While I think Ken and Jeremy are right to warn us and I'm not happy
about carpetbaggers, I do part company with Ken a little on the role of
journal "repute".
Ken has said often that University leaders (of course he's one now and
following his own template) are conservative about these things and want
to see publications in respected journals as an important, possibly the
important, measure of academic achievement.
There was an interesting news item in this week's Times Higher Education
(UK) in which an experienced observer/participant in the research
assessment business, Ray Paul, is reported as warning that university
departments who have used journal rankings as a guide to what to submit
to the UK Research Assessment Exercise may be in for a rude shock when
the results come out. Paul points out that the RAE specifically excludes
Journal rankings in favour of peer review by the government's expert
panel for each subject and he believes that a number of influential
journals include papers that do not stand up to peer review of research
quality, he mentions one example of a high ranking journal where the
editorial policy makes it difficult for authors to explain methods and
methodologies.
The article appears to be freely available at present (most content at
THE is restricted to subscribers) so here's the link
http://tinyurl.com/4syrlg
I know that some countries are hooked on ranking and citation metrics.
Britain has been dabbling with these arts in recent years but I find it
encouraging that every time somebody at the top attempts to promote a
metrics approach it becomes obvious, quite quickly and publicly, that
they don't work for the majority of disciplines.
Given the large amounts of money and careers at stake, the lawyers are
hovering around and it would be very difficult to introduce a system
here if there was any danger that it could be shown in court to be
inaccurate or unbalanced. There will always be plenty of clever
academics available to provide the evidence for the lawyers so my guess
is that we'll stick with the messy old direct review of quality.
Which goes with my belief that nobody, especially in a messy hybrid
field like design, should take a publication at face value, no matter
how distinguished the author or publication. A researcher is responsible
for assessing the relevance and validity of their sources.
best wishes
Chris
*********************
Professor Chris Rust
Head of Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
+44 114 225 6772
[log in to unmask]
www.chrisrust.net
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the
future of the human race. - H. G. Wells
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