Sunday, June 12, 2016

Blogademia

The term 'blogademia' was coined by Craig Saper (2006), before I fully understood what blogging was. I started blogging myself at the end of 2008, particularly my Critical psychiatry blog. Jolly et al (2016) reflect on 'blogademia' in a recent article in The Psychologist.

I've commented before on why I blog (Writing down thoughts on your mind for everyone to see and Blog resistance). Blogs are publicly available. There's no reliance on finding a publisher. Social media in general is user-generated, deinstitutionalised, interactive communication, which makes some academics wary of these publications as they are outside peer-reviewed journals.

Blogs do need to be of sufficient quality to merit publication. They can help maintain academic freedom in a university system motivated by commercial interests.

1 comment:

cobweb said...

There are journals which promote themselves as 'open access' but are in fact limiting access as only a few are freely available.the rest need subscriptions or expensive payments for single articles or are open only to members of institutions.
There are ways around this but why should it be necessary? (eg ask somebody who is critical of the closed world of some journals and does subscribe to forward a copy..)Would members of Critical Psychiatry risk annoying the Coll of Psychs by promoting that?