Academic blogging: a risk worth taking?

It’s commonplace for blogs to be republished without attribution – so is academic blogging a threat worth taking? Photograph: the Guardian

I started writing a weblog based mostly on my doctoral investigation, about the lives of female offenders in Victorian England, in April 2012. In component, I designed WaywardWomen so that I had a forum in which I could investigate the themes and ideas of my thesis. It was my hope that writing a weblog would aid me turn into a greater researcher, a greater author and a more thorough thinker.

Even more crucial than that, I hoped it would act as a area the place I could share and talk about my research with others, be they fellow students, academics, or individuals with a far more standard interest in my subject. Soon after all, in the encounter of a modifying academy, university staff and students alike are acknowledging the necessity of raising awareness of their analysis, and selling its merits, outdoors greater training.

My posts would usually examine a situation research of a single of the girls I investigation, or check out a specific variety of crime that girls were involved in. To my delight, in the 12 months and a half of me posting, my weblog did properly, sharing my investigation with far more individuals than I could have ever hoped to attain in person, and permitting me to examine and debate my ideas with men and women about the globe.

In June this 12 months I was sent a hyperlink to an report on a tabloid newspaper website titled Edwardian Rogues Gallery, by a pal and former lecturer, suggesting I might locate it of interest. When I opened the report, I was shocked and horrified, to find a post I had published on my blog just weeks earlier staring back at me, with someone else’s name placed at the top. Worse still, I identified the exact same submit reproduced on other sites, underneath the name of much more authors.

At very first, my overriding emotion was that of disbelief. Although I knew that some news organisations had been far from scrupulous in their reporting, I had constantly assumed this would cease short of reproducing other individuals work with out permission or acknowledgement. But right after taking to Twitter to get some far more opinions, I was saddened to hear that, yes, this can take place, and yes, it occurs all the time.

Indignant, I resolved to contact individuals responsible. I emailed both the news agency that originally circulated the publish and the two nationwide newspapers, 1 regional title and worldwide internet site that took it. I also attempted several times to make contact with the people who had put their names over my perform. These attempts were, of program, all in vain. Wherever I turned, I was met with a irritating wall of silence. I quickly realised the overpowering likelihood that I would by no means get a response from any person involved or be provided any acknowledgement for my perform. That is when I took the choice to partially shut down my blog.

I didn’t want to. For more than a year I had invested time into generating some thing I was proud of, and into selling it at every single opportunity. I couldn’t bear the imagined of removing it all, so I left a handful of posts, like the 1 in question, and a cautionary tale to other bloggers, on the web site. I’ve not been back because.

Blogging gives a essential technique of communication and networking for PhD college students and early career researchers. Blogs can increase awareness of a researcher and their work in the early phases of a career, prior to they have a extended record of publications, or grant applications behind them. But with an surroundings present in which your investigation can be taken and employed by other people – for profit – with no your permission, and with no accreditation, is it a danger well worth taking?

Regrettably, there are handful of successful actions you can consider to avoid related plagiarism of your operate. Obtaining dwelt on it for some time, I never think the cause my website was reproduced without my consent was due to the fact I hadn’t manufactured it clear ample that I objected. People responsible for exploiting academic blogs are professional and well practiced at their trade. Sadly, in the existing climate, the very best way to defend your ideas and your research would seem to be to be not explicitly sharing them with an unknown audience.

Despite the fact that I restricted access to big parts of my blog, I didn’t get rid of it. I have resolved, in time, to use it once more – the options and advantages blogging presented are just too excellent to very good to pass up completely. Nonetheless, I have however to operate out what format my blogs may well get, and what the content of my posts may be. Right up until something is completed to confront the shameless exploitation of the work of early job academics, it can not be anything at all I thoughts dropping.

Lucy Williams is studying for a PhD in background at the University of Liverpool – comply with her on Twitter @Lucy_E_Williams

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Academic blogging: a risk worth taking?