489 words on Uni
Lilia Efimova wonders Why weblogs are rarely used to document research. This question came to my attention recently as well and my best guesses were:
I like the idea of having research weblogs:
Thus, I think the benefits from having research weblogs could be great. In fact they are as is apparent for anyone who ever bumped into John Baez's This Week's Findings in Mathematical Physics. It can be helpful for the reader looking something up, the reader following his work and probably himself for having to clarify everything to himself before writing it up.
Some of the Contras can probably resolved, e.g. providing your students and employees with easy access to weblogging tools (how much does it add to the IT budget?). And while at that the topic of what happens to your blog once you leave your university should be addressed as well. Others, like the fact that writing things down may be a lot of effort, could be harder to overcome. Also, the feasibility of blogging your research probably depends on the area you're in.
Addendum – I knew something had slipped my mind earlier on: It also seems that research blogging could be interesting vis-à-vis plagiarism. On the one hand it will be easier to know what everybody does and hence easier to steal it. On the other hand, the who giving-credit thing seems to work quite well in those parts of the blogging universe I've seen so far and with your thoughts written down in your blog you have already gone on public record with your ideas, should the necessity arise to settle an "I published first" scenario. But I haven't come up with anything that's worth stealing yet, so I can be quite relaxed about the issue...
Sven-S. Porst asks whether blogs are good for research and lists a few pros and cons. I used a “blog” for research quite a bit…
Sven-S. Porst asks whether blogs are good for research and lists a few pros and cons. I used a “blog” for research quite a bit…