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Hello, Thank you to everyone for some really detailed analyses and useful information. It's given me a better understanding of the state of art of academic perspectives in this area. To clarify the background. The task involves a handful of academics in each faculty making a judgment about which doctoral candidates will receive government and university doctoral scholarships. The candidates have already been accepted for doctoral study. The process is criterion-based and the highest scoring candidates get the scholarship money and the department and supervisors get the prestige. The criteria are: 1. Academic qualifications 2. Achievement of doctoral candidacy 3. Work-related research experience 4. Academic accomplishments including major research grants, minor research awards or prizes 5. Research and Creative Output in last 5 years including refereed and non-refereed journal articles, conference papers, solo exhibitions and group exhibitions or equivalent creative production 6. Referee reports For doctoral scholarship candidates in Art, there are substantial benefits in increasing one's score by redefining one's creative activities as research. Similar benefits are gained from listing publications *about* one's Art as one's own refereed publications. Problems associated with the former seem to be due to pressure on Art academics to do research and the effortlessness of addressing this by arguing that all art-practice is based on some form of research. Problems about the latter seem to accrue from Art-related traditions of collating and presenting information about the display of one's creative output. Similar confusion about both points seems to occur for the doctoral candidates and their academic referees. There are sensible reasons for why these problematic issues occur. Of concern from an ethical perspective, however, is that such mistakes directly benefit the candidates and their referees where they are the candidate's supervisors. In the Art research context, these issues might well be considered ethically unproblematic and not in need of the precautions that might be viewed as necessary in other disciplines. Hence my question about current professional practices in the academic Art realm as I'm not a specialist Art academic. The feedback from experts here and the scale of the financial issues involved (~$90,000 per scholarship) suggests there is a need to review some aspects of this scholarship awarding process. Best wishes and thanks again, Terry