When blogs make sense

摘要

Astronomers are busier than ever: "I look at our students and... there's less understanding and more rushing... we're caught up in this rat race and I don't know what we're chasing." Biologists too: "Technology has made me one of the most highly paid, under-talented secretaries on campus. I have to do a lot more than I've ever had to do before, badly."These quotes come from Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication (go.nature.com/6Y4blg), a survey of 160 academics published earlier this year by Diane Harley and her colleagues in the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California, Berkeley. The quotes are representative of academic scientists these days, thanks not least to the unrelenting pressure to publish.