seafood

Blogging research

I loathe the strictures of academic writing. So much so that it affects my ability to get started on a piece of writing. In this sense, I enjoy the openness of blogging. First, I love its "chatty" nature. There is a certain immediacy to publishing on the web that makes me feel like my intended audience is, so to speak, in the room with me. I therefore feel perfectly justified in describing concepts it pretty much the manner I would in real life. i.e. in a chatty tone. I realise this can lead to unnecessary verbiage; I'm willing to concede that formality can bring succinctness. But it can also lead to a whole lot _not_ being said.

Academic writing always assumes that its reader is an equal, not necessarily a first time reader. It also seems to assume that the author is an absolute authority on what he is writing, which I think is not only invalid much of the time, but also unnecessarily restrictive. Often I feel it would be nice to be able to admit one's uncertainty openly, not solely for the purposes of honesty but also to signal to readers a potential gap they could fill with their own perspective.

It's true that good academic writers already do this, but they do it sparingly. I believe the reason for this is that an academic publication primarily documents finished work. That is, it is the end result of a long process of experimentation, learning, questioning and revision. However, I feel a need to document my ideas at an earlier stage. What I've been doing up until this point is attempting to write my ideas in an academic style in the hopes that once they're complete I'll just have to come back to the document, polish it somewhat, and have a finished, publishable item. It's a nice idea in theory.

What invariably happens though is that I come to a point in the writing where I'm thinking one of two things: "I wish I could go into more background detail here, for my own sake as well as the reader's but that would that just be pandering to them, wouldn't it?" or "This work is incomplete but I've really got to get these ideas down. How exactly do I write that in an academically suitable way?" These perceived strictures hold back the writing. Wouldn't it just be better to get the ideas out there for comment as soon as possible?

Also, as much as I respect the formal peer review process, I think there is room for comment at a much earlier stage, at that point where being made aware that you have said something illogical or not well thought out is much less of a blow to the ego. I think online publishing would be an excellent forum for this kind of discussion.

But I can also see some cons to online publishing. Anyone can read and post their comments. I worry that the addition of the "masses" to my readership might dilute the quality of any feedback I get back. However, I'm heartened by the observation that although this happens to some degree on the mailing lists I participate in, it doesn't really affect my appreciation of them or how useful I find them.

To conclude this short message, I'm going to give this a shot. If it doesn't work I haven't lost all that much. I do worry (but only a little) that I could have the effect of damaging one's reputation. It can't be denied that the ego is heavily involved in the academic process. The present system of thought dissemination seems to favour those who hold back until their work is polished, but I'm arguing that there's a lot a value in a uncut gem.