Terry's message is very worrying in its implications for research in 
Australia, it may not have so great an impact on the rest of us. Valuing 
and financing conference papers routinely as primary research outputs 
does happen in some countries but I have always felt it was a regressive 
approach, likely to lead to "salami-slicing" in some disciplines. Having 
said that conference papers sometimes have more importance in Design as 
an emerging discipline with a less-developed scholarly infrastructure.

I am very worried about the idea of focusing on measuring the papers 
published in high impact journals. The ludicrous example of valuing 
Design Issues but not Design Studies probably comes about because of 
quirks in the systems for compiling citation indices rather than any 
difference in merit between the two journals. For some kinds of research 
Design Studies is the most relevant journal and Design Issues would be 
unlikely to be interested. It is very revealing that the UK Research 
Assessment Exercise in 2001 recorded around 800 journal papers from Art 
and Design (the great majority would be in design) and these came from 
around 500 journals from a very wide range of fields of study, 
reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of design research as well as 
the limited core literature. If Australia is similar then we can kiss 
goodbye to research funding in Oz unless our colleagues there are able 
to make a convincing case for different treatment. It also demonstrates 
how subject based impact factors are extremely regressive since they 
inhibit interdisciplinarity, a problem that is evident in some leading 
research universities in the UK.

In general though, here in Britain the message is very different. There 
are new schemes being hatched for research funding in future but it's 
clear that, while the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) 
disciplines will go for a much greater proportion of measurement (well 
they like that kind of thing) and impact factors will be part of that, 
the Arts and Humanities disciplines have made a robust case for 
qualitative assessment and will continue to rely heavily on direct peer 
review of the work, however it is disseminated*.

In any event, as Ranulph points out, the conference is not mainly about 
dissemination, it is an essential part of the research infrastructure 
because it ensures that we are an international community sharing ideas 
and experiences, not isolated individuals and groups. This is certainly 
recognised by the funding agencies that I know about and their approach 
gives the lie to Terry's suggestion that only a few senior people with 
good grant income will be able to travel in future. Our research centre 
has a number of people attending the European Academy of Design 
Conference this Easter. Here's how it is made up:

1 senior academic (me) funded by our income from past research assessment.
1 new academic attending their first conference funded by the same source.
1 senior academic funded by a small externally funded research project 
(he had to compete for that)
2 PhD students funded by their studentship grant from research councils 
(they had to compete for the studentship in the first place)
2 Post-Doctoral Researchers funded by a large externally funded research 
project (I had to compete for that)

The point here is that 5 out of these 7 are attending because the 
research funding councils explicitly encourage conference attendance for 
a wide range of researchers. You are allowed to build it in to research 
project bids and they build it in to the funding for PhD students. The 
other two people are funded because the university sees the need to keep 
us in touch with the field. I feel that this list shows that a broad 
range of researchers can attend conferences in an environment where 
conference papers are not seen as important research "outputs", as long 
as institutions value the real purpose of conferences.

best wishes from Sheffield
Chris

*My most recent source is a talk given to UK Art and Design Deans and 
Heads of Dept last week by Prof Bruce Brown, who leads the 2008 research 
quality assessment for a wide range of Arts and Humanities Disciplines 
and is actively involved in planning for future research assessment.

********************
Professor Chris Rust
Chair of Design Research Society Council
Head of Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University
Psalter Lane, S11 8UZ, UK
+44 114 225 2706 (direct)
+44 114 225 2686 (research admin)
[log in to unmask]
www.chrisrust.net




Terence Love wrote:
> Hello,
> In Australia, we have received clear signals from the government that
> conferences will become much less relevant in research quality assessment. 
> Instead, the focus will be on citations of refereed papers in first-rank
> journals with high impact factors. (Design Issues is in the citation list,
> Design Studies is not). 
>
> This impact directly on income for education institutions and cash that is
> made available to academics.
> I gather this sea-change is a world-wide phenomenon.
>
> Some  implications are: 
> * Funding for attendance to conferences will be significantly restricted,
> particularly for anyone under professorial rank who does not have their own
> research income stream.
> * Conference viability will be reduced.
> * Conferences will become less relevant to building the research field
> * Conferences will have a biasing effect on the growth of the field because
> the networking will comprise a restricted subset of participants that will
> exclude many researchers in early/mid career 
> * Increased conservatism in the field (conferences only with existing
> established professors).
> * Increased emphasis on well-justified research outcomes rather than
> contextual and philosophical  discussions.
>
> This might be the time to think twice for those thinking of planning future
> design research conferences?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Terry
> ____________________ 
> Dr. Terence Love 
> Curtin Research Fellow, FDRS, AMIMechE
> Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Group
> Key Researcher, Centre for Extended Enterprise and Business Intelligence
> Research Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
> Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth,
> Western Australia 6845
> Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
> Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
> UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal.
> Visiting Research Fellow,
> Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development, Management School,
>
> Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK, [log in to unmask]
> ____________________
>
>
>