Blogging versus scholarly journals
i came across a blogger the other day who was arguing that blogs could replace scholarly journals for some people. here’s the actual text:
Blogs allow us to put half-baked ideas out there, or fully baked for some, to explore ideas and concepts, to get other people’s opinions. While this approach is increasingly attractive as an alternative to peer-reviewed journals or edited journals, some readers will still prefer the journal rather than the blog.
i disagree for 2 reasons, which i mentioned on his blog:
1. blogs are not likely to be counted towards the tenure and promotion process, so it’s hard to see anyone abandoning a peer-reviewed journal for a blog entry any time soon.
2. if a person were to report research on a blog, the real benefit comes when this research gets viewed and scrutinized. if you only have a few comments to your blog here and there, then you aren’t likely to get the feedback that can help you. i know that i am far less likely to give critical feedback to a blogger on their own blog because i don’t want to make the look bad on their home turf. give me an article in the peer review process and i will give it the full scrutiny that the blind review process can allow. this scrutiny is what can strengthen the literature in the long run.
anyone disagree? do you think blogs can some day get counted towards promotion and tenure? (for what it’s worth, there is MUCH MORE discussion on this topic contained in the comments of this post)
Tags: blogs, blogging, promotion, tenure, peer-review, scholarly, journal
June 19th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Sean,
Does this mean I shouldn’t be listing my blog on my CV? I was kind of counting it as a publication . . . jk.
RR
June 19th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Maybe we should start an online scholarly journal together (GVSU scholarly online journal — official sounding title). Heh heh. We can each write a few articles (grab some of our blog posts) and then peer review each other and make it look official. I am game.
Seriously though, most of my colleagues were impressed with the fact that I am blogging, so it didn’t hurt by any means, but I sat around for the discussion and only the scholarly journal publications were discussed when the dealt with my publications. I suppose if you can trick your colleagues into valuing your blog as something more then it’s golden. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to needing the blog. ;~)
June 19th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Howdy! Thanks for the feedback on my post. Blogs aren’t intended to be taken as seriously as peer-reviewed publications. And, I don’t object to them being around.
What I do object to is that some researchers end up being stuck with ONLY publishing their work to peer-reviewed journals, making their work inaccessible. In fact, the kind of writing that one has to engage in leads to a “writing handicap” when writing for real people. And, real people in the field is who we need to write for, not the high falutin’, snobbish peer-reviewed journals alone.
Blogs can soften the edge of a researcher’s writing, help him/her rediscover the joy of sharing ideas, engaging in the back-n-forth that doesn’t involve juggling knives and watching out for other people who might steal your research findings.
The goal is not to trick your colleagues into valuing your blog, but rather, inviting a world audience into beginning a conversation about ideas typically hidden in obscure research.
Miguel Guhlin
http://www.mguhlin.net/blog
June 19th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Miguel, I appreciate your thinking. I would love to see blogs take a more vital role in the process of research. My problem with the blogosphere is that the average blogger is not going to generate the kind of audience that a scholarly journal will reach. My field is ed tech (International Society for Technology in Education — ISTE) and publishing an article in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education will ensure that my audience is in the tens of thousands. Writing something in my blog will ensure that I will reach about 125 - 150 of the people who will visit each month and some of those folks are visiting from a Google search and will have no interest in the rest of my posts. It would be rare for an individual blogger to have the kind of dialogue between research and information that would be entertaining in a way that brings an “audience” back often. The elite blogs can achieve this dialogue, which sort of ends up being like the elite journals.
I think Stephen Downes (link on my front page) has the right idea. He has an Ed Tech feed (RSS) that contains 100 or so ed tech related blogger’s sites. I subscribe and I can use a newsreader to see all of the posts in a given day. I would likely have found about 2 - 3 of the feeds on my own, but with Downes’ Edu_RSS i can see them all. but, I also realize that this might be too many feeds since I really end up scanning titles and picking and choosing which feeds I’ll read. I am not sure how I came across your site, but it might have been from this RSS feed???
I think blogs have a place in the process; just not the final place. I plan to use my blog to present some raw data from some weekly surveys I’ve given to my students for a full semester. I’ll post some trends that are interesting, etc., but the final analyses will be part of an article that gets submitted for publication when I get around to it. While creating conversations and disseminating information is important (very important) . . . until the tenure and promotion process honestly finds a way to value blogs, then blogs are not going to be the destination for real research for most people.
i do agree that blogs provide a way to help bridge the gap between research and practice, which can be a good thing if implemented well. my students enjoy reading blogs much more than reading research articles, so it’s likely that a blogger could easily be on their “must read” to do list. however, our activities this semester have helped them realize that bloggers can say anything they want and don’t often have to use any kind of research base to come to conclusions. opinion has much, much more weight in the blogosphere.
there are scholarly journals that are emerging that provide a bridge between the snobbish journals you mention and the blogosphere . . . for example, innovate is what i envision as a hopeful future for scholarly writing — it’s also much more timely and efficient. I think this journal could easily count in the promotion and tenure process. Time will tell.
Thanks for stopping by Miguel.
June 21st, 2006 at 10:09 am
[…] in my last entry, i mentioned a discussion i was having with another blogger about the role blogs can serve. Miguel added a new blog entry to address our discussion and in the comments (confused yet?) he mentioned, with regard to blogs: The goal is is to facilitate sharing of ideas and research, reflection of such, and, as Vicki writes, “meaningful conversation.” […]
July 26th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
[…] the knowledge tree (TKT) is an online journal published down under that i’ve recently become aware of. this journal is focused on innovative technology practices in learning. in fact, i have been invited to write a lead article for this online journal, which i have accepted. there are many things i appreciate about this journal and many reasons i want to be a part of what they are doing. first, you may recall a discussion on my blog from a few weeks ago where the topic of the future of scholarly journals came up. i stated that i would love to see scholarly journals open up their process and take advantage of newer technologies. the knowledge tree is only on edition 10, but they recently made an exciting transformation. instead of just writing an article and submitting this article to the editor, i will actually be writing my article right into a WordPress blog. i’ll go through some drafts along the way and i’ll likely invite my blogging audience (all 2 of you) to visit along the way. the actual article will then be published in blog format. but, the innovation of TKT goes beyond just the recognition of the power of blogging; they are also having me record my my article into a podcast (mp3), which will be available on the site as well. finally, i will participate in a live session to discuss the article with other professionals and interested parties who tune in at the specified time (down under time, mind you). […]