News & Views item - October 2010

 

 

 Times Higher Education Reports on the Coming of Australia's ERA. (October 1, 2010)

The 30 September 2010 issue of THE, Times Higher Education, under "Research intelligence" devotes a page to Paul Jump's "investigation" of  "Australia's research assessment programme [which is] causing controversy, especially the rankings".

 

Mr Jump points out that the predecessor to Labor's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA, or Era), the Coalition's Research Quality Framework (RQF) "was cancelled owning to concerns about cost and the inclusion of an assessment of impact."

 

What Mr Jump sees as the most controversial aspect of the ERA is the ranking assigned to every journal "which will be used to assess the quality of published research... these rankings remain hotly disputed, perceptions that Australian Journals have been favoured linger".

 

Mark Gibson, a senior lecturer in communications and media studies at Monash University told Mr Jump: "Everyone has a story of egregious injustices in classifications," while Graeme Turner, director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland says that the ranking of journals produced a "fetish" culture among academic researchers "to a ridiculous extent" and he indicates that those eight Research Evaluation Committees (RECs) of 149 evaluators "are never going to believe what [the lists of journal rankings] indicates over what they know themselves."

 

Dr. Gibson also believes "whether or not it was intended, there is a growing tendency within universities to value researchers according to the grade of journal they are publishing in."

 

Clare Donovan, a lecturer in ANU's Department of Sociology was critical of  categorising by disciplines rather than departments for assessment because it fails to reflect universities' internal structure which in turn creates considerable difficulty in the organisation of submissions to the ERA.

 

And Paul Jump reports: "The committees [8 REC's] have total discretion over how to use the metrics."

 

Finally, Professor Turner and Lyn Yates, pro vice-chancellor of research at The University of Melbourne are in agreement, according to Mr Jump, believing that the "real battles" will be between university departments over how much of the funding for particular disciplines should come to them.

 

Professor Yates as pro vice-chancellor, research  envisions: "The potential of the disciplinary codings to create dissension and jealousies within universities, not just between them must count as a new contribution of research assessment to the difficult and ever more competitive environment in which research is conducted."

 

If this is a recipe for improving the research capabilities of Australia's universities it's  remarkably opaque.

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Paul Jump is science and research reporter for Times Higher Education covering issues such as research funding, the research councils, the research excellence framework and postgraduate education.