Following this week’s the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigating matters of European Politics and Policy –Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson (also the creators of this blog!) discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out of restrictive publishing loops

Dunleavy, Patrick

Gilson, Christopher

English

Ahead of the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigating matters of European politics and policy – next week, Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out of restrictive publishing loops

Gilson, Chris

LSE Research Online

blo gs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impacto fsocialsciences/2012/02/24/five-minutes-patrick-dunleavy-chris-gilson/by Blog Admin February 24, 2012Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson:“Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important thingsthat an academic should be doing right now”.Ahead of the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigating matters of European politicsand policy – next week, Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson discuss social scientists’obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academicsbreak out of restrictive publishing loops.LSE’s Public Policy Group already run two academic blogs and you are preparing tolaunch two more in the coming months. Yet many academics are still sceptical aboutthe value of blogging. What is it  that gives you so much confidence in academicblogging as a means of dissemination and engagement?One of  the recurring themes (f rom many dif f erent contributors) on the Impact of  SocialScience blog is that a new paradigm of  research communications has grown up – one thatde-emphasizes the tradit ional journals route, and re-priorit izes f aster, real- t ime academiccommunication in which blogs play a crit ical intermediate role. They link to research reportsand articles on the one hand, and they are linked to f rom Twitter, Facebook and Google+news-streams and communities.  So in research terms blogging is quite simply, one of  the most importantthings that an academic should be doing right now.But in addition, social scientists have an obligation to society to contribute their observations to the widerworld – and at the moment that’s of ten being done in ramshackle and impoverished ways, in pointlesslyobscure or charged-f or f orums, in language where you need to look up every second word in Wikipedia,with acres of  ‘dead-on-arrival’ data in unreadable tables, and all delivered over bizarrely long-windedtimescales. So the public pay f or all our research, and then we shunt back to them a f ew press releasesand a lot of  out-of -date academic junk.Blogging (supported by academic tweeting) helps academics break out of  all these loops. It ’s quick to do inreal t ime. It taps academic expertise when it ’s relevant, and so lets academics look f orward and speculate inevidence-based ways. It communicates bottom-line results and ‘take aways’ in clear language, yet with dueregard to methods issues and quality of  evidence. In multi-author blogs like this one, and all our blogs, ithelps create multi-disciplinary understanding and joining-up of  previously siloed knowledge. (Twitter is ahuge supplementary help, in f orcing academics to communicate key messages in 140 characters!)Academic blogging gets your work and research out to a potentially massive audience at very, very low costand relative amount of  ef f ort. With platf orms like WordPress (which we use here), you can set up a blogand have your f irst article online in no more than 10 minutes. Recent research f rom the World Bank hasshown that blogging about an academic article can lead to hundreds of  new readers when bef ore therewere only a handf ul. Blogging in multi-author blogs is a great way to build knowledge of  your work, to growreadership of  usef ul articles and research reports, to build up citations, and to f oster debate acrossacademia, government, civil society and the public in general.You can see that your longest established blog, British Politics and Policy, is being read across themedia, the civil service, Parliament and government in the UK. Did you foresee this impact whenyou started it  as an election blog in 2010. Why do you think that blog in particular, has been sosuccessful at penetrating these professions?When our BPP blog began lif e as the ‘LSE Election Blog’ in2010, we were testing the waters a bit. From the outset, itquickly became clear that there was huge enthusiasmf rom readers, f rom LSE academics across manydepartments, and f rom other universit ies and othersectors entirely (like the media and pollsters) f or this kindof  init iative.That immediate response gave us the conf idence toconvert the blog into British Politics and Policy and make ita permanent ef f ort at knowledge exchange. Even then wenever really predicted that by now we would have over7,000 readers every week and nearly 9,000 Twitter f ollowers!We believe that BPP has been successf ul because we try relentlessly to promote public understanding ofsocial science and to go deeper into issues than conventional media allow. On Brit ish TV and radioacademics (at least up until now) have tended to be the ‘talking heads’ in interviews and news articles,of f ering short comments, with litt le detail and no links to their wider work. Brit ish newspapers are also runchief ly by people with English literature or history backgrounds, who seem to view data and charts andevidence as anathema.Yet we appeal to the huge and growing population of  well-educated graduates who know a lot aboutpolit ics and policy areas and want to know more. A f ew years ago, these f olk were f locking to the BBCsupersite, but now government cuts and newspapers crit icisms have f orced the BBC to cut back its textof f erings to a shadow of  its f ormer self .So we built the BPP blog as a space f or more in-depth but still highly topical comment f rom academics atLSE and across the UK, and f rom the many skilled practit ioners in NGOs, charit ies, the media, polit ical lif eand think tanks who work tirelessly to sustain