For the past several years, many scholars have been making a significant contribution to the knowledge in rhetoric and composition via their weblogs. Academic bloggers are conversing about topics such as professional issues in the discipline, best teaching practices, electronic discourse, and cultural criticism of digital space. Weblogs are also making a significant contribution to the public intellectual commons. Because weblogs do not have the same gatekeeping checks as traditional scholarly publications, they have heretofore not been considered scholarly work and thus are not often recognized for the contribution they make to our discipline(s).

This year, Kairos and its sister site Kairosnews will once again present the Best Academic Weblog Award in recognition of the valuable contributions that bloggers have made to the discipline. The award will be presented at the 2006 Computers and Writing Conference. We invite your nominations by May 1, 2006.

This year, in honor of John Lovas, we have decided to rename the award for Best Academic Weblog to the John Lovas Memorial Academic Weblog Award in recognition and rememberance of John's contributions to the legitimation of academic blogging. For more information on John and his work, please visit the John Lovas Festschrift.

Criteria

The award will be given to the weblog which best meets the following criteria. The weblog must:

• Be at least six months old from the date of submission for consideration.
• Be updated regularly (an average of at least once per week).
• Actively engage other academic weblogs; in other words, the blogger must be a public intellectual.
• Deal with the types of rhetorical, technical, and pedagogical issues addressed in Kairos and other journals in rhetoric and composition studies.

The deadline for nominations is May 1, 2006. To nominate a weblog for this award, please email your nomination to the Kairos editors at kairosed@technorhetoric.net.