Universities are increasingly moving towards recognising digital scholarship despite conflicting messages that favour traditional publishing in journals

While universities are keen to gain an online profile and like to parade their star bloggers or podcasters, there is also a conflicting message, sometimes implicit and other times more explicit, to many researchers that it is publication in traditional journals that is what really matters.

Similarly, universities are realising that their online reputation is their main brand, that the glossy brochure is not how they attract students now. Being recognised as a university that has online savvy staff is the new equivalent of having TV celebrity academics.

The recognition of digital scholarship presents many universities with a quandary: on the one hand they want to encourage it, because they realise this sends a strong message about their own values; on the other hand they are concerned about maintaining quality and are struggling with establishing robust mechanisms for rewarding a diverse and rapidly changing set of practices. Read more at blogs.lse.ac.uk