January 17, 2012
Posted by David Karpf
On Academic Blogging and Tenure
I’ve just started reading David Weinberger’s newest book, Too Big To Know.* For those who don’t know his work, Weinberger is one of the big thinkers at the Berkman Center. I’m a longtime fan… his first couple books provided an influential push toward my current field of research.
In the prologue, he raises the following question:
“…should a professor who is shaping the discipline’s discussion through her mighty participation in online and social media get tenure even if she hasn’t published sufficiently in peer-reviewed journals?”
This gets talked about a lot in the circles I inhabit. Speaking as a professor-who-blogs, my answer might surprise you:
No. Or at least, Not Yet.
I do believe that more academics should blog. Blogging offers both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to academic researchers. It pushes us to write clearly for an audience, sharpening our writing and thinking. It provides immediate gratification, sorely absent from the peer-review process. It raises your profile within the field, which can yield additional research opportunities. It lets you speak to wider audiences, which can help allay bouts of existential angst and answer difficult questions during holiday visits with relatives.
My own blogging experience has been positive in all these ways. Most of my peer-reviewed articles have begun as blog posts (“Understanding Blogspace,” “Macaca Moments Revisited,” “Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group’s Perspective,” and “Implications of the Mobile Web for Online/Offline Reputation Management” all got their start at shoutingloudly). I’ve also enjoyed the experience of attending conferences and being told “oh, I read your blog post last week.” As a young scholar in a nascent field, it still comes as a shock to learn that someone other than my mother reads this thing!
I generally try to write out an idea when it is fresh. Sometimes it gets helpful feedback from readers in the comment section. More often it just forces me to clearly explain what my point is. After months of losing myself in the research, this provides a lodestone of sorts. Being able to go back to the initial impetus sharpens the mind and helps you dig an argument out the mess of data.
Perhaps more importantly, blogging helps to shape my research agenda. The process of writing for an audience leads me to flesh out lines of thought that otherwise would stay murky. Those, in turn, drive the course of my research. Being an active blogger makes me a more active scholar.**
That said, we should acknowledge two limitations on academic blogging: it is bite-sized and it is not (yet) a central forum in academia.
1,000 words is long for a blog post. Most posts are more like 500-750 words. An academic article, by contrast, will run between 6,000-10,000 words. Hyperlinks mediate the difference somewhat — instead of devoting column-inches to describing competing arguments, you can link to them online. Still, peer-reviewed research represents a level of detail that blogs don’t reach. A good research article delves into complexity in ways that a good blog post cannot and should not.
I have had plenty of ideas that appeared ironclad in 600 words. It was only when I attempted to write them in 6,000 words that I saw problems crop up. This is a good thing — nothing sharpens the mind like realizing “huh, I guess I was wrong about that.” But for this reason, peer-reviewed articles ought to remain the “coin of the realm,” where tenure and promotion are concerned.
Likewise, academia is a slow-moving professional field. As my friend C.W. Anderson remarked to me, “ours is the only profession that is paid to think slowly.” That is also a good thing, but it means that the discipline is institutionally conservative and tends to adopt new communications media reluctantly. As a result, while there are some great academic blogs out there, none meet Weinberger’s standard of “shaping the discipline’s discussion.”
Peer-reviewed articles enjoy a privileged position in tenure, promotion, and hiring decisions. That’s because peer-reviewed articles are where the various disciplines’ discussions occur. We assign one another’s articles in the classroom. We cite one another’s articles in our research. We attend conferences centered around early versions of these long-form research articles. This may very well change in my lifetime, but it isn’t going to change anytime soon.
So no, I don’t believe an academic who excels through blogging and social media ought to receive tenure on that basis. Academics ought to blog and tweet, and they can benefit from doing so. But those benefits ought to translate into improved long-form research output. If those benefits fail to translate into research articles, I would consider that reason for serious concern. We are supposed to think deeply and rigorously. Blogs and twitter can aid such thinking, but they provide a tricky venue if not augmented by lengthier articles that have gone through the (sometimes brutal) process of anonymous peer-review.
