The Scholar’s Space

A short article in Walt Crawford’s, “Cites & Insights 7:9 – On the Literature” explores the contribution of blogs to scholar’s communication today. Crawford’s field is Information Science.  The analysis would be different for different fields, but the overall point he makes is an important one: whether official or not, we are all in the midst of examining and assessing the value to us as scholars of publications that are not reviewed by our peers *before* they are published, but only afterwards in the exchange of comments and discussion that follows a blog post, for example. We assess this value as we decide what to read and how much time to spend on what we read. We assess this value when we cite to sources like blogs and wikis. We assess this value when we decide how best to convey important information, ask questions including research questions and disseminate the results of our research, to our peers. The article is worth reading as it sheds light on a process that is well underway, in many fields, but that still is not acknowledged in tenure and review processes. There we still seem to believe that only one process adequately assures us of the quality of our scholarship. Is that belief still justified?