Why Professional Librarian Journals Should Evolve into Blogs

Marcus writes:

But something funny happened on the way to OJS: I became firmly convinced that the traditional journal model is antiquated for sharing research and knowledge among librarians.  A better course is to develop and nurture excellent blogs, with multimedia capabilities and guaranteed preservation of the postings. This could be an entirely new blog that starts from scratch, or an established journal that evolves into a blog. 

One of his arguments:

Peer review should be a post-publication process, rather than a pre-publication process that sometimes drags out for many months.  If physicists can post pre-prints that get discussions flowing quickly, why can’t librarians?

Read the whole post. I am particularly interested in this for two reasons: I’m on the tenure track and peer-review is important for me and much needed AND I’d like to see more and more opportunities for folks to get their ideas out there, get credit for them, receive feedback, and move forward.

Practitioners and students alike should be able to experience the value of the blogosphere and use it to expand their thinking.I know many great folks in the field are blogging and extending the conversation.I think  Librarians like Cliff Landis, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor who are actively pursuing scholarly endeavors and working to make their libraries better could certainly benefit from a peer-reviewed, blog-based community-focused “journal” environment to get credit for their work, etc. And it should count for those librarians on the tenure track even as the feedback rolls on.

Students too. I just read 15 papers from my Library 2.0 & Social Tech Class — top notch stuff approaching emerging technologies, foundational library practice and more. I’d certainly send many of them to Library Student Journal but I also wish for more channels for publication. 

Finally, as a recent editor of an issue of IRSQ, it amazes me how long it takes from a call for papers to the publication date. Another benefit then is rapid dissemination of content. Why wait months or years?