Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016

Blogging on the tenure track

Greg Gbur

Faculty striving for tenure often experience the greatest pressures of their careers: pressure to achieve in the laboratory and the classroom, as well as pressure to do outreach. How can writing your own science blog help you? Could it be the icing on the cake of your tenure package? Greg Gbur explores the advantages and difficulties of blogging while on the tenure track.

Scientists pursuing the tenure track in academia have a lot to worry about: they must supervise students, conduct research, write papers, teach classes, help manage the department, and get funding for their research, among many other commitments. It may seem incredible, but plenty of academics choose to take up blogging on top of all these tasks. Others have thought about starting a blog, but wonder if there are any benefits to it (besides the satisfaction of reaching out to the public) that can outweigh the risks to tenure. With that in mind, I aim to explain why one might want to blog on the tenure track and, equally important, to suggest how to do it while minimizing risks to one’s tenure case.

I started my blog Skulls in the Stars back in 2007, roughly two years into my position as an assistant professor of physics in North Carolina. In the beginning, I ran the blog pseudonymously, though I never worked too hard to hide my activity. To receive tenure, one must typically put together a package of documents showing one’s strong contributions to research and teaching, as well as service to the university and one’s professional community. When I went up for tenure myself in 2009, I included a description of my blogging activities in both the “teaching” and “service” portions of my tenure package. The complete document was well received, and even used as an example for other assistant professors in the following year. Since then, blogging and social media have become an accepted and rather important part of my academic life. Some of the advice I’ll share stems from plans I put in place before tenure, and other ideas occurred only in hindsight, or were accidental!

How

Let’s start with the “how” discussion first. Suppose a new faculty member decides to write a blog, or has an already established blog before taking the new job; how should he or she make sure it is treated as a benefit and not a detriment to the university? This is not an unreasonable concern: though blogging and other social media activities have become much more accepted even in the last five years, a new professor still runs the risk of having it viewed as an activity that takes away from the already heavy load of important work that needs doing. One’s overall strategy should involve showing officials at all levels of the university that blogging adds to academic life, and doesn’t detract from it.

To achieve this goal, make sure that your official duties take priority over blogging, and that your “research,” “teaching,” and “service” components of your tenure package are beyond reproach. This is somewhat obvious, but easy to forget in the enthusiasm of writing fun blog posts. I tend to view blogging as a particularly delectable dessert that comes after a tenure package dinner: the dessert can’t take the place of the meal, but can add to a particularly good one.

Closely related to this is making it clear that blogging is an extracurricular activity, and not one taking away from ordinary work time. I emphasized this in both word and deed. On the “deed” side, my online activities were mainly done at night, after work, for the first couple of years. Since getting tenure and recognition for my efforts from the university, I’ve felt more comfortable developing blog posts during work hours. On the “word” side, I would occasionally mention in blog posts and department activities reports that my blogging was an after-hours effort.

Tenure decisions are made by one’s colleagues, beginning with a decision by an appointed RPT (reappointment, promotion, and tenure) committee and often including a vote by the entire department. This means that it is highly important to connect with departmental colleagues and make sure they understand whatever you’re doing, including blogging. In the (thankfully few) cases where I’ve seen faculty fail to get reappointed or to get tenure, they’ve typically been very isolated from the rest of the department. Such faculty members are unable to find allies because either nobody has a vested interest in their work, or nobody is even sure what they’ve been doing. I told my colleagues about my blogging gradually, starting with those I was friendliest with and working my way through the rest of the department. I also invited a number of colleagues to guest blog for me, which was not especially successful, but making the effort to be inclusive may have made people more sympathetic to the idea of blogging in general.

Department colleagues are far from the only allies to be found on campus. All universities have public relations offices that are tasked with promoting the university, its research, and its faculty. Traditionally, communications workers in these offices have served as intermediaries between the university faculty and the public by, for instance, writing press releases about exciting research developments. Getting faculty to help with this process, however, is often like pulling teeth, and I’ve found that workers in communications are delighted to find scientists who are active promoters. Helping with a university’s social media strategy is a great way to make oneself a unique and indispensable asset.

