A few months back, our fearless leader Matthew had a post referencing a discussion at Weatherson’s blog Thoughts, Arguments and Rants about the role that blogs are starting to play in philosophy. I want to revisit this issue in light of a recent event (and at Matthew’s encouragement—where would we be without him?).
On 12 March, I initiated a post on “Divine Eternity and Libertarian Free Will”. At the time, I was working on a paper attempting to show that the doctrine of divine eternity is compatible with God knowing and responding to the actions of free agents even if libertarianism is true. The discussion for this post ran to about 30 or so comments, and (if I remember correctly) led to a few spin-off posts. In subsequent months, I continued to work on this paper. Among other things, I tried to incorporate the most relevant aspects of the discussion from Prosblogion.
On 11 May, I announced in another post (“Truthmaking and Divine Eternity”) that an updated version of this paper was on my web-site and invited comments. A number of Prosblogion regulars were kind enough to send me comments on this draft.
I was informed this morning that this paper has been accepted for publication in a future issue of Religious Studies. In the acknowledgements footnote, I thank by name those individuals that were kind enough to give me comments on drafts of my paper. But I also include the following: “I am also appreciative of the readers of the Prosblogion philosophy of religion blog for numerous conversations related to the contents of this paper.” Furthermore, on 18 May I posted on “Simple Foreknowledge vs. Open Theism on Providence” (this was supposed to be round 1 of many—I’ve unfortunately been too busy to begin round 2). My idea with this post was to use the ensuing discussion as the basis for a future article. The blog gave me a venue to try out an initial version of my argument as well as see what sorts of objections I would need to respond to. I still hope to develop that discussion into a free-standing article in the relatively near future.
I strongly believe that blogs can have a very positive impact on philosophical research (though not always—I continue to wonder what philosophical purpose many of the political rants at Leiter’s blog serve). There seem to me to be a number of ways that this can happen, some of which I’ve already mentioned. Here is a partial list of ways that I think blogs can help in research: (i) provide a venue to test ideas, (ii) provide a venue to get feedback on drafts of papers, (ii) provide a source of ideas, (iv) provide a resource for finding and becoming acquainted with arguments and others’ work, (v) general philosophical stimulation, (vi) networking. I’d like to see if others have any additions to this list and what the readers of this blog think about the relationship between blogs and research (either in general or in terms of publishing more specifically).
Technorati Tags: fearless leader, eternity, libertarianism, referencing, libertarian, rants, encouragement, incorporate, spin, blogs, philosophy, blog, led, god
Technorati Tags: fearless leader, eternity, libertarianism, referencing, libertarian, rants, encouragement, incorporate, spin, blogs, philosophy, blog, led, god
Congrats on the publication Kevin and I agree, blogs like this one can be helpful in many ways.
I'm surprised--no takers for 2nd-order blogging.
Kevin,
Your point about blogs and research is well-taken. As you say, Weatherson made suggestions along these lines some time back. You're certainly right that contributions to blogs find their way into papers/presentations, etc. whether consciously or not. And blog discussion definitely inspires philosophical work.
One real messy question concerns citation. I think this came up on TAR as well. You kindly cited PB, but there are no conventions or (I think) even expectations about citing posts or commentary. On a different question, it would be nice to see more credit given for posting/commentary academically. No question, there's a lot of repetition in postings/commentary and, also no question, there's a lot of bad blogging. But there's also a lot of very good work that ought to be given academic credit. This work ought to count as a line on a vita somewhere, it seems to me. But I have no idea how to do that in some principled way.
Kevin is too generous by far! I just grease the wheels around this place. Sorry for not responding sooner. I'm up to my neck in boxes preparatory to my move on Thursday.
The reason I asked Kevin to post about his experience is that our segment of blogosphere needs more discussion of role of blogging in the academy. There have been occasions in the past where I've invited folks to participate on Prosblogion but they've begged off because they simply didn't know how to use the blog as a tool. I think Kevin outlined six of the best reasons for participating in a blog like ours, but Mike brings up two of the most frequent concerns that I hear about blogging; how do I cite it and how do I get credit. The other concern that comes up is over ownership of ideas.
I always find the citation complaint a little puzzling. How would you cite a conversation you had in your office, over lunch, at a conference. It seems quite common for people to cite/thank the beneficial discussions at seminars, conferences, and workshops. If individuals in those discussions where particularly helpful then you should single them out in your paper. If you work a particular comment into a paper then it should be footnoted. So, in general I don't see the citation problem as being a particularly large problem.
