The Research Quality Framework and the Wasted Hours. (December 6, 2006)

    So far the Federal Ministers for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop and Brendan Nelson before her have wasted thousands of personnel hours in pushing a barrow with a square wheel which will result in a negative impact on the quality of research at Australia's universities and have squandered millions of dollars.

Up to now most of the wasted hours were those of administrators or their staff, but now the matter has truly gotten out of hand. The Department of Education, Science and Training is looking to corral "academics" -- which for this purpose are taken to mean active researchers working at Australian universities -- to take part in workshops to draft the panel-specific sections of Research Quality Framework (RQF) Guidelines (see below).

In short thousands of research hours will be sacrificed to the overweening drive of the Coalition Government to bring the academic community to heel.

The admonition by the Productivity Commission to just cool it for a while was met with derision. 
 

DEST have invited various organisations, pro vice-chancellors and deputy vice-chancellors of research to nominate individuals to be part of these discipline workshops to assist in development of the panel specific sections of the RQF guidelines.
 

Ultimately assessments will be done by 13 panels based on the Research Fields, Courses and Discipline Classification (RFCD) codes.

The workshop, participants will be asked to provide input on:

1. the appropriate research outputs for the disciplines within the relevant Panel;

2. appropriate indicators to aid the assessment of  research quality and research impact;  and

3. the type of supplementary information that can be included in a Research Group's context statement.

The outcomes of these workshops will be published and will be used to draft the Panel-specific sections of RQF Guidelines.
 
DEST state: “We are looking to invite participants who can represent the views of the broad disciplines covered by the Panel areas.  It will be necessary for participants to demonstrate sufficient representation of the disciplines.  Expertise in peer assessment would be an advantage”.
 

The workshops are scheduled for Feb/March 2007.
 

Nominations are due December 17, 2006