publish short think-pieces. But many thoughts, while valuable, do not require or necessarily merit a 25-40 page paper. Where to publish them then? Blogs seem like an obvious and helpful outlet in such a case. And yes, blogs can have a peer review component if comments are allowed and knowledgable people are reading the material. posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 6:16 pm Post a comment [...]

By: Dave Tufte

Dave Tufte — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:01:34 +0000

I am going through the tenure process right now, and I have submitted my blog as part of my package, even though there is no precedent for this on my campus. First, a little private information to couch my arguments. I obtained tenure in a Ph.D. granting department in 1998. I then left to go to a school that was more focused on teaching. I did not ask for tenure. Here I have done much less research, and over the past year, a lot of blogging. I expect to get tenure, but it is safe to say that this will be on the basis of past journal publication performance. Anyway, here is why I think blogging should be part of the tenure process. I quote from the intellectual contributions standard of AACSB (the top level accreditation for business schools): “…faculty members should make intellectual contributions on a continuing basis … should be available for public scrutiny by academic peers and practitioners.” This is at the top of AACSB’s write up. I think it covers the essentials of academic work: 1) you must do something, and 2) you must make it available to others. Scholarly research satisfies this, and so does blogging. We can quibble about the relative importance of these endeavors, but blogging fits the bill. So it should count. By how much is another matter. To address that, we need to ask how much impact these endeavors can potentially have. But that task is just about impossible even for scholarly articles. Here’s an alternative: scholars write articles and books because they are good at it. Scholars who don’t probably are not. By the same token, the increasing prevalence of academic blogs suggests that some scholars are good at this too. But ultimately, tenure is about making a decision whether an individual faculty member is good at something that the institution needs. And there’s the rub: I don’t know that institutions of higher education know that they need bloggers yet. I know that my blog is academically useful. Microsoft (and others) have announced that they know that the blogs written inside their organizations are important. Universities need to figure this out. This will happen eventually, but probably not until there are more bloggers on tenure committees, and applicants with blogs.

By: eszter

eszter — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:43:01 +0000

More great food for thought, thanks everyone! This thread is such a great example of what I like about blogs. (That said, I realize we’re fortunate at CT to have a large readership with the potential for much valuable input, which makes it all that much more exciting.) A few more points in response: Dan – I think it’s true that there is much material out there on blogs that couldn’t count as scholarship (that includes CT and probably most blogs), but since it’s all public, people can certainly check to see. Also, just to reiterate, our conception of what is “scholarship” may be too narrowly defined. This brings me to Deb’s point. I don’t think we want to be too narrow in what we consider academic contributions by some. Here on CT we comment on all sorts of things even if the topic is not our narrow area of expertise. Among Timberites, I am most familiar with Kieran’s work (other than my own:) so it’s easiest for me to tell when he’s commenting on something that’s not his specialized area per se. However, that doesn’t mean he’s not making really thoughtful, interesting and informed contributions. He’s unlikely to pursue those thought pieces into publications though, precisely because they don’t represent his areas of expertise and he’s likely busy enough developing full-fledged articles in those domains, but that doesn’t mean he may not have made some original contribution to a different debate. I like your three points regarding what to strive for on academic blogs. Laura – I think what you call “breath of fresh air” is what I consider reviving academic debate. So maybe my statement makes it sound as though I think it’s more overarching across the academy than it really is. I just think for those of us who have an interest in engaging in conversations with a broader set of interesting and informed people blogs do make that possible and so through our involvement at least for us they do allow for a level of debate that otherwise hasn’t been available. Your comment on the high percentage of academic scholarship that you don’t think is of high value (to use different words than you did:) underscores the importance of quality blog conversations relative to what we’d consider legitimate (i.e. published in journals) academic scholarship. Mike – There are senior scholars who blog. But you’re right that it’s probably harder for non-bloggers to understand what it is about and since bloggers are more likely to be younger (and thus likely junior) this may be a concern. One more general point I have is that those of us on CT (but true for other academic blogs as well) are actually quite productive with more traditional types of scholarly outputs as well so it’s not as though we have to make a case for blogging as a replacement for more traditional scholarship. And in the end the benefits are there in less tangible ways even if we don’t get a specific CV item out of it. The feedback we receive and the motivation for improving clarity in our writing due to the public nature of our posts certainly helps our scholarship in ways that may well end up on our CVs in other forms eventually.

