Why Academics Should Blog

Not only hipsters and music lovers spread their idea via writing an online blog. In fact, blogging can help bring your thought process to the next level. The online community is huge, and quite sophisticated. Check out Sam Roggeveen's article "Why academics should blog".

Why academics should blog, by Sam Roggeveen

The blogosphere is the gift that keeps on giving. Just this morning, I discovered Stephen Matchett's The Common Room, a higher education blog run by The Australian which looks to be well worth bookmarking.
I was particularly interested in Matchett's lament from Tuesday that academics aren't trying hard enough to get involved in the public policy debate. There are notable exceptions, says Matchett, but 'in general economists and social scientists write for each other and publish in journals, which the Australian Research Council rates and university managements accordingly expect.'

Given that professional incentives for academics are so skewed towards publishing in journals which only other academics read, maybe it's remarkable that we get even our current level of participation in public debate.
Incentives are clearly important, but one conclusion I'm flirting with, having edited this site for more than four years, is that there might also be cultural factors at play within institutions. The vast majority of academics who write for The Interpreter are from the ANU, which seems to have a far more vibrant blogging culture than any other Australian university, at least when it comes to various specialties we might lump together under the term 'international policy' (New Mandala and East Asia Forum are but two examples). I don't know why, but blogging seems to have become normalised at the ANU in a way that hasn't happened at other Australian universities.

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