Sebastien Paquet wonders, along with Andrew Chen, Jill Walker, and Professor Bainbridge about the benefits of research blogs as opposed to formal academic publication. I don’t quite see why it’s an either/or situation – for me, a research blog is a thinking, talking, networking tool and a shared interest magnet; academic publishing is a more rigorous (but far slower) way to disseminate concrete findings and test well-thought out arguments – and of course, formal publication is an absolutely essential CV building exercise.

The question in most of the above discussions is whether the public engagement, reflexivity, and contribution to current or emerging knowledge that come out of blogging should be CV-builders too. Perhaps, as others have said, in these ways blogging is analagous to giving conference presentations. I think that genuine research blogging should be a recognized part of each individual’s overall research profile. It isn’t entirely clear how something parallel to the peer review process can be shown to have taken place – but I think that weblogs could easily be asessed for quality (in terms native to the web, not to the print journal) and weighted accordingly. Sadly if this shift does take place, it won’t be soon (ah, but when I run the world…).