By: Michael Weiksner

Michael Weiksner — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 12:53:15 +0000

Ezter, Your argument is interesting intellectually, but it does not consider the political points. What gets scholarly credit is defined as what senior scholars value. The key question is: what incentive do senior scholars have to value blog posts? Perhaps if senior scholars create their own blogs, or actively comment on others’ blogs, then they will understand and value them. Or perhaps we’ll have to wait until the current crop of junior scholarly bloggers like yourself, say, become senior scholars. – Mike

By: Laura

Laura — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 02:52:10 +0000

Can blogging revive academic debate? I doubt it. I don’t think enough academics have blogs or read them to really change the rules and traditions of academic scholarship. The gatekeepers of academic, the chairs and the journal editors, are pretty ancient and techno phobic. That said, I think blogging is a breath of fresh air into academic discourse. It allows for cross disciplinary input. It forces the writer to break away from meaningless jargon. It encourages the writer to explore new, creative ways of organizing thought. It allows the writer to reach past the confines of specialization. The comments provide input in an early stage of research. Of course, I think 90% of academic scholarship is crap. Don’t even get me going on how scientific citations in the social sciences have destroyed good writing.

By: Deb Frisch

Deb Frisch — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:01:20 +0000

There is a narrow version of this thread [Where, if anywhere, should academics list blog publications on their CV’s?] and a broad one [In what sense is academic blogging work?]. If an academic has a blog on a topic that is completely unrelated to her area of expertise, it’s not work. If Richard Thaler started a blog for wine collectors with a special emphasis on older Bordeaux, it wouldn’t be work. If he started a blog in which he posted a weekly column about behavioral economics/finance and engaged in discussion about it, it would be work. Whether he would get credit for it is an open question, but I think all academics would admit that “maintaining a blog related to area of expertise” is at least service and maybe teaching and maybe even research. Blogs like DeLong, Drezner, Crooked Timber and Marginal Revolution contribute to the public good. Can we agree on what is desirable in an academic blog? A few thoughts: 1. Academic bloggers should allow comments unless they have an excellent reason not to. The optimal amount of class/audience participation is almost certainly not zero. 2. The majority of posts should be accessible to an educated lay person or academic from a different field. 3. The academic blogger should occasionally post messages about her specific area of expertise. I have read enough of DeLong and Drezner to see how they think about a variety of political and economic issues. I don’t have a sense what either of them is an expert about. I’d love to read posts that would let me understand the blogger’s research contribution.

By: Daniel Drezner

Daniel Drezner — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 04:51:26 +0000

I fear Eszter is guilty of inductive reasoning, in that Eszter's blog posts might be worthy of scholarship, but I'm not sure that this is true of the run-of-the-mill scholar blogger. I agree with John Q. I have a line about my blog in the cv under "occasional publications."

By: Richard Zach

Richard Zach — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 17:11:28 +0000

Harry, that mostly has to do with the the fact that philosophy is unusual as a discipline in that graduate students rarely publish. In most of the sciences, people start publishing as undergraduate students. So if few of your applicants have publications, you must rely on other factors—and since grades in graduate school are not very reliable, the only thing that’s left is reference letters and writing samples. Moreover, it is (perceived as) easier to form a judgment based on a piece of philosophical writing than it is to form one on the basis of a scientific piece: analytic philosopers pride themselves on producing work that is clear, and understandable to a wide audience. So even if you’re not an expert on the field of research of an applicant, you can judge the writing sample on criteria such as clarity. In other fields what matter is not the writing so much as the results. And these will be harder to evaluate by non-specialists. Also, in my experience, publications are important in philosophy at many research institutions which aren’t among the top: If you’re a top department, you can have your pick from graduates of top departments. If you’re not, you are probably looking at not-so-top departments to hire from, consequently, the prior expectation that te candidates you’re looking at are really bright is correspondingly lower and the prestige attached to their letters as well. So you’ll pick the candiate that has a proven track record of publication over the one who merely has good letters and a nice writing sample (among other things, of course).

