Review by Peers

Review My Work

I am currently arguing that this blog is a publication. The idea for this came from Greg Downey’s post on Neuroanthropology at PLOS. He argued that the blog should be considered a publication, and proposed that the best way to do this was by soliciting reviews from other scholars in order to show the quality and impact of one’s work. You can see the original post here: Blogging for Promotion- An Immodest Proposal.

Over on GradHacker, I wrote my own proposal for framing the blog as a publication, and a number of ways that would help in gaining acceptance of this form of scholarship within the department. You can see the post here: Taking a Chance- My Blog as a Publication.

On the advice of Greg Downey and others, I am therefore asking for reviews and comments of support of my site to include in my mid-term review. If you have found my blog helpful, and see this blog as a scholarly publication, I would greatly appreciate it if you would write a comment of support on this page, citing specific posts or a general comment on the whole blog. Think of these as mini letters of recommendation regarding the quality of my blog and writing!

Thank you!

Bones Don’t Lie Honors

Scientific American: Anthropology in Practice Editor’s Selection, Krystal D’Costa

Top Forensic Blog, ITSGOV

Top 3 Bioarchaeology Blog, Society of Arhchaeological Sciences, Gordon Rakita

Top 10 Anthropology Blogs, Anthropology Report

18 responses to “Review by Peers”

  1. Pingback: Supporting Bones Don’t Lie | Bones Don't Lie·

  2. ‘Bones don’t lie’
    Should this blog count as an academic publication? Absolutely.
    I see blogging as the leading edge in the next phase of academic publication. One of the main objections to self publishing is the lack a of peer review process – however anyone who has run a blog with a comments section at the bottom of each page will tell you all about peer review. Additionally blogs can be constantly altered to take in new evidence, or correct mistakes. Cost is not a consideration, as the pages are available for free anywhere in the world.
    In my mind the question as to whether Katy Meyers shold be allowed to submit her blog as an academic publication should be countered with an enquiry as to what took so long, and how come more academics aren’t publishing to the wider world in a similar fashion?

  3. I think it is a splendid idea to count this blog [and others of its ilk] as academic publications. With enough academics prowling the web and participating on sites like these, peer review is not a problem. I think it high time that academics fully utilise the online world and all its applications for information, publication and networking with peers, students and amateur interest.
    I agree fully with Henry Rothwell’s comment and endorsement above and think Katy Meyers should be allowed to submit her blog as an academic publication. It is very interesting and helpful, with scholarly research of note!

  4. This blog has not only served as a resource to other career academics, as evidenced in other posts, but also as a source of information for the greater Classics community.

    As a Middle and High School Latin teacher, I have used Katy Meyers’ blog to support my classroom materials. My students have used the blog to engage with the ancients directly. The 8th grade biology teacher and I will be doing an interdisciplinary project involving bioarchaeology and textual analysis as a direct result of Ms. Meyers’ blogs and our e-mail correspondence.

  5. This blog is a great resource for anyone interested in Mortuary Archaeology. I am an Anthropology undergraduate student and I love this blog because I can get updated on new findings all over the world in one site. I also find myself interested in researching some of the topics further for class projects. I look at the site weekely.

  6. I’ve enjoyed following this blog, learnt a lot from it, and recommended it to my peers. The posts are solid, with sources and refences for those interesting in digging deeper, but approachable enough for non-academics.

    Should it count as publication? Yes. A blog isn’t as “important” as a book or an article in a leading journal, but it ranks higher than a “Letter to the Editor” in a newspaper that so many others fill their CVs with – and it has the potential to reach a far larger audience than an article.

    What I particularly like about the concept of a blog is that, as in lectures, one can use many images to illustrate points – which one cannot do with a paper publication due to costs and issues of use rights. One can also link to articles within a post. Bones Don’t Lie is a blog which exploits both of these and shows how blogging can be used to explore academic issues.

  7. Academia needs to get over its antiquated fetish with only printed publications counting as “real” scholarship. While it’s true that the scholarly monograph continues to reign when counting towards things like academic promotion, it is an error to think that print is the only worthy vehicle for communicating research of substance. Blogs allow for instant communication, continuous peer review, and provides added depth and dimension to serious research. It’s a shame that we still have to have the argument about what constitutes a publication. Born-digital content, online-only peer-reviewed journals, and the like should be considered normal and should carry as much weight as peer-reviewed, printed materials. Katy Meyers’ blog is a prime example of solid scholarship presented in a contemporary, digital way, and for all intents and purposes must be considered a publication.

    Andrew Reinhard
    Director of Publications
    The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

  8. Blog should be considered a special publication, and be reviewed in order to show the quality and impact of one’s work.
    I agree that the work of Katy Meyers is of special interest.

