Writing, Blogging, Publishing…If we fail to do that, do the ideas perish?
Learning Rocks (and does it ever) brings up the difficulty of entering discourse via academic publications, particularly because the publishing process is so (1) slow and (2) costly. Thought-provoking. I wonder about the academic game sometimes. It *is* a game. Some people get very good at playing it, and rise up in the ranks, and would feel threatened by a sudden change in the rules.
But aren’t a lot of ideas and opportunities for discourse lost by a reliance purely on this process as a means of sharing information and research? It’s so Gutenberg-Era. (attempt at humor). AECT keeps asking, what should AECT be…if AECT provides a network of researchers, educators, designers, and thinkers who are willing to engage in dialogue and make each other think, it doesn’t matter what it is. People who want to not just think about, for example, what is learning* but really be engaged in a discussion about it.
But then the question is, how to foster and reward discussants for their time and effort….and how to make sure that everyone who wants to participate feels included?
(*Warning, entering into this series of blog-versations could lead to brain fatigue).
Writing, Blogging, Publishing…If we fail to do that, do the ideas perish?
AECT keeps asking, what should AECT be…if AECT provides a network of researchers, educators, designers, and thinkers who are willing to engage in dialogue and make each other think, it doesn’t matter what it is.
Trackback by Systemic Change — March 24, 2005 @ 9:34 pm
While, as a fellow grad student, I understand the idea that some (even most) academic publications are slow and costly, there are many alternatives out there now. The number of web-based or electronic journals that are available are growing.
And as folks like Stephen Downes (and others) begin to reject the traditional, closed-source, journals, it gives these open source electronic journals more credibility. Even from those who haven’t given up on traditional journals, their participation in these online publications (Chris Dede’s article in Innovate comes to mind) again lend credibility to these publications.
In fact, many of these online publications have similar acceptanc/rejection rates as many of the more established journals. In the Social Sciences Citation Index, this is one of the measure used to measure a journals value.
While I don’t think that we have gotten to the point where blogs and personal homepages are acceptable sources, they can be great places to get ideas out there, discussed, considered, refined, etc.. As these ideas get refined and we attain new ways of looking at them, the likelihood that we will be successful in generating articles that can be published in journals, be them traditional or online, should increase.
Comment by Michael Barbour — March 26, 2005 @ 10:50 pm
Research and Publication
Recently, I have noticed a number of blog entries that have dealt with the topic of the difficulties in publishing in academic journals and the copyright issues associated with them (see Cognitive Dissonance, Who’s Deadline is it Anyway, Learning Rock…
Trackback by The Program — March 26, 2005 @ 11:57 pm
As Blogger doesn’t do trackbacks, see my post at http://mkbabd.blogspot.com/2005/03/this-whole-publishing-racket.html which references this entry.
Comment by Michael Barbour — March 27, 2005 @ 11:33 pm
[...] as we might call it the ‘academic source code’, or the Gutenbergian model (see Heather) academia still stucks in. There were/are several proposed remedies as nicely described by Michael. Most o [...]
Pingback by Learning Rocks » Do we need a review process in academia for publishing? — March 29, 2005 @ 12:28 am
As Blogger doesn’t do trackbacks, see my entry on the “Status of blogs” at http://mkbabd.blogspot.com/2005/04/status-of-blogs.html which references this post.
MKB
Comment by Michael Barbour — April 4, 2005 @ 10:53 pm