By: donna

donna — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 16:10:10 +0000

I am very new to both blogging and academia, but my professional background in the information industry leads me to raise a couple of logistical issues related to the use of blogging in academia, and that is: (1) permanence and (2) management. While blogging is a fascinating catalyst for thought and discussion in the short term, I’m not sure how well it will survive the long lens of cumulative study, and that alone might restrict its usefulness in a large body of work. Management becomes an issue of separating wheat from chaff in the huge pile of blogposts. While this is true of published journals as well, the fact is that peer review BEFORE publication edits our choices, for better or worse, down to a manageable stream of information. Peer review AFTER publication, as in a blog, is valuable to the poster but presents the blog browser with a very daunting task.

By: harry

harry — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:37:39 +0000

I am a bit startled that other discplines consider peer reviewed articles (2 in jackmormon’s case) essential for hiring to a tenure track job. I can see it in subjects where the hiring committee has no confidence in its own judgment. But in humanities disciplines we are surely competent to make judgments about the quality of work we are looking at? My experience is that letters are what get you looked at or not, and that then your writing samples (published or not) are pored over; and then the job talk is a baptism of fire. I don’t think any search I’ve been involved in at beginning tenure track level has seen publications as anything other than a sort of extra. (Philosophy, land-grant). Why do other disciplines see publications as essential?

By: Jackmormon

Jackmormon — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:24:20 +0000

In a CV, I’d put maintenance of a blog under service or hobbies or affiliations. (BTW, in my experience on a hiring committee—English, Ivy—two peer-reviewed paper journal articles were considered minimum for a junior tenure-track position.) For the most part, I just haven’t seen the same degree of sustained seriousness in posts as I have in journal articles. I would be nervous about citing a blog post—just as I tend to shy away from citing conference presentations. I’m finding that reading and commenting on blogs helps my teaching quite a bit; the blog creates a forum for rehearsing lines of argument. In my general experience, though, the format of the blog has produced speculative or emotional arguments. Sometimes postings and threads seem like arguments and evidence in search of an author. My sense is that until the kind of writing produced on blogs changes, they’ll be valued less than forms of writing associated with paper (vetted articles or books). I think it’s the speed with which an argument can go from home to public that freaks a lot of academics out about internet writing.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:44:47 +0000

like some others, I see blog posts as being in the same class as pieces for newspapers, popular magazines and so on. However, I list newspaper articles in my CV, but I don’t list blog posts. The main reason is a practical one. I’ve written over 2000 posts, ranging from trivial to substantial. Listing them all would be silly and it seems much easier to point people at the blog than to try and decide which posts are worth including in a CV.

By: eszter

eszter — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:47:32 +0000

More great points everyone, thanks. John, some of what you raise reminds me of a related point (and all of this is probably ready for a new blog post, but we can do that later if so inclined). I’ve noticed that various sections of professional associations (and I’m thinking here especially of sections in the American Sociological Association where I have experience with this) have a really hard time transforming their static Web sites into something dynamic and interactive. For years I’ve watched various sections try to launch discussions on their sites and these rarely work. Why? Maybe it is not through disciplinary affiliations that the most productive discussions are inspired, although one would think that would be a good place to start. Just recently, upon the last receipt of a message encouraging more active use of a section’s Web site did it occur to me that blogs are fulfilling precisely the role to which these sites aspire. But no one is encouraging people in any of the mailing list messages to look to already established blogs for discussions. Granted, existing blogs have their own set of authors so people wouldn’t have that much say in setting the agenda. Nonetheless, it’s interesting that these links aren’t being made more explicitly. I guess many people – even academics – still don’t know much about blogs and don’t have (or don’t think they have) time for them. But then why would they have time for an interactive section Web site?