There are many different ways a faculty member can help with outreach beyond promoting one’s own research. When word of my blogging got around, I was approached by a research communications specialist about organizing and running a social media workshop sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Science. This was done pre-tenure, and gave me some official sanction for my blogging efforts, which in turn made me more confident about putting blogging in my tenure package. In recent years, I’ve also volunteered to help with my university’s yearly Science and Technology Expo, a free event open to the community (http://cri.uncc.edu/research-innovation/2014-science-technology-expo). It can be worthwhile, too, to see if one’s university has a series of popular talks for the general public, and volunteer to give one. At the very least, I would recommend contacting the university’s public relations office and finding out how your work can fit into the university’s larger promotional strategy.

It is worthwhile to connect with people outside one’s university as well. It is now possible to find established researchers blogging about almost every conceivable field of study, and I suggest getting to know people in one’s field by interacting through blog comments, Twitter, and other social networks. Social media is an excellent place to ask questions and share ideas, and good conversations online can leave a positive and lasting impression on colleagues. Not only can these researchers act as virtual mentors for one’s own online activities; they can also be sympathetic referees on one’s final tenure package. For those people, like me, who find meeting people at professional conferences awkward, an initial introduction online can smooth the process considerably. Just be sure to be polite, sincere, and not too pushy in your online interactions, especially with very distinguished researchers who may already be stretched thin with a large number of other commitments.

It is also important to connect with professional organizations. Many organizations have now jumped wholeheartedly onto the social media bandwagon, and are very eager to find members who are themselves active online. Connections with these groups can add professional gravitas to one’s online activities; in my final tenure package, I was able to note that my blog was listed on the blogroll of the American Physical Society’s own blog, Physics Buzz. As a bonus, professional organizations will occasionally offer registration discounts or other incentives for participants willing to be official bloggers for a meeting.

Connecting with events, organizations, and activities specifically attuned to online science communication will help give one’s efforts an official appearance. There are now numerous physical meetings about online science outreach on the local, regional, and global levels; participating in these meetings or even presiding over a session is a nicely tangible accomplishment.¹ A number of professional organizations and science magazines offer opportunities to write guest blog posts, which can bring in more readership to one’s own blog as well as work as a semi-official publication. Though they seem to be gradually going out of style, some “blog carnivals” are still going that one can volunteer to host on one’s site; these carnivals are monthly or semi-monthly collections of links to posts on a particular topic. Participating in a carnival will demonstrate that a faculty member is part of a broader community of writers. I myself, with some encouragement, started a blog carnival about the history of science known as The Giant’s Shoulders (http://ontheshouldersofgiants.wordpress.com), which ran for six years and which I counted as an achievement in my tenure package.

It should go without saying that all achievements of this sort should be documented for tenure. Blog statistics, especially numbers of blog comments, are important metrics that demonstrate the impact of one’s efforts. Even modest stats, say two hundred page views a week for a year, add up to numbers that are quite impressive in comparison with ordinary academic citations. Very few researchers can claim to have had their papers read more than ten thousand times before tenure, though a single blog post can reach that number very quickly!

Selling blogging to an academic department becomes easier as one gets more established online and one’s influence becomes greater. For those who are more cautious, it is not unreasonable to begin blogging under a pseudonym, which provides some level of protection from online gaffes and allows the faculty member to step away easily if the activity doesn’t feel right. I started my own blog under a pseudonym, though by the second year I felt established enough to share my work with colleagues (I realized, too, that one must inevitably come out from hiding if one wants credit.) Keep in mind, though, that no pseudonym offers perfect protection from being “outed”: one should always keep blog behavior in accordance with acceptable university practice. The best guideline: if you wouldn’t say it in a professional setting, be wary about saying it online.²

Why

Why would a faculty member want to put in the effort, on top of his or her already busy workload, of creating and maintaining a blog? Hopefully the most important answer is that the researcher genuinely enjoys connecting with people online about science. Beyond this, however, there are a number of other practical benefits to blogging on the tenure track.

I began blogging with one significant goal in mind: broadening my scientific knowledge. Having a blog is great motivation for reading about research in not only one’s own field but also areas outside of one’s immediate area of expertise. Reading about a wider variety of research topics can in turn give a scientist new ideas and lead to novel research. I am now developing a pair of small research projects that were motivated by reading for my blog.

