A note published by Guardian Unlimited analyzes the topic of academic blogs, one that interests me for a long time now. It is known that every time more college teachers have blogs, but some are still reticent to this phenomenom. One of the main reasons is fear to be copied. That is, that someone will steal from us some very relevant idea which we planned on using in our works. This excuse is lame; the truth is that relevant ideas do not abound in academic contexts and, usually, its publication in a blog is enough to establish our author status. If someone steals an idea, a post, some text we publish in our site, there’ll always be a reader or someone who will tell us about it. It only takes an e-mail to have the blogger delete the stolen or copied post.

The note in Guardian Unlimited cites the case of Break of day in the Trenches, a blog by Esther MacCallum-Stewart, who follows the development of her thesis. I’ve once had a similar idea, mounting a blog that followed the development of my own Master program thesis on blogs and journalism. But the truth is, I have very little time and two jobs, and keeping two blogs is more than enough.

The note cites the excellent Purse Lips Square Jam by Anne Galloway and the famous Crooked Timber. It’s worth to read it, mainly because it’s not common for a media to cover this kind of issues.