Is self-promotion hurting scholarship?

I have a blog and I actually think it's very helpful. It gets me writing about my work and I can record ideas I may have about my field or doing a PhD that aren't directly related to my thesis. Sometimes I share a post as a way to network. However, I don't seek a following or to brand myself in anyway. When used as an honest summary or reflection of your work, a blog is useful.

I believe it's actually very healthy, and productive, to not focus on a single thing for an extended time. The break and outward look provides stimulation and possibly insight. The fact that talented research individuals have to actually do this to be "found", seems more like a failing in higher ed not effectively aggregating research and researchers. This gap can only be filled by higher ed, and it means that students miss opportunities, good research talent might not get aligned with cutting edge work in their fields, and less importantly industry may not find things that could be commercialized. Aggregation is marketing, but if there are not more central catalogs to do this, it would come down to individual competition, with aggregations happening through social and search engines.

I agree there's a risk of "celebritisation" of research, with people who are good at self-promotion accruing more attention than those whose work may be equally good or better, but less well promoted. One of the things we're trying to do at Kudos (www.growkudos.com) is level that playing field. We simplify the process of making your work more visible, and bring together a range of metrics so you can see which kinds of communications efforts are most effectively building the readership and impact of your work. So you don't have to be a "marketing expert" or invest masses of time in communications around your work, but you can take some simple steps to ensure that you don't fall behind those who *are* putting lots of effort in. That feels like a useful middle ground in this age of "information overload" where simply publishing your work is no longer enough to sure that it is found, read, cited or applied by others.