Where does blogging fit into promotion and tenure (or should it)?

By Joshua Mugg

Research, Teaching, Service. Those are the three areas under consideration when we go up for tenure or promotion, at pretty much any institution. Where does blogging and social media presence fit in? I have benefited from reading blogs and discussing posts with folks online (especially now that I am at an institution where I am the only philosopher!), and I suspect others feel the same way. It is plausible that at least some philosophy blogging should count, but where? I don’t really blog about research, and even for those who do, some reviewers might point out that blogging rarely has any rigorous peer review process (though some blogs do have editors). Most of the blogging that happens here is not direct toward our students. So it is hard to put it into teaching (though those blogging about teaching might be able to). Finally, it is not clear blogging serves our university directly (as being part of a committee does) or can really count as community engagement. So does blogging have to count as a purely extra-curricular activity? Perhaps not.

Yesterday I met with a sociologist colleague (Stephanie Medley-Rath) who is an active blogger (see here) about where blogging should fit on our faculty annual reviews at our institution (which are used to determine raises and, sort of, for promotion and tenure). The American Sociological Association has issued a report on just this issue, which I think philosophers can benefit from (see here and here). The core insight of the review, to my mind, is that all blogging and social media presence need not (an indeed, cannot) be placed into one of above categories. The difficulty is that there are three distinct assessment criteria:

1. Type of content (e.g., public communication can include original research, synthesis, explanatory journalism, opinion, or application of research to a practical issue). Regardless of the type of communication, however, an overriding criterion might be whether a given piece is well grounded in sociological theory and research.
2. Rigor and quality of the communication (e.g., peer-reviewed, vetted by an editor, or a non-reviewed blog post). The main criteria here might be whether the piece communicate effectively through clear writing, foregrounding of policy implications, and compliance with the format, technology, and standards of effective engagement with public audiences.
3. Public impact (e.g., number of readers or views, evidence that practitioners found the work to be helpful, or documentation of the role the work played in policy changes).

The report adds:

“No single measure of reach or impact is sufficient, but solicitation of letters from affected parties outside of academia can be especially effective in conveying impact.”

Even at a single blog (say, the Philosophers’ Cocoon), there are multiple types of content. Some posts here concern teaching (here, here and here), and so those posts could count as scholarship of teaching and learning. Occasionally, there are posts about research (such as the new Philosophical Discussions series). Of course, most of the blogging here concerns the profession. This, it seems to me, should count in the same category as reviewing papers or conferences: it is service to the profession. The upshot is that ‘blogging’ does not fit into a single category. We have to distinguish post by post depending on its content.

One reason I wince at the idea of blogging going into the same category as research is that it clearly is not as rigorous as a peer-reviewed article (my most recent publication went through two rounds of R&R!). The ASA acknowledges this, but points out that my wincing confuses type of content with rigor of content. A post is not equal to a peer-reviewed article, but neither does a conference presentation, which also counts under research.

Finally, blogging and social media has one nice feature over many traditional journals: we can track impact. We can say exactly how many people and how many views our blog posts received.

I am curious if others are having similar conversations at their institutions. Social media is here to stay, and it seems academics need to carefully think about how it should (or if it should) figure into hiring, tenure, and promotion. Let me know what your thoughts are!

Comments

[Dilemma]

Joshua,
I want to present a dilemma (of sorts) that draws attention to the problem with giving any consideration to blogging for promotion, tenure, etc.
First some qualifications. No one at a Research University is going to get tenure or a promotion on the basis of their blogging.
So if blogging matters, it can only matter to non-research institutions.
Now, if someone at such a place has publications in peer reviewed journals, that is what will secure their tenure and promotions. The blogging is just something else, but of little or no consequence.
Alternatively if someone at such a place does not have any refereed publications, or few such publications, then the blogging surely should not make up for their shortcoming in scholarship.

[Joshua Mugg]

Dilemma-

Your dilemma leaves open the possibility that blogging on research, when it is of a sufficient quality, might tip the scale in borderline cases. I agree that at an R1 (or anywhere for that matter) blogging will not serve as a substitute for peer-reviewed articles. Nor should it! However that is because of rigor and quality rather than type of content. Conference presentations count for something in P&T, just not as much as publications. No one is going to get tenure because they did a conference presentation at some small local conference, but it should still count for something. Blogging that is research in type might count somewhere below conference presentations.

Note also that blogs do come in different varieties of rigor. The blog my colleague contributes to has an editor and their posts are referenced in some of Pearson’s intro to sociology materials.

[Shane]

I see blogging as on par with publishing in pop culture and philosophy collections. It might be considered a contribution to the service requirement for tenure, but not research. It is a form of public engagement and that's service, not research (though blogging and writing for pop culture and philosophy collections admittedly can and often do involve research).

As an aside, my blog was shut down by my institution when a piece I wrote criticizing the institution was published on Truthout.org. And I have tenure! So much for academic freedom and the protection of tenure. So be careful what you wish for. Sometimes I would like my institution to pay less attention to what I write for non-academic audiences.