Blogging as scholarly communication

David Rosenthal has posted some very perceptive thoughts on blogging as scholarly communication, including some thoughts on peer review as it happens via blogs. He lists the following reasons why academics are likely to use blogging more and more for scholarly communication:

• The process is much faster. A few hours to a few days to create a post, then a few hours of intensive review, then a day or two in which the importance of the reviewed work becomes evident as other blogs link to it. Stuart's comment came 9 hours into a process that accumulated 217 comments in 30 hours. Contrast this with the ponderous pace of traditional academic communication.
• The process is much more transparent. The entire history of the review is visible to everyone, in a citable and searchable form. Contrast this with the confidentiality-laden process of traditional scholarship.
• Priority is obvious. All contributions are time-stamped, so disputes can be resolved objectively and quickly. They're less likely to fester and give rise to suspicions that confidentiality has been violated.
• The process is meritocratic. Participation is open to all, not restricted to those chosen by mysterious processes that hide agendas. Participants may or may not be pseudonymous but their credibility is based on the visible record. Participants put their reputation on the line every time they post. The credibility of the whole blog depends on the credibility and frequency of other blogs linking to it - in other words the same measures applied to traditional journals, but in real time with transparency.
• Equally, the process is error-tolerant. Staniford says "recognition on all our parts that this kind of work will have more errors in any given piece of writing, and its the collaborative debate process that converges towards the truth." This tolerance is possible because the investment in each step is small, and corrections can be made quickly. Because the penalty for error is lower, participants can afford to take more creative risk.
• The process is both cooperative and competitive. Everyone is striving to improve their reputation by contributing. Of course, some contributions are negative, but the blog platforms and norms are evolving to cope with this inevitable downside of openness.
• Review can be both broad and deep. Staniford says "The ability for anyone in the world, with who knows what skill set and knowledge base, to suddenly show up ... is just an amazing thing". And the review is about the written text, not about the formal credentials of the reviewers.
  
• Good reviewing is visibly rewarded. Participants make their reputations not just by posting, but by commenting on posts. Its as easy to assess the quality of a participant reviews as to assess their authorship; both are visible in the public record.