Of course, for many members of Bracher’s primary audience—young scientists still struggling to get tenure—those discussions can look like a minefield. A fair number of the participants use pseudonyms out of fear that a comment might offend some professor’s sensibilities, hurting a student’s chances of getting a job later. Other potential participants never get involved because they feel that time spent with the online community is time not spent on cranking out that next publication. “The peer-reviewed paper is the cornerstone of jobs and promotion,” PLoS ONE’s Surridge says. “Scientists don’t blog because they get no credit” for that.
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