  9. I myself have a formal background in neuroscience and am currently working toward earning a mortuary science degree and license to embalm/ direct. I began following Katy’s blog a couple months ago, which I stumbled upon while researching some of the historical aspects to modern day mortuary practices. Because of her blog, I have been able gain a fair amount of exposure to academic anthropology and archaeology presented in a highly accessible, clear and concise manner. I believe she presents well-researched information with a variety of angles and a great critical lens.

    Should it count as publication? Yes. It has the potential to reach a far larger audience than any article and has the potential to generate interdisciplinary conversation.

  10. Hello,
    I would definitely defend this blog as an academic publication because it is updated fairly regularly with well referenced and up to date research papers and sources, it is standardized in format, the style of writing is academic, and the posts are consistent in content. It is an excellent demonstration of active academic outreach.

    What I would be wary of, personally, is the rush to label every blog (within reason of subject of course!) as an example of academic work. In my own case, I would not label or document my blog as academic in quality as it contains personal examples of writing, and deals with topics of a wider theme which do not suit the academic field. I would be happy, however, to label it as outreach as personal effort, as a document of a personal interest in the C.V.

    The problems of the wider implications of considering blogs as publications are the implementations of standardisations for such work, I think.

  11. I found this blog as exceptionally useful. If it qualified as an academic source, I feel that it would become a well used source for those of us still working at the lower levels to complete research projects. Using blogs as sources makes perfect sense. Peer review would be the only roadblock that I could see causing problems. But with a standardization of a specific kind of blog may be a way to encourage peer review more readily, and keep the lines between academic sources and general internet interest articles separated.

  12. Katy,

    I reviewed your entire blog “Bones Don’t Lie,” and I think that you make a very strong and academically credible argument that your blog should be considered a publication. Your blog contains a lot of information that is normally stated in respected academic publications: you have provided your academic and professional credentials – which can be verified, you provide evidence of your academic research, others in your field – undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional organizations, have stated that they consider you to be a subject matter expert in your stated academic and professional field, and you provide links to other sources of information regarding your stated field. All of this is normally found in more “standard” academic publications. Your blog is actually just using a new medium to convey academically and professionally pertinent information.

    I would probably add just two suggestions for your blog: to provide some type of disclaimer of sorts on the “peer review” page of your blog, that states that the academic and/or professional credentials of your “peer reviewers” are subject to verification; and possibly to add a glossary of terms used on your blog.

    I have recently created my own blog – it’s about a month old. It’s pretty bare so far, but I expect that will change soon. I have found your blog to be very helpful to me as I have created my own blog. We have similar purposes for creating our blogs, but my blog is going to be more focused on the criminal justice system and forensics. I have two undergraduate degrees. My first degree is a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English – with a 3.53 GPA. My second degree is a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Criminal Justice – with a 3.737 GPA, and Cum Laude Honors.

    Good luck in your academic and professional endeavors!

  13. Pingback: Review by Peers | Tari McNeil·

  14. I agree that blogging should be taken more seriously and have academics take a serious look at some things. My own website has been doing research on bone and cartilage regeneration using Google Scholar, Google Patents, the PubMed Database, and ClinicalTrials.gov to find new ideas and how to reinterpret old data in a new light.

    People think the objective of my website http://www.naturalheightgrowth.com is impossible to achieve, but the research from the last 2 years with my amateur collaborators have revealed some startling new information.

    Also, just found your website and love what you are doing. Thought about going into mortuary science and/or archeology myself back in high school.

  15. A blog as consistently updated and with such thorough reviews of the articles discussed, to me, counts more than just a stand along book review or the Letter to the Editor mentioned above. Your blog is inspirational and it was great to meet in person recently. Keep it up!

  16. Hi Kathryn, I spoke at the Jack the Ripper conference in Baltimore on Ripper suspect Francis Tumblety. They asked be to speak because of my ten research articles plus the dozen-plus finds I’ve made recently on Tumblety. They’re published in my book The Ripper’s Haunts. Point about Tumblety’s grave. Being from Buffalo (and an MSU grad), I visited the family gravesite. The name spelling of “Tumuelty” was not a mistake, but a name variant of his family in Ireland. Tumblety likely bought the expensive granite monument when his mother or father died years before his death. I have more, especially connecting him to the Burke & Hare practices.

  17. Hi Katie. I would like to kindly request an electronic copy of your dissertation when it is completed. The co-occurrence of cremations and flesh inhumations is a subject that has always interested me since I worked with some 33 years ago in Tennessee. Cremations and flesh inhumations show up in Middle Woodland sites in Middle Tennessee. If you would consent to sending me a copy, my e-mail address is tcbkjbbrown@comcast.net. Congratulations on your nouveau Ph.D.!!!

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