By allowing easy instant communication across geographical and political boundaries the Internet has been a great way of building communities. With its heavy emphasis on communication through the written word the scholarly community has been a huge beneficiary of this and for academics their global discipline-based group is as important, and as immediate, as their local institution. While formal publishing remains the most important channel of scholarly communication there are some important new channels of informal communication that are worthy of consideration.
13 a - Listservs
Academic discussion lists, sometimes known as electronic conferences or listservs, have probably gone out of fashion in recent years. Started as long ago as the 1980s, they are email based - all subscribers to the group receive all emails sent to the group although replies can go to either the individual who sent to the original message or to the whole group.
If you can find a listserv which is a good match with your subject it can be a very worthwhile community to belong to. If the top scholars in your field subscribe and contribute to a listserv then you can sometimes listen to their online conversations. Other listservs are good sources of community news - conferences, grants, scholarships and jobs. Not to mention professional tips and good information sources.
There are a number of sources of discussion lists you can try
- Catalist - the searchable catalogue of the company that runs the listserv software. Lots of discussion groups but expect many of them to be quite local and student-oriented.
- JISCmail is a UK-based collection of academic mailing lists - see the Child Poverty list for example.
- For those in the humanities H-Net is a wonderful resource. It brings together academics with teachers and amateur researchers to share information and debate interpretations. For a nice example see H-Connecticut.
- To find a discussion from a professional organisation or academic community try the Scholarly Societies Project.
13 b - Blogs
Weblogs (like this one) are a great way of communicating and also allow two-way exchanges. It is hard to find many examples of good academic ones though and many of the best blogs are semi-professional mainstream media ones. Try one of these -
Blogscholar (Blogs by scholars rather than scholarly blogs)
Chronicle of Higher Education Blogs - The Wired Campus is a good way of keeping you up-to-date on educational technology.
Public Library of Science Blogs
Many scholarly organisations have useful blogs. The American Historical Society blog covers many aspects of the discipline as well as grants and jobs, while the American Chemical Society's Careers Blog is rather more focused.
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