At the e-publishing and blogging sessions that I attended during the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Atlanta, presenters and respondents from the audiences repeatedly raised questions related to tenure and promotion committees’ esteem, or lack of same, for online journals. As far as I know, no one has done any kind of serious research project on this issue, at least as it relates to biblical studies. However, as a member of Seaver College’s Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee, I can certainly offer some anecdotal evidence related to this topic. As a blogger, I can also offer my personal opinion without having to pass it through any editorial control—and there’s there rub.

In my experience, it matters little or none whether you deliver your scholarship in physical or digital formats. Tenure and promotion committees, however, almost always draw their members from across the entire college or university. We have eight “divisions” in Seaver College, and our Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee consists of one tenured representative from each division plus one untenured representative elected by the faculty at large. Therefore, I—a biblical scholar—must evaluate research done by my colleagues in all other disciplines. The farther we get from the humanities, the farther we get from my ability to independently assess my colleagues’ research, never mind the time involved. Faculty sitting on tenure and promotion committees must therefore rely on the judgments of reviewers in the same field, and that’s why peer review is so important.

In my own applications for tenure and promotion, for example—as well as for research funding and such—I have no reason to think that the relevant committees have considered the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures inferior in any wise to Semeia (to use only two examples) just because Semeia was printed on paper and JHS is (note the different verb tenses!) distributed electronically (though you can get a paper copy). Quite the opposite, in fact: JHS rates higher than Semeia in the eyes of my Seaver College peers, because JHS is peer-reviewed while Semeia volumes were editor-reviewed. Both, however, carry much more weight with our tenure and promotion committee than my most brilliant Higgaion posts, precisely because the JHS and Semeia articles were reviewed by professionals in my field before they were published.

In short, the distinction between print and digital media matters far, far less than the path to publication, for most forms of research. Only if that path goes through an academic editor’s hands, and more desirably through several peer reviewers’ hands as well, will tenure and promotion committees consider the work to be “scholarship.”

When I came up for tenure, I asked Chris Brady to write a letter for my file addressing the value of iTanakh to the scholarly and student communities. However, I did not offer iTanakh to my tenure and promotion committee as “scholarship”; rather, I categorized it as “professional service.” Ditto with Higgaion; I (have) include(d) it in my applications for tenure, promotion, appointments, grants, and such as “professional/public service,” not as “scholarship.” The lack of peer review, in part, drives this categorization.

I very much support Chris Brady’s suggestion for a kind of peer review panel, under the auspices of the SBL, which could undertake such evaluations upon request. However, I think that tenure and promotion committees will still prefer material that has been reviewed before publication to material reviewed post hoc.

One final note: my comments here related to fairly traditional forms of scholarship, such as essays and papers. As Bob Cargill has pointed out repeatedly, including in the blogger session at SBL 2010, we still need to develop new forms of peer review for research that comes packaged in other media.

I can hardly believe that I’ve actually gone for almost two months without posting anything at all to Higgaion. I’ve not lost interest, but have simply found that my offline life—and my other online lives—have eaten up the time that I might once have used for blogging, and for reading other people’s blogs. Throughout May, I taught a Hebrew readings course, and then, immediately upon completing some committee work and a couple of long-overdue projects, I had to begin preparing for a professional conference and a family vacation. The word “busy” hardly seems adequate.

At any rate, Ron Hendel drew me out of blogging hibernation with his recent piece in Biblical Archaeology Review, “Farewell to SBL.” Actually, the ensuing kerfuffle has drawn me out more than the piece itself. I found the contents of the piece rather unsurprising, though I admit to feeling disheartened (John Anderson understands this better than anyone else) by Ron’s choice not to keep working from the inside to solve the problems Ron perceives.

If you’ve been living in a cave or, like me, out of a suitcase for the past week, you might want to read Ron’s article, the blog posts linked in James McGrath’s roundup, and the conversation on the SBL web site before proceeding to more of my own thoughts on the matter.