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*This is a great season to be an internet politics geek… new books Weinberger, Clay Johnson, Rebecca MacKinnon, and Joseph Turow are all hitting the shelves. I’ll post some reviews to the blog as I make my way through them.
**Within limits. I blog 2-3 times per week at most. If I was blogging 2-3 times per day, I can’t imagine finding time for much else.
13 Comments
January 17, 2012
I am all for academics blogging! I think it is a untapped forum which provides the benefits listed as well as potentially changing the gale-force winds of anti-intellectualism currently blowing through our culture. I agree, however, that it still has its limits within a strictly professional discourse.
Thanks for these insights!
January 17, 2012
And of course, “blogs” are not just one thing.
In addition to being a great place for rough drafts and works-in-progress, I also think that blogs can serve as a much more substantial “comments section” for journal articles. It’s still pretty ad hoc but there are certainly several blog posts that I can think of off the top of my head that serve as important points in discourses, both riffing on and leading to further journal articles. Ultimately, I think blogs can help bridge both leading in and coming out of the slower (and worthwhile) journal process, and make journal articles – and more importantly, scholarly discourse – better.
January 17, 2012
I agree that a prof. who only excels at social media should not get tenure but I doubt the case is usually so clear-cut. A prof. today, especially in our field, is likely to publish books, articles, and social media content. What weighting is appropriate. I don’t think you’re arguing the social media content shouldn’t be weighted at all? Or is that what you are arguing?
January 17, 2012
David, thanks for the excellent push back. But I think I was being a little less provocative than you understandably took me as being. I wasn’t thinking that a young scholar would get tenure for only short blog posts and tweets. I was assuming (but did not say so – sorry) that the person had posted some significant articles outside of the for-pay journals as well as engaging in the lively fray of blogs, tweets, etc. I was thinking, within my field, how ridiculous it would be to turn down a danah boyd, Clay Shirky or Ethan Zuckerman if they chose not to publish in traditional journals. (I hesitate to name names, since I am not claiming they actually feel that way. Rather, I am just huge fans of their work, and they are mighty contributors online.)
I think I don’t have the confidence you do in the judgment of traditional peer reviewers (and here I may be influenced by my humanities bias). Continuing to force works through that traditional process not only can prevent worthy scholars from getting tenure — unless you define “highly worthy” as “having produced long form works that have gone through peer review” — it slows down research for artificial reasons. Yes, there’s value in slow thought — nice point — but not thought slowed because there’s a two-year backlog in articles to print, or because one of the peer reviewers has to work on her own book.
I still think that the advantages of the publish-then-filter world substantially outweigh the benefits of the other way around, even within academic disciplines. And if that’s the case, then scholars should be measured in no small part by their scholarly engagement in online and social media. I think.
We have an Internet generation that will be coming up for tenure pretty soon. I am curious to see how this plays out.
Thanks again. Your discussion and disagreement, as well as the perceptive comments from jkd and Mary, mean a lot to me.
January 17, 2012
(replying to Mary)
Good clarifying point. What I’m arguing is that young profs should *presume* that it won’t be weighted at all. And that, even so, there are very good reasons to engage in blogging and social media activity.
Tenure standards are sure to be a lagging indicator of academic success – they will only change after it has become pretty universally accepted that they need to. In the meantime, we should use short-form blogging to enrich our long-form work.
January 17, 2012
(replying to JKD, and part of David’s response)
Yes, I’m particularly happy with the bridging that can happen leading in. Blog your work in its early stages. Also blog it and post working paper versions when it has been accepted.
I can abide by the couple-month wait time that peer review processes force on research papers. The year-or-more wait associated with the ink and pulp publication makes me die a little on the inside, though.
January 17, 2012
(replying to David)
First, one point that I should have made clearer in the intro: I’ve only made it through the preface so far! This post is meant less as push back, than as a jumping off point. It’s an essay I’ve been mulling for awhile. Your point in the preface provided an impetus.
(I’m hoping to write some commentary on the full book in a week or so.)
