“A certain measure of righteousness
A certain amount of force
A certain degree of determination
Daring on a different course.”
– Rush, “One Little Victory.”
Because I took the week off from blogging last week to apply for a grant, I had forgotten all about the Aid Bloggers’ Best Awards (ABBAs) until this afternoon, when I read Lawrence Haddad’s post on the topic. Lawrence’s Development Horizons blog came in fifth in the “Best Academic Blog” category.
What really — and I mean, really — surprised me was that this blog came in second in the “Best Academic Blog” category.
Make no mistake: with 59 percent of the votes, Chris Blattman is the clear winner in that category, and I came in a distant second with 14 percent of the votes. But given the sheer size of Chris’ readership (with almost one million page views per year, he also won in the “Best Aid Blog” category), this second place feels every bit like a victory. So I want to thank everyone for their vote. Thank you!
Krugman on Scientific Publishing and the Peer Review Process
So now we have rapid-fire exchange via blogs and online working papers — and I think it’s all good. Work circulates even faster than it did then, there are quick exchanges that can advance understanding, and while it’s still hard to break in, connections aren’t as important as they once were and the system is much more open.
But, you say, doesn’t this allow a lot of really bad economics to circulate? Yes, but is it really any worse than it used to be? As I’ve tried to explain, the notion of journals as gatekeepers was largely fictional even 25 years ago. And I have a somewhat jaundiced view of how the whole refereeing/publication system has ever worked; all too often, it seems to act as a way for entrenched doctrines to blockade new ideas, or at least to keep people with new ideas from getting tenure at a good school.
The major problem I see now is the disconnect between promotion and the real nature of intellectual discourse in the Internet age. But the quality of the discussion, it seems to me, is if anything higher than it was in the good old days.
That’s Paul Krugman, in a post commenting on the trend toward open science, which the New York Times discussed earlier this week, and which my colleague Don Taylor blogged about yesterday.