SWJ: praise given and reviews (merged)

[marct]

Hi Mike,

A couple of the posters have suggested that it might be a stretch to consider the SWJ community of platforms a model for future academic work. Rex rightly points out that at least for academics, blogging, forum moderation, etc., count for next to nothing towards the ticket punching that needs to be done for academics to progress.

It's an interesting question / problem set, Mike. I think it is made even more interesting by the shifts that are happening, partly as a result of the new communications technologies, in the very definition and meaning of "academic". For example, one of the major changes that I see happening is a revitalization of the older, "independent scholar" type of academic who may be affiliated with a university (or research unit), but whose career is not controlled by them.

And, just as a note, in my department, blogging does count for academic credit in the tenure system, albeit not for very much.

I think where some new media can easily fail is in trying to function as an alternative to peer-reviewed publication, or trying to replicate it in accelerated form, or trying to revolutionize how peer-review is done.

Hmmm. Back in 1996, I had the chance to sit down with a guy who used to be the main editor of the American Journal of Sociology and talk about this. One of the points he noted, and he had been involved in peer review and editing for about 40 years, was that editing had pretty much disappeared in most journals while peer review tended to be more about theoretical correctness than any type of scientific assessment of the merits of an article. His point was that the heavy pressure to publish when combined with the huge increase in numbers of academics and increasing specialization was what led to this sorry state.

Personally, I see the development of online, hmmm, let's call them "practitioner communities", can serve as an excellent model of where scholarly research could go (if not "academic" research). Over the past 40 years or so, the pressure to use theoretical models, rather than fieldwork and data, has increased (one of those cost issues), so a lot of social science work has been based on "data" that is increasingly divorced from the field actually being studied. Forums such as the SWJ/SWC and the CTLab () act as a work-around putting practitioners and scholars back in contact with each other.

Why compete? Blogs, discussion fora, online magazines, all offer opportunities to extend debate and enable new and non-traditional voices to be heard - many of them non-academic practitioners with plenty to say. The can also enable academics, who might never be read or hear by any but their own narrow realm of academic peers, to become members of broader communities of interests, to have their work and ideas introduced to previously estranged communities.

If the management side of things remains focused, and keeps the content focused - as with SWJ/SWC - then the model works, and can be applied in innovative ways.

I think this gets to the divide I was implying between "scholars" and "academics". Academics are, to some degree, locked into an academic career system based out of universities, while scholars are not necessarily so restricted.

I always viewed SWJ (and the forum) as a place for practitioners of war, and those concerned with war, to trade ideas for use in combat. I'm interested in knowing if anyone learned anything here that benefited them and/or their units in combat? This would be a good survey question. Does this forum have that feature?

Hi Ratzel, yes, we can run single question surveys. You would need to start a new thread to do so. Under the "Additional Options" at the bottom, there is a check box marked "Post a Poll". That will generate a multiple choice (max of 10 options) poll question. If you want to run a survey with more questions, shoot me a PM and I can toss one together on my own site and link it through for you.

Cheers,

Marc