John Hawks has an excellent essay up (I don't know how correct it is, never having been on a tenure track) on the merits and problems of being an academic blogger. Do read it.
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Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel has a post on the limiting of job searches that is an excellent example of the problems with the academic mind-set:
The short summary: postdocs and other academic job candidates are disqualifying themselves from even applying for certain positions because:
1. they don'…
I'm a very, very lazy blogger, and I'm particularly bad about updating my sidebar links. I finally got around to putting a few months' worth of new science-y blogs into the sidebar, though, so you might want to check them out, if you don't already read them:
Angry Physics "Presenting the "other"…
Let's consider a hypothetical situation.
Professor Jones, who has tenure, learns that a graduate student in a different department has conducted a class in a manner he finds objectionable. So Jones writes a blog post in which he attacks the graduate student by name. He uses incendiary rhetoric…
I saw a bunch of people yesterday tweeting approval of John Hawks's complaint about academic timidity when it comes to blogging:
The bottom line is: People need to decide if they want to be heard, or if they want to be validated. I have long been an associate editor at PLoS ONE, and once I edited…
I've had friends on tenure track at a research university, Penn State. One of my friends was borderline in his published research. His advsors said that his student reviews were too good. He was told that he spent too much time helping students while he needed to spend more time on research. His advisors wanted to see average student reviews instead of exceptional student reviews. He was borderline in regards to the number of peer reviewed publication per year and he was denied tenure.
Papa Beaver says that a research university might frown upon Assistant Professors spending time on a blog unless the respective Assistant Professor publishes twice as many peer reviewed articles than expected. Consult your local tenure advisers if exceptions apply.