Thursday, July 31, 2014

Hurtado on blogging and scholarship

LARRY HURTADO: Scholarly Work and the “Blogosphere.” Excerpt:
Scholarly work intended to have an impact on the field isn’t done in blogging. The amount of data, its complexity, the analysis and argumentation involved, and the engagement with the work of other scholars that forms an essential feature of scholarly work all require more space than a few hundred words of a blog-posting, or a few paragraphs of blog-comment. So, it’s rather unrealistic (not to say bizarre) for some commenters to assume otherwise.
Via James McGrath, who has comments on Larry's post here and who is pretty much in agreement. I agree too. The blog is not a natural format for producing original scholarly work, although sometimes it can be used that way (as noted, for example, here). And this discussion indirectly supports my decision not to allow comments on my blog (although Larry and James, bless them, do allow them).