Footnoting Blogs in Academic Publications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Christopher Skinner asked a really great question on the Crux Sola\u00a0blog: Do online resources belong in academic footnotes. Chris offers a qualified "no."\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/07\/footnoting-blogs-in-academic-publications.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Footnoting Blogs in Academic Publications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Christopher Skinner asked a really great question on the Crux Sola\u00a0blog: Do online resources belong in academic footnotes. 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{"id":31191,"date":"2015-07-31T12:33:37","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=31191"},"modified":"2015-07-31T12:33:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:33:37","slug":"footnoting-blogs-in-academic-publications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/07\/footnoting-blogs-in-academic-publications.html","title":{"rendered":"Footnoting Blogs in Academic Publications"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Christopher Skinner asked a really great question on the Crux Sola\u00a0blog: Do online resources belong in academic footnotes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chris offers a qualified \u201cno.\u201d I would suggest a qualified \u201cyes\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

Several people who responded to the question rightly pointed out that even the best blog posts are more like conference papers than articles \u2013 not the fully fleshed-out or complete and polished arguments and ideas scholars traditionally\u00a0publish in print, but the draft versions we share\u00a0at conferences and in other venues, precisely with the aim of getting feedback and improving the final version.<\/p>\n

Now, scholars have always cited other scholars\u2019 papers when they were aware of them and a final version in print was not available. And so the point here is less that they should not be included \u2013 indeed, if you have read it and been influenced by it, you\u00a0must<\/em> cite it, even if it is\u00a0on a blog. The point here is that conference papers and blog posts\u00a0ought to be things we\u00a0settle for<\/em> citing, because the\u00a0author\u2019s final\u00a0version is not yet available.<\/p>\n

And if in some cases a blog post is like a conference paper, in others it is more akin to the napkin at a pub on which another academic sketched out her idea and showed it to you. In that case, you can still cite. The question here is whether one should still ask permission before doing so. In the case of the napkin, it was shared privately and so asking permission before\u00a0publicizing is crucial. But what if the napkin is online for the entire world to see?<\/p>\n

It is also true that the distinction I\u2019ve made above, between blog posts and articles, is not an absolute one. I will be speaking\u00a0at an upcoming conference<\/a> about the role of blogs in the investigation of the Gospel of Jesus\u2019 Wife, in which we saw not only blog posts, but pdfs of\u00a0articles which had not been previously published, nor\u00a0was it clear whether they were\u00a0drafts of articles intended for final publication elsewhere. Surely citing such articles in a print book or article on that subject would be appropriate?<\/p>\n

And so I think the answer to Chris\u2019 question is absolutely \u201cyes\u201d \u2013 especially since the question itself is about online<\/em> and not just\u00a0blog<\/em> resources, and many articles and books are online these days.\u00a0The\u00a0qualification of my \u201cyes\u201d has nothing whatsoever to do with the\u00a0online<\/em> aspect, and only to do with the character of some of the online materials in question. Whenever possible, scholars should be interacting with the final published version of another scholar\u2019s work \u2013 wherever that happens to be found in our digital online era.<\/p>\n

How would you answer Chris\u2019 question? Click through<\/a> and see what others wrote on his blog, as well as chiming in here.<\/p>\n

Let me conclude with a couple of cartoons of relevance, both of which come from a post on the blog Fresh Spectrum<\/a>:<\/p>\n

$\"making$ $\"paper$ <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"