Exposing myself to critique
This is a reflection about writing. I came across this post, through the GO_GN network Twitter feed – “Remember a condition of academic writing is that we expose ourselves to critique” – 15 steps to revising journal articles“.
Blogging and writing in academic journals is a process of exposing myself. Doing this in open educational spaces is on this continuum of exposition where I judge and accept the risks inherent in each. Blogging, for me is less risky. It has a level of anonymity to it that journal writing doesn’t have. This is actually paradoxically oppositional when you really think about it.
Blogging is open. Anyone can find it, comment on it, critique it, shred it and criticize it. My blog posts are topics that come to mind, randomly connecting to my ideas, thoughts, and actions. They are rough connections to others’ randomly connected ideas, thoughts and actions. They are a spider’s web of gossamer, building threads from one ‘branch’ to another. The risk that many others can criticize is very real, but rarely happens or even gets found! It’s the scale of attention, I think. Because there are so many blogs and bloggers, the risk of any one of my random writings gaining much traction or critique is relatively small. It’s rewarding when someone or several ‘others’ find meaning in my writing and explore/expand on ideas with their own blog posts, linking back to my writing, or even podcast conversations about the work.
Journal writing is closed, found and shared in limited ways. It’s between me, the peer reviewers, and the editors. It’s found in potentially restricted access journals. It is, however, much more daunting since it is writing that is scrutinized for accuracy in grammatical structure, ethical attribution and honesty in ideation. So why does this type of writing scare me more than posting a blog? It’s shouldn’t be any less daunting, but the benchmark of acceptability with a dressing of academics shifts who and what I’m becoming through this writing and publishing.
I’ll conclude that this is, as Pratt (2008) indicates for qualitative research writing, the key is finding a balance “between story and study” not as an issue of “either or” but the potential inherent in “both and” (p. 505). My dependance on blogging and social media as a means to communicate thinking, ideas, comparisons, investigations or just plain meandering thoughts needs to be balanced with some honest, academic contributions through journals and publication.
References
Lupton, D. (2017, January 18). “Remember a condition of academic writing is that we expose ourselves to critique” – 15 Steps to revising journal articles. Retrieved from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/01/18/15-steps-to-revising-journal-articles/
Pratt, M. G. (2008). Fitting oval pegs into round holes: Tensions in evaluating and publishing qualitative research in top-tier North American journals. Organizational Research Methods, 11(3), 481-509.