A few other thoughts:
-I’m fully in agreement about the *artificial* slowing. It is plainly ridiculous that peer-reviewed, well-written pieces lie dormant for a year or more while they await their turn for publication. The actual peer-review process is slow, but it offers value so we have to accept the tradeoff. The rest of the wait time is defenseless. I do see some marginal improvements in that area, at least. Journals now often post early versions of papers online. There are some very good online journals with fast turnaround time as well.
-What I was aiming to communicate in the post was that I do indeed agree with you about the advantages of the publish-then-filter world. I think those advantages offer a substantial payoff in the filter-then-publish world (as, indeed, we witness with Clay’s books, danah’s articles and book, and Ethan’s soon-to-be book and articles).
-With regards to the Internet Generation, I’ve heard both poles of the debate from friends at conferences. One extreme says “don’t blog. Focus on research papers.” The other says “research journals lock up knowledge. Blog instead.” I’m trying to stake out the position of “research journals lock up knowledge. But they also fill a valuable niche. Blogging improves your writing, thinking, and reputation. Do both.”
Sometime soon, we’re going to have test cases — people who are borderline tenure cases based on their peer-reviewed work, and also have made some contribution through their social media-based writing. Those tests will likely turn out badly. I think its best to avoid being one of them, and think online engagement can help.
Thanks for your response, always a pleasure.
-DK
January 17, 2012
In terms of career advice, I can’t argue with you.
If you decide to write more about 2b2k, I’ll look forward to reading it.
January 17, 2012
@Dave – and, well, you also have the other response from the Internet Generation: research journals lock up knowledge and tenure is a crazy close-run thing anyways so… do something else. That would be my choice (or rather, it was/is so far).
I definitely agree that it’s not people like danah (who manages to both blog more and write more articles that I can contemplate) but folks with lower profiles – both in the journals and in social media – who’ll be the real test cases. Frankly, folks like I would’ve been. And I agree it probably won’t go well.
I think that one role blogging and online commentary can play is by both being a bridge in the discourse and pointing out that pulp-and-ink lag time is often serving no particular purpose, bring the discourse more out in the open. Peer review is valuable, but journal paywalls are insane – I’d love to keep up reading (and think I might be able to make some manner of small contribution to conversations here and there) even if I don’t have a .edu after my name anymore, and I know I’m not alone.
@David – also looking forward to digging into your new book.
January 24, 2012
I am a bit late because of many computer crashes, but I wrote a comment as a blog post. Given my understanding of blogging that seemed appropriate. The url is
http://www.boyntons.us/website/new-media/analyses/blogging/invitation-to-blog.html
And I deposited it other places for my friends.
January 24, 2012
(replying to Bob)
I enjoyed your response post, and don’t actually think we’re disagreeing all that much.
-We both think that scholars should blog.
-We both think that it would increase scholarly communication and knowledge-sharing.
-I agree with your assertion that we ought to blog things as we learn them/work them out. I think you’ll agree that I follow this practice, for the most part.
I’m actually not saying blogs “aren’t long enough.” I’m saying that they fill a different niche than long-form journal articles. That niche is currently discounted by tenure and promotion committees. I find a lot of other value from the niche, and think there are a lot of other reasons for us to engage in blogging. And yes, I also think that long-form, peer-reviewed research can surface errors in a way that short-form, networked conversation doesn’t.
I’m taking up the tenure and promotion question because it’s particularly pressing for scholars at my stage and earlier. (I also find it interesting because I study institutional/organizational change.) Full professors like yourself are free to advocate for changes to the tenure system in ways that assistant professors can’t.
Thanks for the commentary,
-Dave
January 27, 2012
I understand the ‘dilemma’ of the untenured. But if the young do not lead the revolution no one will. Most established professors are very happy to do the same over and over until they are so bored they retire — with administration being a way to retire and increase your income simultaneously.
January 27, 2012
Fair point, but that’s what makes this such a tough collective action problem. Senior professors have an incentive to leave the system as-is. Junior professors assume enormous risk by trying to change it even as they seek tenure. I suppose associate professors *might* represent a “happy middle.” But otherwise, we’re left with a situation in which nothing is going to change! (and that, in turn, is why I expect academia to be one of our slowest-changing institutions)
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