It might be nice to see people get credit for blogging, but I'm not hopeful that it will happen. I'm not sure what the grounds would be for giving someone credit for blogging. Philosophers have only been blogging for a few years, so I think it's a little early to tell what role they will play in the field. However, I tend to think of blogging primarily as a tool and not as a form of publication. When used as a tool it yields the six benefits that Kevin outlines, but as a form of publication... I'm not sure what to think. I actually try to discourage people from thinking of blogging as publishing because it inflates expectation such that they think they should put out conference ready posts. I don't think this is plays to a blog's strength. Blogs should point you to timely news/journal items and provide some analysis. They should be a place to hatch new ideas, sound off, ask questions, get feedback, etc. The only way I can really see listing a blog on my CV is if the blog where to rise to a level that is so consistently good that it was well esteemed by the community.
Here is a rather thorny problem that I got from Tom. The problem arises when you throw out the nugget of an idea. Let's say it's a fairly original idea at that. You get a lot of good feedback in the comments, you interact with the commenters, and you refine the idea, developing arguments, etc. You go back to your office and type everything up into a nice little paper. Should you simply thank the commenters or should you invite them to be coauthors?
I've been packing for days, so I reserve the right to retract any part of the above comment! :)
Matt,
I think the citation problem can be larger than you suggest. It is not always just a matter of thanking someone as in personal correpondence. There are problems with quotation, where you might want to note an important disagreement/agreement in your interlocuter's own words. Or where you want to make it clear that someone is committed to some position or other. There are conventions now for quotations from certain web publications such as the standford encyclopedia online. But there seem to be no conventions for doing so from blogs (or, none that I know of). I guess that's the worry I had.
Your concern about coauthorship is difficult online and offline. It's hard to know when large contributors (in blogs, personal conversations, email, etc.) have become coauthors.
If it helps here is the MLA's answer to How do I document sources from the Web in my works-cited list? I think the important point is that someone can find the source in the future. So the important thing is that you provide enough detail for the quoted source to be found. Citing a blog entry is pretty straight forward.
Lastname, Firstname, I. "Title of individual blog entry." [Weblog entry.] Name of Weblog. Sponsoring organization -- if any. Date posted. (URL to permalink.) Date accessed.
Citing a comment is a little more verbose, but still fairly straight forward. I'd think something like the following would suffice.
Poster's Lastname, Firstname, I. (or screen ID) "Title of comment, or first few words." [Weblog comment.] Date comment was posted. Title of blog entry. Author of blog entry. Name of Weblog. Sponsoring organization -- if any. Date blog entry was posted. (URL that displays the comments in context, if possible.) Date you accessed the comment.
Almeida, Mike. "I think the citation problem..." [Weblog comment] 27 June 2006. "Blogging and Publishing." Kevin Timpe. Prosblogion. 23 June 2006
If these seem suitable maybe I should place a permanent reference to them like the Stanford Encyclopedia does.
A couple of follow-up questions and comments.
What's wrong with acknowledging a blog along the same lines as a conference? The latter is commonly done, sometimes as a whole, sometimes a commentator is named individually, sometimes particular individuals are named specifically if they have offered particularly good/insightful comments (at least this is my standard practice). I've even cited email correspondence on occasion when I thought it was warranted. I guess if I wanted to quote a comment someone made on a blog in a paper, I would ask if they minded. If not, and I thought it warranted, I might actually quote and provide the URL (actually, I think Matthew just gave a good indication of how this could be done). If they preferred or if the situation was such that it was better, I might just indicate that 'so and so raised this objection' or even the more impersonal 'one might object at this point....'
I too think it would be great if individuals received credit for (good) blogging. One place it might work in is in letters of recommendation and 'collegiality' issues. I know that one of my colleagues indicated my regular participation with blogs in her letter for my reappointment. Of course, blogging partners tend to be geographically dispersed, so this may not always work. While many people (myself included) put comments on papers at conferences on their CV, do you think that this actually gets them any real credit when it comes to matters of tenure or hiring? I would think that the personal relationships and connections that come with giving comments would help here more than the actual process of giving the comments--and I would think the same about blogging. But even if I don't get official 'credit' for blogging, I still am greatly benefited by it, and so think that it indirectly helps me in such matters.
About co-authorship. I don't really understand how this works in general (since I've never done it yet, though I have two such projects in the works). But again I wonder if blogging is significantly different in this area than converstaions over beer at the APA, email discussions, follow-up ideas that come from conference comments, etc....
I guess that, for me, a lot of these issues look like good issues, but I don't see them as particuarly more problematic for blogging than for the other types of inter-personal interaction that we do on a regular basis.
The citation problem is actually less of a problem with blogging than with conversations, because you can forget who gave you what ideas if it's not written down. On a blog, you can just go back and check.
On the co-authorship issue, it seems to me that I could get a whole bunch of ideas from other people who have no interest in writing them up, and if I do the work to write it up and then cite them for the ideas then it's fine for me to be the sole author of the paper. I'm the one who's writing it, and anyone reading it will be able to see that the ideas are not mine when they're not mine. The problem with blogging, though, is that you have someone's exact words to cite. Does that change things? I don't know what I think about that.