Take, for example, a site like our course web. Of course, you look at it as a student getting information from the instructor. Reporting Other than report summary site stats at Ricci Green, I don't do any formal analysis of Ricci Street. Nor do I read papers at conferences or publish in peer-reviewed journals. I'm doing that at Ricci Street and gaining a wider and more targeted audience than I ever could at a conference.
Journals are too slow.
By the time it makes its way to a library shelf and gets picked up by another researcher, it's so dated that it's useless. Take a look at First Monday , a highly respected online-only journal. Its publication cycle is more like that of a newspaper than an academic journal or even a popular magazine. Recent First Monday articles have an editorial history at the end. They are often written only weeks before they are available on the Web.