By: jholbo

jholbo — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:28:49 +0000

Thanks for the interesting post, Eszter. I’ve been meaning to take this bull by the horns for a while. You did it first and said it very nicely. I’m with you: cautiously inclined to say blogs should get a little more official academic credit. The problem, in a way, is that deciding to do that, or not, can be couched as a question about whether posts = papers, or presentations, or service. But the fact is: blogs are not really equivalent to anything but themselves. And we should avoid falling into the trap of looking like we are sureptitiously equating them what they are not when really we are saying: hey, they are good. So they should count. I just came back from the ALSC conference – American Literary Scholars and Critics. I’m trying to horn in on lit studies in my career, as anyone who knows me knows. The ALSC is looking to break out of a kind of rut they’ve been in (by their own admission). More generally, lit studies as a whole is in the midst of a serious publishing crisis (details too complicated for a blog comment.) I’m in the process of proposing some things to the ALSC. One, a blog for their journal, which REALLY needs to move online. So you’d have a journal that was like the Washington Monthly or TAP. (Or, shudder, NRO.) A house blog to draw folks in. Two (and this isn’t really on the table yet) some innovative Creative Commons online scholarship and e-books. Having an academic journal with its own blog has obvious functional prospects, it seems to me. Especially if it is a journal that nobody notices right now. Also, you can sponsor discussions of all the articles in each issue as it comes out. And it would be easier to claim a kind of ‘service’ credit (I agree with Brian that we can use that label, if we must use one of the old ones). Being the blogger for a journal would be like being an editor for a journal. Worth something. And if you did long pieces, helped people find their way to the good stuff, you could plausibly claim to be more than an editor, and eventually everyone would get used to that. I also agree with Brian that, in philosophy, there is no especial urgency to do any such thing, although I think he would agree it would be nice. In lit studies, for a variety of reasons, there is real urgency in addressing a true publishing and circulation crisis. It has to do with the harrowing quirks and crotchets that Estzer mentions: the unbearable arbitariness of being judged by anonymous reviewers. But there is more than that, in the case of lit studies. The field needs to move to a new reputation economy because the old one is, if not broke, then not operating efficiently. This isn’t a political point, incidentally, although it is a way of saying: the present anarchy of the field makes travel and communication across it very uncertain. I’m not saying: I want to take away everyone’s reputations and start over. I mean more: the avenues through which young scholars have to prove themselves are needlessly distorting of, and concealing of, quality. This needn’t (though it may) be an anti-MLA point, in case anyone is curious. MLA folks write about how there are these serious problems, too. They see them. They would be happy to see sensible responses to it. But there is a problem being the first to do it because ‘hey, I have this website, tenure me’ sounds like the stupidest thing in the world. Except for: we must cling to paper as our medium, even though it is inefficient and bankrupting us and relegating us to irrelevance, because our reputation economy is backed by paper. Anyway, I’m sort of trying to put myself forward as the guy to start this thing for the ALSC. We’ll see whether they’ll have me. When I proposed it – I sort of mumbled it out, because I figured I’d sound like a cranky hobbyist (which I am, of course; I only hope I’m also more than that). As I was saying: when I proposed it, the response was quite favorable. So we’ll see. I want to be the guy who builds something new and functional for lit studies. Oh, and Richard Zack is right about the double-counting. (Hi, Richard, long time no see.) And thanks for the vote of confidence, Tim.

By: kwijibo

kwijibo — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 04:03:53 +0000

To me blogs fill the place of the older American customs of pamphlets and lyceums, which offered a sort of education to the common citizen. Blogs are academic in the sense that they fill the same educational gap. They provide food for thought for those who don’t read scholarly journals and papers regularly, but for whom the modern predigested news and popular dumbed-down non-fiction aren’t adequate. Blogs also permit a peculiar sort of interactive research for true scholars. Bloggers bounce comments around and grow their ideas in ways that individual research or discussion with local colleagues would not make possible. Consider also the rathergate business (if you can bear to think about it one more time). How else could an expert in a rare field pop up and say, “I happen to know the history and typefaces of Selectrics, and why that matters in this case.” It wouldn’t do to make blogs a major resource for scholarly research, of course, but what else would provide that sort of serendipitous discovery?