Based on your knowledge about how to evaluate an blog, I would say a blog which one has multiple features (social networking features, RSS feeds,blogroolls, tags, and archives) and functions can be considered as a form of scholarship or news.
As we known the blogosphere has always included sites by students, professors, librarians, administrators and other university members, more scholars are now tying their blogs to their work-related activities and making the connection between online presence and career development. Mostly the function of the blog depend on the purpose about why it has been created. For instance, some blogs are create simply to collect information and provide to the reader more information regarding his research and interests. The collection of that type of information can include reference questions and answers, themed websites, links to news articles or reviews, MP3 files, videos, or artwork. However, not all blogs can be considered as good resources. This qualification as a scholars form will depend on why,how, and who wrote the blog and what kind of work cited have been cited to persuade the readers.
Academic blogs by definition tend to focus on professional rather than personal topics, showing explicit connections between blog content, research issues and academic life. Peer-reviewed articles are still the benchmark for academic professionalization, and some graduate students and early-career academics feel that blogging is a waste of precious time that could be spent on “legitimate” publishing. Because it’s a form of self-publishing that lacks peer review, blogging isn’t usually viewed as a legitimate form of scholarship.
The issues with the blog is that information can be scooped and no one want to use an information which can be copied from another source without knowing if this information is relevant or not.
In regard of blog which cannot be use as scholars source I will cite here the following that I found while i was doing my research on the following topic: the influence between gay parents and their children in their sexual orientation from Eric Harris ( Eric Harris. ( Fall 2009). Child and Infant development : Are gay parents better? Retrieved from http://psy3215.wordpress.com/)
The blog entry is not that rich based on the work cited which I found did not concise which the entry because I did not found this relevant. Eric Harris posted the following a resources :
http://www.gayrightswatch.com/2007/05/gay-parents-better-parents.html.
http://www.narth.com/docs/does.html.
However, if we check the following blogs , I would say that is a good form of scholarship and news because the writer has a knowledge about the topic he/she develop and discuss : http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://freegovinfo.info/
Very nice post, Carene!
ReplyDeleteA lot of bloggers tend to comment on current events, laws, speeches, and other happenings in their posts. A good blogger will provide links to whatever they write about, so that the reader can come to their own conclusions about the topic, and have the ability to comment, thus generating discussion on the topic.
If the blog deals with a theme that is viewed as relevant to the professor's teaching/research goals, it is possible that the university administration may accept it as legitimate scholarly publication if the writing meets the same evaluation criteria that their other works would receive, and if the blog gets traffic and recognition within the community of scholars to which the professor belongs. Sometimes the peer review process takes a long time, and by the time someone's research is published in traditional journals it could already be obsolete--especially in some sciences.
Professor Wexelbaum