Summer 2012 Research Blog Experiment

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During the summer of 2012, I am going to conduct a personal experiment to evaluate the benefits of maintaining an online research blog. My goals for this summer blogging project include:

• Getting back into the habit of writing down and organizing my thoughts about my research.
• Connecting with other researchers with similar interests.
• Helping my students understand the research process at a meta-level.
• Evaluating the benefits of research blogging to see if I will continue it past the summer.
• Becoming more confident writing in online communities.
• Learn more about the technology and mechanics of maintaining an online journal and explore/evaluate the different online communities such as facebook, twitter and others.

In the past I have had very positive experiences keeping a research journal. For example, I have many engineering and research notebooks from many projects as early as middle school. During the writing of my dissertation, I also found the book “Writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day” by Joan Bolker to be extremely valuable. Following advice from Dr. Bolker made writing my dissertation not only bearable but also extremely enjoyable. I recommend this book to all my students at any stage of their writing process but especially early on in their graduate careers to help them build the habits they need to be good writers.

However, since finishing my dissertation, it has been hard for me to get back into the habit of writing and I miss it. I have started personal research journals using different programs such as Microsoft Word, LaTeX, Evernote and others. The problem is not the technology but my motivation to keep writing and stay in the habit of writing. My hope is that by maintaining a research blog this summer, I will re-establish a writing habit and perhaps be of benefit to others who might read the blog. Some things that I am worried about this project:

• I have a mild form of dyslexia and it makes me nervous to publish anything that has not been proof-read by someone else, and it’s embarrassing when people point out spelling and grammatical mistakes that I really can’t see.
• I am curious about being scooped. Some experienced colleges have cautioned that I should keep my research ideas secret until they are published, to preserve my intellectual property. I guess I have more faith in the scientific community, but it will be interesting to see whether this proves to be a naïve perspective (or if my ideas are even worth stealing!).
• How much time will this take? Where is the balance between gaining from time spent blogging about research, and wasting time that could be spent on doing research?
• What are the consequences of “thinking in public”? Once a blog has been posted, it can’t be truly removed. What if I unintentionally offend someone, or say something that is so stupid it becomes negatively viral?

At this point, I am going to make a commitment to write in my daily journal every day and make a post to my research blog every week. Lets see how this goes.

• Dirk

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