Hi steemians! After my last post on sleeping beauty papers in academia, it sparked off some of my thoughts on why i think academicians, be it science, engineering or social sciences, should really start blogging! I think it will also be useful for recent phd graduates too! And here are the reasons why.
Engaging and networking with stakeholders
A blog is so much more engaging than a journal paper. It was until early 2000s that there was a strong growth of blogs and in the mid 2000s that the blogs becomes mainstream. With the uprising of new communication channels such as social media, blogs, there are so many ways now to reach out to stakeholders such as students, funding partners, research partners, etc. Blog under your name! Potential funding partners might chance upon your blog and contact you for potential collaboration opportunities! You can even gain some loyal readers and followers, thereby establishing your much needed reputation. Academia is no longer only about reading and writing papers. Networking in your field is also very important and relevant, be it about project funding, jobs, etc. Blogs are also free! Don’t have to wait till conferences to network. However, if you do blog using your own name, remember that whatever you wrote, it is in the public domain. So think twice before writing anything, or endorsing anyone, the things you wrote might come back to haunt you one day.
Promoting your paper and debating with peers
In my last post, i wrote about sleeping beauty papers in academia"sleeping" for a long time! Don't let it sleep no more and start promoting. Cite and write about your own paper in your blog and explain your rationale doing the research in your paper. Blogs can complement your journal papers, and is a good way to promote yourself and your work. This is especially true if you are working in a highly technical and obscure area. We also don't have to wait till conferences to debate with your peers. With blogs, you can expect your peers commenting and debating on your blog. It can be very fun and interactive! Who don’t enjoy an intellectual discussion? You can start by uploading your paper at Academia where researchers share their research and network with each other.. @lemouth has correctly pointed out that journal papers can also be "promoted". Maybe you wrote a great paper but no one knows that you did some incredible research and wrote a great paper. And this great paper might have been
Share knowledge for fun
It is very meaningful for academicians to share knowledge in a fun way. It allows your stakeholders to see another side of you, be it funny, casual, etc. However, blogging requires an active tone of writing which is severely lacking in many academicians. It seems not important but it can also be a new skill set and hardly recognized in academia. You might ask why. First, I would think that it is very easy to explain theory and experiments to your peers. But it is very difficult to communicate what your research is really about to the laymen. Hence, it is a skill to fine-tune the depth of your writing and be able to describe it to the layman. I believe that if your blog has somehow inspired a layman's interest in your work, then you are definitely successful with your outreach!
I'm getting ready to start writing the lit review section of my dissertation. Accordingly, I'm about to start going through all the literature again. As I do, I've been thinking about doing a sort-of annotated bibliography on steemit or on my personal blog. Another reason I have, that I don't think you mentioned is this: My tuition gives me library access to papers that most other people cannot access. School faculty members and corporate researchers have the same elevated level of journal access. If we write about the papers that we read (without copying), it brings the information to the general public in a way that generic science journalists cannot do.
Exactly my point. I think blog is a good way for science outreach. Bringing science to the people using our knowledge using the journal papers and reviewing them in a fun way. Great that you have the access to journal papers to do it... Following you!
I have actually never really thought about writing about my personal publications. This is something I will have to consider.
Yeah, i think it would actually be nice to talk about it. Anyway, consider it. :-) You know i always look forward to your posts ;-)
Although I like the idea, what is not clear to me for the moment is the ratio of the number of interested people to the needed time to invest to make the paper understandable by many. For instance, I could discuss my latest paper here, but who will be really interested by learning about the jet activity around a diphoton resonance as a test for QCD at the Large Hadron Collider? My guess is maybe 2-3 people at most.
Without many peers on the system, I honestly don't think it will work as this may be too specific for the general audience. But I am now curious and I may give it a try :)
Also keep in mind that the NSF is now requiring an Education/Outreach section of every single grant application, and blogging can fit that. NIH has not followed suit yet, but they may in the future.
It is nice that they include education/outreach section. But is NSF doing something at a bigger scale like events and stuff?
When they devote a portion of every grant they fund to education and outreach, that will add up and involve more people than any one-time event. They also fund portions of NOVA and most of the other documentary series.
That's very good! This should be part of any proposal, as conservation of data and making them available to anyone.
True. i understand that the time and effort may be a lot more massive in trying to make it interesting and engaging to the layman. And yes, i found a few more papers that I found interesting. Will be writing on them as well :-)
The number of interested readers includes the people who would read the dense jargon-filled journal article. They will also appreciate the clarity, even though they may not admit it. And in my opinion, becoming a better communicator can only be a waste of time if your work is classified.
Unless of course, you are not yet tenured, in which case it can get you fired, as it did me.
Oh my... I hope you can somewhat maybe tell your story here if you could...
I am already convinced to give it a try. However, writing articles on steemit takes me time (as you probably noticed, I am not posting much), which is something I don't have much those days. You may therefore need to wait for a week or two :) .
Two good examples, one a round-robin blog from an NSF center
and one from one of their individual researchers, who has experienced a good deal of success through blogging, called 'Living in an Ivory Basement'
https://www3.beacon-center.org http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/
Nice! Thanks for the recommendation! Will hope over to those blogs you mentioned. Saw that you have read and commented many articles of mine. Thanks! Really appreciate it :-)
me follow you and upvote
if you can back upvote my blog ?
https://steemit.com/photography/@zein/the-beach-where-i-live-original-work
Seriously, this is not the way to engage.....
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