Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? forum: topic
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My blog and my CV: should the former be included in the latter?
Roberto Keller
Monday, 11 May 2009 11:36 UTC
What are the pros and cons of including ones blog as part of the curriculum vitae to be submitted when applying for a high-level grant or research job? Since referees and search committees will probably google the candidate anyways, does it matter?
I am a freshly minted PhD who has been keeping a blog since November 2008. I model the style and content of my blog to the ones I find most attractive: field specific (in my case entomology, systematics and taxonomy); posts with original content documenting ongoing research; posts on published papers of interest; news (conference announcements, new developed tools and resources, highlights from other blogs); and the occasional trivial filling. Even when posting trivial matter I try, for the most part, to keep in mind that I am building a digital presence from which I will be judged. I don’t have any doubts about the benefits of blogging.
However, as I look forward into establishing myself in academia, those initial questions regarding my CV keep coming to me. I recently asked an adviser in the grants and fellowship department of my institution (who was slightly younger than myself) those questions. Her reply was “A blog? Oh, so you are interested in switching from research to science popularization.” Is the blog stigma that pervasive even among young people?
Partial answers to this topic have been answered in the posts and theirs comments below, but I will like to hear some opinions on this specific matter.
Benefits of blogging?
Can Science Blogging Enhance Your Research Life?
Why do we blog and other important questions, answered by 34 science bloggers
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having a blog hosted on Nature Network or ScienceBlogs would give a very positive impression about the candidate compared to having a self-hosted one.
Hi, Roberto. This is a really interesting thought, but needs its own post! My metric for assessing blogs is different (and still forming), but I think this would make an interesting discussion;-)!As for your original post, not that Cameron needs it, but ditto on everything he said. A recent hire here (not science, but newly minted PhD) was made partly on his interest in “web 2.0”, but it was for a teaching position, not a classic tenure-track appointment. I teach students to tailor applications to positions, and we usually recommend they look up the folks sitting on their interview committees. Makes it easier to successfully match personal experiences with info hiring committees need to make decisions.
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I don’ want to repeat the things that other people commented. But I have to say that I totally agree about the advantage of having a blog should have in a CV, or in a interview. However, I also feel that academia is far from being interested about blogging, and even more, it feels like a lack of seriousness the fact of having a blog.
A good discussion would be how do we make to give more relevance to scientific blogging, beyond blogs.nature, scienceblogs, and a few more webpages about the subject. -
Good point Pablo. I realized that the person in query is aware of the benefits of blogging (albeit, past 48 hours) and hence the main thrust lies in relevance of blogging. As I said earlier, the world of academia is resistant to change, right from the delivering lectures to laboratory/workstation protocols. I shall not look at the relevance of blogging at nature or other blogs, but the scenario and pattern of thinking needs to be evolved at the universities and institutes where the universal method of information transfer is still followed.
One can look at the institutional blogging where all the professors, researchers, graduate students come together. I call this as hierarchical culture of blogging. This pattern is already followed by professors in renowned universities like Harvard.
Let us say, in a classroom the learning is generally unidirectional and the thought process of every graduate listener is different. The queries generated during the lecture session can definitely be brought in the classroom, but at times, the dynamics of the setting shuns it. This is where blogging can serve as a platform for the students, aspirants, and novice researchers to discuss the matter. Institutes can thrust upon making blogging as a source of information by making scientists exposed to wider audience rather than their own students and peers.
All in all, the relevance can be enhanced by changing the pattern of universities and institutes where even in the century of internet, one cannot evade the universal pattern of information transfer. Albeit, it is a difficult proposition.
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@Roberto – This has been a great discussion board for me since I am in the midst of writing my CV to apply for postdocs!
I agree that having a blog on something like Nature Network makes the decision whether to include it on your CV or not a bit easier.
Still many of my own 20-something peers, when asked, have seemed a bit skeptical of my including it on an application. Being a blogger, I can’t always fully understand their reasons for hesitation, but it causes me to then be hesitant and wonder at this opinion of blogs?!
However, my mind may be made-up since a recent “googling” of myself revealed that my NN blog was the first two hits. So I may as well be “loud and proud” about it on my CV. :)
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lets see……firstly I believe that blogging has great future..but….we only can give that future…..
Let us, we who are doing science, give a new interpretation to blogging…..e.g. Let us give it a very serious sounding name…let us be very disciplined and critical, just like a research paper, while writing our blogs……the less serious posts can be put in a secondary section seperately…lets not call it a blog….you can publish original research there and get it commented by several experts…the date of post and last update guarantees your credit for the work……
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