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Chris Brady, I mean, when he opines against twittering or blogging about the SBL meeting from the selfsame meeting. And Jim’s wrong too, when he says that we do it for people who aren’t here rather than for people who are. Well … partially wrong (over-the-top rhetoric can gain readers, though). I don’t really mean to criticize either Chris or Jim, though. I just wanted to offer this case in point in favor of blogging at the SBL for other SBL attendees: if not for Daniel and Tonya’s post, I wouldn’t have known about the new Accordance syntax database. I plan to go down for a demo tomorrow.

Whew! Saturday at SBL 2009 proved rather busy and hectic for me, and the first half of Sunday looks about the same.

Remember those iTunes U and YouTube videos that I’ve been posting recently? Pepperdine University funded the equipment and software to produce those videos with a Faculty Innovation in Technology and Learning grant. As part of that grant project, I brought my equipment with me to SBL ’09 and partnered with the SBL folk who are working on the new World of the Bible web site. I spent a good bit of Saturday working with that project, and will do the same the first half of Sunday. If all goes well—I have some concerns about lighting and sound quality, but hope I can fix those issues in post-production—Pepperdine’s iTunes U and/or the SBL web site will soon feature the likes of Mark Goodacre, Aren Maeir, and others delivering 5-minute (or so) mini-lectures on the Philistines, Mary of Magdala, and so on. I’ll give more details later as I learn how well the video did or didn’t turn out.

I also gave my presentation “Drowning in Paint: The Deluge in Western Art” on Saturday afternoon. Aside from misusing one German word (audience members graciously corrected my error, and I learned that what I had said was true of Danish, but not of German), I thought it went reasonably well. The questions and comments offered afterward were helpful and on-point, and I didn’t get any of the “Why didn’t you write the paper I would have written?” or “What do you think about a completely different topic?” questions. (I hate those.)

The only other presentation I attended was David J.A. Clines’s presidential address. David gave a good talk, but I was weighed down by dinner and found myself nodding—not in agreement, but with sleepiness. Essentially, David put forward a lengthy-ish case for active learning. I completely agreed with his proposals, but didn’t find them as “new” as he seemed to cast them.

It’s now Sunday morning, 6:50, and time for me to head out to the “Church of Christ Professors Meeting” (a.k.a. on-site worship). See you around!

Now the true reason I expressed skepticism about the SBL/Biblioblogger hookup has been revealed. I can keep it secret no longer.

Just take a tip from Henry Farrell.

Who knew that expressing doubts could cause such a kerfuffle? With parallel discussions happening in comment threads here at Higgaion and on Bob Cargill’s blog, it’s hard to know where to continue the conversation. I probably should just drop it, but I do want to make sure my point about “academic respectability” is clear.

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I have to confess that I’m not nearly as excited about this announcement as some other bloggers-who-often-address-biblical-and-related-studies (no links here, so as not to offend anyone by leaving them out) seem to be:

I’m very pleased to announce, after discussions with Jim West that the Society of Biblical Literature and Bibliobloggers have become affiliated. We look forward to partnering at our North American and international meetings every year.

This partnership will make possible the fostering of biblical scholarship and communication among members of both groups. The affiliation will enable Bibliobloggers to meet and hold sessions in conjunction with the SBL meetings.

Individual bibliobloggers who are members of the Society of Biblical Literature and who wish to identify themselves as affiliates of SBL may post the affiliation on their blog.

I want to thank Jim and his colleagues for their efforts. This is a partnership long overdue, and it’s great to see it come to fruition.

At the risk of making myself quite unpopular, please allow me to tell you why I don’t like this development. Lest I be misunderstood: I happen to like the SBL quite a lot, and I’m working on a partnership with the SBL on a project unrelated to blogging. I’ve been an SBL member for years, and I think I’ve presented a paper at every SBL Annual Meeting I’ve attended since 1994. You will not find any anti-SBL sentiment here. It’s just that the whole “affiliate” business has some implications that make me uneasy.

1. First and foremost, the announcement implies that “Bibliobloggers” (note the capital B, though I acknowledge the inconsistent use of capitalization in the announcement) form an organized group with Jim West as authorized spokesperson. Please note that the “affiliate” language is the same language SBL uses to describe the Academy of Homiletics, the Adventist Society for Religious Studies, the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars, the Karl Barth Society of North America, the Association for Case Teaching, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and so on. Heretofore, the word “bibliobloggers” has never implied an organization, but has simply been a convenient label by which one might categorize the typical content of a particular blogger’s posts. I know of no organization called “Bibliobloggers.” Certainly I have never read the charter of such an organization, applied for membership in such an organization, or voted for officers in such an organization.

