Are blogs academic publications?
Tony Hirst at the Open University in the UK asks an important question:
Should blog posts count as academic publishing?
I think the answer is clear: yes, if their content is academically valuable. There's no reason to assume that blogs (or wikis or whatever) are intrinsically less valuable than traditional forms of academic discourse, such as conference presentations and journal manuscripts.
But while the answer is quite simple, its implications for academic publishing – and for research itself – are complex and profound. What does this mean for citing and archiving, funding assessment, and the way that research is conducted? Frankly I don't know, but it will be interesting finding out.
