I don’t know if it can in academic research, (well, maybe…it has for blogger extraordinaire, Bora), but blogging might boost your resume if you’re looking for a career in science journalism.
Chembark (Paul Bracher, Harvard chemistry grad student) recently noted that Chemical and Engineering News has been recruiting chemistry bloggers as columnists, and more recently as a staff editor. Carmen, a chemistry grad student at Princeton announced last month she’s been hired by the magazine as an editor. Of course, not every ordinary blogger will get a job with a field’s leading trade publication. Paul is quite complimentary of Carmen and her blog, saying that her posts were similar in style and content to the magazine. She was able to use her blog to get her thoughts and writing out there and to gain publishing experience (even if it is self-publishing).
So (hint, hint, nudge, nudge to our community of bloggers on Nature Network and to other blogging hopefuls out there), the moral of the story is, start/keep blogging and do it well, because you never know who will be reading you and what doors it might open.
I am glad to see that the trend has spread to science bloggers! A number of food bloggers have earned book deals in the past two years.
I have a “blogging got me a job” story as well. I used my genetics blogs to network and hone my reputation as an industry expert. All this led led to consulting opportunities in my area of interest!
Why not…we have bolgger for evey thing..name anything…job is an fantastic option…it is just like spreading valuable words…words should be authentic… good to see those scraps…
How about PhD opportunity? I wrote to a professor in National University of Singapore (NUS) and mentioned my blog (the old one on Blogspot.com), he replied and offered me a PhD scholarship, without asking for more certification such as a TOEFL score, publication or a detailed CV with GPA and ranking data. He was ‘impressed by the knowledge of supramolecular chemistry’ I had shown in my blog…Unfortunately I have still one year to obtain my MS so I couldn’t accept his offer immediately.
But I also hear that some professors don’t appreciate his/her students keeping blogs – they should not have time to do so. Blogging is regarded as ‘random thoughts by random people’ and thus contribute little to the serious research activity. So despite a nice scholarship-from-blog experience, I won’t mention a word of my blog in applying letters in the future.
Andrew and Hsien, those are good stories and example of how blogging about science can be useful to science and scientific careers, not just “goofing around online”. The problem I think is that many people paint “blogging” with a broad brush and lump in people who blog about what they ate for breakfast (not that I’m knocking food blogs, of course…there are many that are quite good) with those who blog about real science.
I think we’re unfortunately caught in a bit of a vicious cycle: bloggers who fear being criticized for their blogging blog anonymously. But anonymous blogs don’t help to increase the credibility of blogging much either. So what can we do to get out of this?