2. The whole idea of constituting “Bibliobloggers” as an official group threatens to enshrine the perpetual “who’s in, who’s out” nonsense as a permanent feature of discourse within the group of bloggers who happen to blog frequently about academic biblical studies. Witness the recent flare-up of the perennial “Where are the female bibliobloggers?” question. Can’t we just blog about what we enjoy discussing without trying to define group boundaries (even if in/out status is self-selecting)?

3. A few enthusiasts have opined that the SBL badge raises the “academic respectability” of blogging, but I must question this opinion. Does anyone truly believe that adding the “Biblioblog/SBL Affiliate” badge to your blog will lead your school’s Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee (or whatever it’s called at your place) to esteem your blog posts more highly? Application of the badge carries no actual implication of or requirement for quality control; the only requirement is that you identify yourself as a “biblioblogger” and pay membership dues to the SBL. Anybody can do that with a little outlay of cash. Unless, of course, you wish to submit arbitration of who’s a biblioblogger and who’s not to an organization board—with regard to which, see items 1 and 2 above. Barring such a board, there’s no reason why any old crackpot couldn’t pay SBL dues and paste the badge up on their own blog. Do you really think that a “status” equally available to Fred Phelps and Steven Anderson as to you increases academic respectability? (Has the SBL even thought through this point, I wonder?)

4. Aside from the alleged stamp of academic respectability (addressed in item 3), the only other benefit that I can see from “Bibliobloggers” becoming an SBL affiliate is the ability for “Biblobloggers” to organize sessions at the SBL Annual Meeting. Other than socializing, I cannot imagine what bloggers can accomplish better when gathered in an SBL meeting room than when sitting in front of their individual keyboards, typing away at interesting posts or making comments on other bloggers’ interesting posts. Call me alarmist if you wish, but I see here the threat of ghettoization. Seriously, what sorts of papers will “Bibliobloggers” present to one another? Will we have Bob Cargill present a paper on archaeology and the media? By no means—Bob should present that paper in the Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries section. Shall I present some research on paintings of the flood narrative? No! That belongs in the Bible and Visual Art or the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media. Do I want to go to a “Bibliobloggers” meeting to hear John Anderson talk about the trickster God in the Jacob narratives? Of course not! I want to hear that in the Pentateuch section! Shall we then all get together and talk about blogging? Never mind the narcissism inherent in such a topic; why not try to conduct such a discussion in the Computer Assisted Research Section? This is especially important for younger bloggers seeking academic respectability—especially the respect of their local tenure committees. Get your work in front of a broader audience. But my concern isn’t just about tenure issues for younger faculty. As a blogger, I can easily share my thoughts with the community of other bloggers and blog-readers any time I wish. I don’t need to wait for a twenty-five minute slot at an annual meeting. Better still, I can receive immediate and ongoing feedback from people interested in my work by posting my inchoate ideas on the blog. Seriously, if you exclude socializing with other scholars (and the annual blogger meet-up dinner, usually organized in grand fashion by the aforementioned Jim West—and many thanks to him for doing so—facilitates socializing quite nicely) and browsing through the exhibit hall, blogs potentially do a much better job than academic conferences of disseminating ideas for review and comment. The only advantage that you get from a conference presentation is a different audience—but you lose that advantage if you present your work to a gathering of “Bibliobloggers.”

I suppose that’s enough of a rant for today. If I go on, I will start repeating myself. For my part, I am happy to be an unorganized, independent (but friendly, and socially connected), blogger who happens to write most often on topics related to biblical studies.

… that the International Bible Society-Send the Light bothered to notice that the journal of the Pontifical Biblical Institute already bears the name Biblica before they went and changed their own name to Biblica?

Over the weekend, I attended and enjoyed the WECSOR (Western Commission for the Study of Religion) meeting, which included the Society of Biblical Literature/Pacific Coast Region meeting. I’ll tell you more about it later.