better quality polit ical debate. We hope it ’s proved its valuealready as a place where people can come to f ind new ideas and evidence-based arguments around theissues of  our t imes. It ’s also proved usef ul f or media f olk to use our blog as a source of  inf ormation abouta story, or to f ind the right academic expert to comment.You use a multi-author format across each of the blogs. Can you tell me, and those new toacademic blogging in particular, why you favour this over a single-author blog format?According to some good estimates, perhaps 80 per cent or more of  the single-author blogs on the web arecurrently inactive, or are ‘desert blogs’ that very rarely updated. And this is because people start them withhigh hopes, in determinedly individualistic mode, but f ind that hard to sustain af ter a while. Coming up withf resh content, day af ter day or week af ter week, is hard work f or any academic, especially in the currentclimate where there are so many other demands on people’s t ime. But if  you don’t post regularly, in arhythm that is clear to readers so they know when to come back, then it can be hard to keep things going.We don’t think single-author blogs are a sustainable or genuinely usef ul model f or most academics –although all praise to the still many exceptional academics who can manage to keep up the continuousef f ort involved. By joining together and f orming multi-author blogs, academics can mutually reinf orce eachother ’s contributions. We have 350 authors now on BPP, so if  they blog with us twice a year we can posttwo posts a day without too much dif f iculty (as we do). And there are many synergies – f or example,readers who come f or a blog on polit ical developments may stay reading f or comments on social policy, orconstitutional ref orm. On a multi-author blog, you of ten benef it f rom the content that others provide, andthey of ten benef it f rom yours.Your new venture covers European Polit ics and Policy, under the ‘brand name’ EUROPP – and isready to launch next Wednesday February 29t h. How has this concept evolved from BPP and whatreaders do you hope to attract?Again our mission remains to increase public understanding of  the social sciences, but with EUROPP in thecontext of  European governance and policy change. And we interpret ‘European’ very broadly here to covernot just the European Union but also the 30+ countries of  Europe, and those in its neighbourhood regions.Of  course, pan-European issues, like the f inancial crisis,and the EU’s f oreign relations, are very interesting and‘hot’ right now. So we are launching at this t ime to helpcover the March EU leaders’ summit and developmentsaround it. But beyond that there are lots of  f ascinatingand important developments certain to happen across thecountries of  Europe over the rest of  this year, beginningwith the French elections, and we will be trying to cover asmany of  these as we can in an evidence-based way. It ’sgoing to be a huge learning curve f or all of  us involved inthe blog, but we have Sara Hageman f rom LSE’sEuropean Institute as Academic editor of  the blog andgreat buy- in f rom a big community of  academics at LSE and across Europe.We want to attract the widest possible range of  readers who are interested in Europe; polit icians and civilservants f rom across the continent and beyond, academics, journalists, students and cit izens who areinterested in European af f airs. And as with the BPP blog, our range of  disciplines and topics will be reallybroad, covering economics, media, culture, polit ics, social changes, and history and theory usef ul f or theanalysis of  contemporary changes.  We’ll also be reviewing a great range of  new academic and seriousbooks on European issues, every week.Finally, what are your three short but sure-f ire t ips for academic bloggers working to improvetheir craft?Make sure your t it les tell a story, and your f indings are communicated early on. Academics normallylike to build up their arguments slowly, and then only tell you their f indings with a f inal f lourish at theend. Don’t do this ‘Dance of  the Seven Veils’ in which layers of  irrelevance are progressively strippedaside f or the f inal kernel of  value-added knowledge to be revealed. Instead, make sure that all theinf ormation readers need to understand what you’re saying is up f ront – you’ll make a much strongerimpression that way.Remember the Web is a network, not a single-track railway line – and not everyone uses the web inthe same way. So once you have a blog post, do everything you can to get the key content out todiverse readerships who want to see it. Post your links to Twitter (several t imes, at dif f erent t imes ofthe day) and Facebook. Let people subscribe by RSS or email.Talk to your readers. Encourage people to comment (but only post their comments af ter moderation)and respond to comments and to Tweets. Talk to people on Twitter and Facebook when they discussyour work. And be reciprocal, open-minded and f air in sharing your content with others and linking totheir work – improving the public understanding of  social science is a huge collective good f or allsocial scientists. We can all f lourish together in the new paradigm f or academic work.  EUROPP – an academic blog discusses European politics and policy will launch on Wednesday, 29th February.The PPG also runs the British Politics and Policy blog and is preparing to launch the LSE Review of Books bloglater this Spring.Related posts:1. Five minutes with Andrew Miller MP: “It ’s important that people handle inf ormation in an intelligent way,and social science has a huge role in this.”2. Five minutes with The Incidental Economist Austin Frakt: “Only 0.04% of  published papers in healthare reported on by the media, so blogs and other social media can help.”3. Academic blogging and collaboration make demonstrating pathways to impact an easier matter4. Five minutes with Mary Evans: “Gender equality is of ten overlooked, and with it women’s part in publicdebates.”5. Should you enter the academic blogosphere? A discussion on whether scholars should take the timeto write a blog about their work

Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson: “Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now”

blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/03/03/five-minutes-with-patrick-dunleavy-and-chris-gilson/Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson:“Blogging is quite simply, one of the most importantthings that an academic should be doing right now”.Mar 3 2012Following this week’s the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigatingmatters of European Politics and Policy – Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson(also the creators of this blog!)  discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread theirresearch to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out ofrestrictive publishing loops.LSE’s Public Policy Group already run two academic blogs and you arepreparing to launch two more in the coming months. Yet many academicsare still sceptical about the value of blogging. What is it that gives you somuch confidence in academic blogging as a means of dissemination andengagement?One of the recurring themes (from many different contributors) on the Impact ofSocial Science blog is that a new paradigm of research communications has grownup – one that de-emphasizes the traditional journals route, and re-prioritizes faster,real-time academic communication in which blogs play a critical intermediate role.They link to research reports and articles on the one hand, and they are linked to from Twitter,Facebook and Google+ news-streams and communities.  So in research terms blogging is quitesimply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now.But in addition, social scientists have an obligation to society to contribute their observations to thewider world – and at the moment that’s often being done in ramshackle and impoverished ways, inpointlessly obscure or charged-for forums, in language where you need to look up every secondword in Wikipedia, with acres of ‘dead-on-arrival’ data in unreadable tables, and all delivered overbizarrely long-winded time-scales. So the public pay for all our research, and then we shunt back tothem a few press releases and a lot of out-of-date academic junk.Blogging (supported by academic tweeting) helps academics break out of all these loops. It’s quickto do in real time. It taps academic expertise when it’s relevant, and so lets academics look forwardand speculate in evidence-based ways. It communicates bottom-line results and ‘take aways’ inclear language, yet with due regard to methods issues and quality of evidence. In multi-author blogslike this one, and all our blogs, it helps create multi-disciplinary understanding and joining-up ofpreviously siloed knowledge. (Twitter is a huge supplementary help, in forcing academics tocommunicate key messages in 140 characters!)Academic blogging gets your work and research out to a potentially massive audience at very, verylow cost and relative amount of effort. With platforms like WordPress (which we use here), you canset up a blog and have your first article online in no more than 10 minutes. Recent research from theWorld Bank has shown that blogging about an academic article can lead to hundreds of newreaders when before there were only a handful. Blogging in multi-author blogs is a great way to buildknowledge of your work, to grow readership of useful articles and research reports, to build upcitations, and to foster debate across academia, government, civil society and the public in general.You use a multi-author format across each of the blogs. Can you tell me, and those new toacademic blogging in particular, why you favour this over a single-author blog format?According to some good estimates, perhaps 80 per cent or more of the single-author blogs on theweb are currently inactive, or are ‘desert blogs’ that very rarely updated. And this is because peoplestart them with high hopes, in determinedly individualistic mode, but find that hard to sustain after awhile. Coming up with fresh content, day after day or week after week, is hard work for anyacademic, especially in the current climate where there are so many other demands on people’stime. But if you don’t post regularly, in a rhythm that is clear to readers so they know when to comeback, then it can be hard to keep things going.We don’t think single-author blogs are a sustainable or genuinely useful model for most academics– although all praise to the still many exceptional academics who can manage to keep up thecontinuous effort involved. By joining together and forming multi-author blogs, academics canmutually reinforce each other’s contributions. We