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How goofy is it to cite your own blog work in an academic paper?

I'm starting my doctoral work pretty soon, and something just dawned on me…how arrogant/vain/self-indulgent/downright silly would it be to cite one's own weblog posts as references when writing an academic work?  It would certainly be acceptable by what I remember as APA standards, albeit being a little strange for an instructor to validate a student's work and seeing within a list of "resources cited" multiple instances of her own documented thoughts.

 

Years ago when I was getting my MBA, I'd be one of the few in my classes who would have the majority of sources cited in a paper based on web URLs.  But sadly, these were in the days before the rise of the almighty blog, when reliable news and academic sources were used.  In the years since, I've copied some of my better works over to my blog, for reasons such as the topics I wrote about are still relevant, and that I'd like an easily accessible locale in case I ever need to bring them up suddenly.

 

My dissertation is likely going to be a continuation/extension of my Master's thesis, being an examination of the variance of the consumer psychology between traditional and Internet-based product marketing.  (I know, I know…YAWN!)  As such, I've got a body of existing work containing lots of things I can draw from. 

 

But how weird would this be?  I guess as in all things, moderation would be key.

Comments

TrackBack said:

# February 16, 2005 4:54 PM

mschaef said:

That's a little odd.

Most Ph.D. level papers I've seen primarily cite either papers in referreed journals, or maybe working papers. Your own posts in a totally unreferreed forum are a little lightweight to be a source in a serious paper, I'd guess.
# February 17, 2005 9:08 AM

mschaef said:

"Your own posts in a totally unreferreed forum are a little lightweight to be a source in a serious paper, I'd guess."

BTW, don't take this to be an indictment of your writing or research skills, just the nature of the forums involved.
# February 17, 2005 9:09 AM

mike said:

I think it would depend entirely on what it is you're writing about and citing. If you're writing about comunications and new media, I can imagine citing a blog post and follow-up comments. If you're writing about populism in politics, of course. The linguists over on the Language Log (and various sites they point to) frequently cite blogs and email, since they represent a rich source of contemporary language usage.

What IS your thesis going to be about? I think I missed that part.
# February 17, 2005 10:29 AM

Scott said:

The only background I have is in writing scientific papers so this may not apply to other academic writing. One of the first "BS Tests" that my professors taught me to apply when reading a scientific paper was to look at the citations and see if the author cites his other works more often than they cite works by other people. Unless the author is truly doing groundbreaking work, they should cite others more than they cite themselves. "If I've seen farther it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" and all that. I was also taught to only considers citations from peer reviewed sources.

That being said, I'm not sure if a weblog counts as a peer reviewed source. You might be better off incorporating your blog writing into your disseration rather than using the posts as citations.
# February 17, 2005 10:37 AM

Derick Bailey said:

I'd generally agree with mschaef.

My wife is a Ph.D. in Psychology (teaching at Baylor in Waco, TX, FYI) and from what I've heard from her, and in my own experience with paper writing (limited, that it is), i'd elaborate by sayin it depends on how you are citing.

I would personally think it's not good to just go around quoting your blog all over the place, since it's not a "well known" publication like a Psy journal, etc. However, I would say some moderation in the use of it is not a bad thing. As long as you have the proper data, references, etc. listed in your blog, I think it would be fine to say something along the lines of "building on previous research from ...." or something in that fashion.
# February 17, 2005 2:32 PM

TrackBack said:

# April 15, 2005 7:32 AM

TrackBack said:

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