👓 Blogging, small-b, Big B | W. Ian O’Byrne

Read Blogging, small-b, Big B by W. Ian O'Byrne (W. Ian O'Byrne)

I’ve written quite a bit about blogging, and my creation of open education resources over the past on this website. A lot has changed in my blogging habits, and general digital identity construction since those posts. Most of the response that I get from colleagues, students, and tenure committees is “why in the world would you share that stuff openly online?” As such, I’ve been meaning to write up a post documenting my thinking about why I do…what I do.

One of these days I’ll get around to writing up my larger thesis about using a personal website for an all-in academic samizdat experience to rid academia of the siloed mindset its been stuck in for ages… This post comes relatively close to laying the underlying groundwork for some motivation.

As an academic, I need to regularly have empirical research publications in top-tier, peer-reviewed journals. Nothing else matters. Many senior colleagues bemoan the fact that I need to play double duty…yet the system still exists.

And why can’t your own blog count as a top-tier, peer-reviewed journal?

and serve as pre-prints to work that may live later on, or always exist in their current format

Thinking of a personal site as a pre-print server is an interesting concept and somewhat similar to the idea of a commonplace book.