have 350 authors now on British Politics andPolicy (BPP), so if they blog with us twice a year we can post two posts a day without too muchdifficulty (as we do). And there are many synergies – for example, readers who come for a blog onpolitical developments may stay reading for comments on social policy, or constitutional reform. Ona multi-author blog, you often benefit from the content that others provide, and they often benefit fromyours.Your new venture covers European Politics and Policy, under the ‘brandname’ EUROPP. How has this concept evolved from BPP and what readers do you hopeto attract?Again our mission remains to increase public understanding of the social sciences, but withEUROPP in the context of European governance and policy change. And we interpret ‘European’very broadly here to cover not just the European Union but also the 30+ countries of Europe, andthose in its neighbourhood regions.Of course, pan-European issues, like the financialcrisis, and the EU’s foreign relations, are veryinteresting and ‘hot’ right now. So we are launchingat this time to help cover the March EU leaders’summit and developments around it. But beyond thatthere are lots of fascinating and importantdevelopments certain to happen across thecountries of Europe over the rest of this year,beginning with the French elections, and we will betrying to cover as many of these as we can in anevidence-based way. It’s going to be a hugelearning curve for all of us involved in the blog, butwe have Sara Hageman from LSE’s EuropeanInstitute as Academic editor of the blog and great buy-in from a big community of academics atLSE and across Europe.We want to attract the widest possible range of readers who are interested in Europe; politiciansand civil servants from across the continent and beyond, academics, journalists, students andcitizens who are interested in European affairs. And as with the BPP blog, our range of disciplinesand topics will be really broad, covering economics, media, culture, politics, social changes, andhistory and theory useful for the analysis of contemporary changes.  We’ll also be reviewing a greatrange of new academic and serious books on European issues, every week.Finally, what are your three short but sure-fire tips for academic bloggers working toimprove their craft?Make sure your titles tell a story, and your findings are communicated early on. Academicsnormally like to build up their arguments slowly, and then only tell you their findings with a finalflourish at the end. Don’t do this ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ in which layers of irrelevance areprogressively stripped aside for the final kernel of value-added knowledge to be revealed.Instead, make sure that all the information readers need to understand what you’re saying isup front – you’ll make a much stronger impression that way.Remember the Web is a network, not a single-track railway line – and not everyone uses theweb in the same way. So once you have a blog post, do everything you can to get the keycontent out to diverse readerships who want to see it. Post your links to Twitter (several times,at different times of the day) and Facebook. Let people subscribe by RSS or email.Talk to your readers. Encourage people to comment (but only post their comments aftermoderation) and respond to comments and to Tweets. Talk to people on Twitter andFacebook when they discuss your work. And be reciprocal, open-minded and fair in sharingyour content with others and linking to their work – improving the public understanding ofsocial science is a huge collective good for all social scientists. We can all flourish together inthe new paradigm for academic work. EUROPP – an academic blog discusses European politics and policy launched this pastweek. The PPG also runs this British Politics and Policy blog and is preparing to launch the LSEReview of Books blog later this Spring.You may also be interested in the following posts (automatically generated):1. Patrick Dunleavy to give evidence to House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reformtoday2. Five minutes with Mark Blyth: “Turn it into things people can understand, let go of theacademese, and people will engage”3. The REF doesn’t capture what government wants from academics or how academic impacton policymaking takes place4. Safeguarding research ethics must be key to academic work, particularly when aiming tocreate external impacts on politics and society

Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson: “Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now”

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