The peer reviewers are, to some extent, right.

In the UK the assessment of staff research performance is ultimately
achivied through the research assessment exercise (every several years),
which is not run by the institution but by the Higher Education Funding
Council, the QANGO responsible for the entire university sector in the UK.
Staff teaching performance is assessed similarly, although at more regular
intervals.

Institutions do of course have their own internal monitoring and evaluation
schema, but in a context where external oversight is so strong these
internal systems are light touch. HEFCE¹s evaluations underpin how
institutions perceive their staff, effecting promotion and job security
(there is no automatic promotion here, nor tenure). Where the US system is
decentralised and devolved the UK¹s is highly centralised. Given that all
but one university in the UK are public institutions (the University of
Buckingham is the only private university in the UK licensed to accredit its
own degrees) this level of centralisation is not surprising. Expenditure of
public money gained through the tax system has to be assured publicly.

However, there are elements of the U-Maine guidelines that we in the UK can
learn from. In particular, we could benefit from a broader definition of
what constitutes research and what constitutes a valid research output. That
said, my impression is that UK already uses a broader definition of these
things, with the RAE assessing creative practice as research and HEFCE
having a funding council in part dedicated to supporting practice-led
research. We also have well developed doctoral study programmes in the
creative arts. This broad undertsanding of what can be research has been
reflected in what the RAE can consider a research output (an exhibition, for
example, or an artefact).

However, proposed changes to this process would seem to be moving in the
other direction, with a renewed emphasis on more traditional measures of
research quality (so-called metrics), where journals will be ranked
according to importance and research council funding given more prominence
in measuring success. This approach will function to penalise research that
is disseminated outside more narrowly defined and recognised platforms. We
will see where we are in 2013, when the next assessment exercise will be ­
but I think in retrospect we will regard, with nostalgia, the period of
1996-2008 as a golden age for creative arts funding in UK higher education.

I hope I am wrong...

Regards

Simon

Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
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www.eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk/circle/

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AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk



From: roger malina <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: roger malina <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:22:47 +0200
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Fwd: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] New criteria for new
media academics

Jon

I have to mention that as you know your article was peer
reviewed before publication= and received several negative
peer reviews which I over ruled !!!

One of the concerns raised by one peer reviewer was that the U Maine
approach
was very specific to a US american university and that
they were maybe inapplicable in in non usa educational systems.



Roger


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jon Ippolito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:09 PM
Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] New criteria for new media academics
To: [log in to unmask]


I know some folks on this list have already requested these guidelines
privately, but now that Leonardo has published them you can refer your
peer committee to their Winter 2009 issue. Kudos to Roger Malina and
co. for  nudging academia into the 21st century!

Leonardo publishes "New Criteria for New Media"

Academia's goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many
universities have been wary--if not downright dismissive--of their
professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge
that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities. Peer review
committees are supposed to assess a researcher's standing in the
field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by
blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists.

In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship,
however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT's Leonardo magazine--itself a
traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with
networked media--has published a feature on the changing criteria for
excellence in the Internet age. To make its point as concretely as
possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and
tenure guidelines of the University of Maine's New Media Department,
together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled "New
Criteria for New Media."

Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the
window, "New Criteria for New Media" tries to extend them into the
21st century. To supplement the "closed" peer review process familiar
from traditional journals, U-Me's criteria recognize the value of the
"open peer review" employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh
and The Pool. As the name suggests, open peer review allows
contributions from any community member rather than a group of
experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate
recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than
possible via the customary approach. "New Criteria for New Media" also
urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research;
valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or
even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose
collaboration results in a publication).

Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt
these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them
under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. (Due to a misprint by MIT
Press, the Leonardo article highlights the authors' copyrights rather
than the CC license; it's surprisingly hard to give things away in a
print economy!) The new criteria have already been sought after by
individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher
Education. You can find them in Leonardo's winter 2009 issue (vol. 42
no. 1) or online at these links:

"New Criteria for New Media" (white paper)
http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html

"Promotion and Tenure Guidelines" (sample redefined criteria)
http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/promotion_tenure_redefinitions.html

For more information, please email me or the Still Water lab at the
University of Maine (http://newmedia.umaine.edu/stillwater/).


new


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