Writing publicly about other people’s research is also a great way to make new scientific connections and, potentially, find new collaborators. Scientists are typically delighted to read positive and accurate descriptions of their work, and it is not unusual for them to comment on the blog or contact a writer directly about such a post. (Keep this in mind if you decide to write something harshly critical.) Demonstrating a deep understanding and enthusiasm for a scientist’s research also makes the possibility of collaboration more likely; at the very least, it puts a blogger “on the radar” of the scientist. I personally have not yet had any significant blog-based collaborations, but a number of esteemed scientists are now aware of my research after first encountering my blog writing. Such familiarity can lead to opportunities for presenting research at conferences, for helping to organize conferences, and for journal editing, among other things.

Perhaps most important, blogging has been a great platform for improving the quality of my own writing, and it comes with free and honest feedback in the form of comments on blogs and other social media. Seven years of blogging have taught me how to write and explain complicated science in a nontechnical manner: my early posts are on simple topics and filled with equations, while my more recent posts are on complicated topics and contain no equations. Being able to talk science in an entertaining and nontechnical way is of course a very useful skill in the classroom; what surprised me is how much better my technical papers and conference presentations became as well. Successful talks and papers should always have an introduction understandable to the broadest audience possible; my blogging work has helped me write more accessibly.

Improving your writing skills may produce its own tangible benefits: it can lead to offers to write popular science articles for magazines and possibly even books. Thanks to my blogging efforts, I have written several articles for Optics and Photonics News (http://www.osa-opn.org/home) and the French magazine La Recherche (http://www.larecherche.fr). Both opportunities came from editors who read my blog. There is a real need, especially in professional science organizations, for scientists who can write well about technical topics, and blogging is a way to freely advertise one’s writing skill. Plenty of writers have also used their blog as a platform to develop, advertise, and sell a book proposal: because of posts I have written, a publisher has expressed interest in working together on a book.

Blogging, and online communication in general, have also become remarkable tools for sharing and solving problems as a community. On Twitter, where “followings” can connect you to thousands of people at once, it is possible to get answers to questions, assistance finding research papers inaccessible at a particular institution, or even help solving a scientific mystery. To take just one example of many: Alex Wild, who blogs at Myrmecos (http://myrmecos.net/2012/02/01/an-unusual-wasp), took a picture in early 2012 of an unusual-looking wasp in Australia. Unable to identify it, he posted the picture on Twitter, and within twenty-four hours learned via the North Carolina State University Insect Museum that he had taken what may be the only live photographs of that insect.

A few other surprising advantages of blogging are worth mentioning. First, it can push academic scientists into entirely new and unexpected fields of study. When I started blogging, I had a mild interest in the history of science, but the response and feedback from early posts led me to become actively involved in its study, and I am now accepted as an amateur historian of science among the professionals. Second, and perhaps most delightfully, blogging allows academics to connect in a less formal manner with students and the public. The first panel discussion on blogging that I co-moderated, for example, was with an undergraduate and a graduate student. We were equals in running the session—and I learned a lot. Having an online presence helps a scientist keep one foot outside of the “Ivory Tower,” making him, or her, a better public academic. In an age when science is often attacked as being unimportant or untrue, it is important for academic scientists to be able to explain and justify their own work to people of all backgrounds and professions.

If carefully and thoughtfully orchestrated, blogging can give a faculty member on the tenure track the perfect training for interacting with people at all levels inside and outside of academia. A dedicated blogger becomes an outreach resource for the university—a faculty member who can communicate in a way that most cannot. While blogging on the tenure track, your goal should be to convince faculty and administration at all levels that you can fulfill that role.

Greg Gbur is an associate professor of physics and optical science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He writes about physics, optics, and the history of science at his blog Skulls in the Stars. His blog writing has appeared in The Open Laboratory in 2010 and 2013 as well as in The Best Science Writing Online in 2012.

Greg is based in Charlotte, N.C. Find him at his website, http://skullsinthestars.com, or follow him on Twitter, @drskyskull.

Notes

1. See, for instance, the long-running ScienceOnline series of meetings, http://scienceonline.com, and some of its offshoots such as ScienceOnline Oceans and ScienceOnline Climate.

2. The cases of David Guth (http://kansasfirstnews.com/2014/04/02/ku-professor-returning-after-leave-over-controversal-tweet) and Steven Salaita (http://kansasfirstnews.com/2014/04/02/ku-professor-returning-after-leave-over-controversal-tweet) are noteworthy: both have had their careers suffer due to angry statements on Twitter.