Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and New York Times blogger, and Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago evolutionary geneticist and personal/professional blogger, both have brief comments this week about the rise of academic blogging.
Krugman, whose post is prompted by an upcoming piece in The Economist, writes about academic blogging in relation to traditional gatekeepers in academia. On the whole, he sees the rise of blogging as quite positive:
What the blogs have done, in a way, is open up that process. Twenty years ago it was possible and even normal to get research into circulation and have everyone talking about it without having gone through the refereeing process – but you had to be part of a certain circle, and basically had to have graduated from a prestigious department, to be part of that game. Now you can break in from anywhere; although there’s still at any given time a sort of magic circle that’s hard to get into, it’s less formal and less defined by where you sit or where you went to school.
Jerry Coyne, whose blog’s title matches that of his recent book (Why Evolution is True), also talks favorably about blogs for an upcoming review in the European Molecular Biology Organization Reports:
Blogging gives you outreach potential that you really should have if you’re grant funded, and it’s fun. It opens doors for you that wouldn’t have opened if you just were in your laboratory. So I would recommend it. It takes a certain amount of guts to put yourself out there like that, but I find it immensely rewarding.
Blogging…good and good for you.
