This week’s readings made me think about what may keep some new researchers from blogging. I agree with Hitchcock that “A lot of early career scholars, in particular, worry that exposing their research too early, in too public a manner, will either open them to ridicule, or allow someone else to ‘steal’ their ideas” (Hitchcock, 2014). I think such concerns can be addressed by remembering that research benefits from peer review. In addition, new researchers should not feel restricted to only writing about certain subjects. Thus, it is important not to “let ideas about propriety or academic silos limit you” (Perry, 2015).
Hitchcock, T. (2014, July 28). 3 Rules of Academic Blogging [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/07/28/twitter-and-blogs-academic-public-sphere/
Perry, D. (2015, November 11). 3 Rules of Academic Blogging. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/3-Rules-of-Academic-Blogging/234139
As a person who is young in research, I do understand how intimidating it can be for people to put themselves out there. One of the things we always talk about in our field is “leaning into discomfort” because that is where growth takes place. I believe that blogging is also one of the leaning into discomfort things to do for a lot of people. Appreciate your point of view on it. Hopefully we can get you all warmed up to the idea of it. 😀
It is an unfortunate part of our society that our first inclination when putting our work out there is that it is going to get stolen. It is really important to remember that the way our society/research/etc grows is through collaboration and idea sharing. Hopefully, we can stop being so seemingly egotistical and remember that sharing our thoughts is imperative!
One piece of advice about blogging that I got from a new investigator in my department is that blogging can be so much more than just presenting your current research work. He suggested that a blog can be used as a way to find your voice in writing about science, or it can be used to review new and exciting works in your field. Once the blog is going and you feel more confident on what you can share, then you can start talking about your own research and even data if you use a preprint server to store manuscripts before they are published by a journal.
This is interesting – I do think blogging could be a useful outlet to explore research topics of interest that do not directly relate to current and ongoing projects. Thus, opening it up to peer-review in order to hone thoughts for future research project ideas.