scholarly journals Accountability in context: effects of research evaluation systems on publication practices, disciplinary norms, and individual working routines in the faculty of Arts at Uppsala University

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Hammarfelt ◽  
S. de Rijcke
2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 592-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim C.E. Engels ◽  
Andreja Istenič Starčič ◽  
Emanuel Kulczycki ◽  
Janne Pölönen ◽  
Gunnar Sivertsen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution in terms of shares of scholarly book publications in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in five European countries, i.e. Flanders (Belgium), Finland, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. In addition to aggregate results for the whole of the social sciences and the humanities, the authors focus on two well-established fields, namely, economics & business and history. Design/methodology/approach Comprehensive coverage databases of SSH scholarly output have been set up in Flanders (VABB-SHW), Finland (VIRTA), Norway (NSI), Poland (PBN) and Slovenia (COBISS). These systems allow to trace the shares of monographs and book chapters among the total volume of scholarly publications in each of these countries. Findings As expected, the shares of scholarly monographs and book chapters in the humanities and in the social sciences differ considerably between fields of science and between the five countries studied. In economics & business and in history, the results show similar field-based variations as well as country variations. Most year-to-year and overall variation is rather limited. The data presented illustrate that book publishing is not disappearing from an SSH. Research limitations/implications The results presented in this paper illustrate that the polish scholarly evaluation system has influenced scholarly publication patterns considerably, while in the other countries the variations are manifested only slightly. The authors conclude that generalizations like “performance-based research funding systems (PRFS) are bad for book publishing” are flawed. Research evaluation systems need to take book publishing fully into account because of the crucial epistemic and social roles it serves in an SSH. Originality/value The authors present data on monographs and book chapters from five comprehensive coverage databases in Europe and analyze the data in view of the debates regarding the perceived detrimental effects of research evaluation systems on scholarly book publishing. The authors show that there is little reason to suspect a dramatic decline of scholarly book publishing in an SSH.


2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (5) ◽  
pp. 503-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mcculloch

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics’ writing practices in three different higher education institutions and across three different disciplines. Specifically, the paper discusses how England’s national research excellence framework (REF) and institutional responses to it shape the decisions academics make about their writing. Design/methodology/approach In total, 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focussed on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data were coded using the qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti. Findings Academics’ ability to succeed in their career was closely tied to their ability to meet quantitative and qualitative targets driven by research evaluation systems, but these were predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation. Research evaluation systems limited the epistemic choices available to academics, partly because they pushed academics’ writing towards genres and publication venues that conflicted with disciplinary traditions and partly because they were evenly distributed across institutions and age groups. Originality/value This work fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical and qualitative findings on the effects of research evaluation systems in context. It is also one of the only papers to focus on the ways in which individuals’ academic writing practices in particular are shaped by such systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Joacim Hansson ◽  
Jukka Tyrkkö ◽  
Koraljka Golub ◽  
Ida Ahlström

This paper is a case study of research publication practices at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Linnaeus University, a young, mid-sized university in the south-east of Sweden. Research output was measured from publications in the local institutional repository following the guidelines of local research policy as defined in university documentation. The data collection comprised 3,316 metadata records of publications self-registered by authors affiliated with the faculty during the period of 2010–2018. A statistical analysis of research output was conducted, focusing on preferred publication types, disciplinary specificity, level of co-authorship, and the language of the publication as registered in the local repository. The analysis focused on two main research questions: 1) how do the local research practices stand in relation to traditional publication patterns in the humanities? 2) how do the observed publication patterns relate to local university policy on publication and research evaluation? The empirical results suggest a limited correlation between publication practices and research incentives from university management, a finding that is corroborated by previous research on the scholarly character of the humanities and university policies. Overall, traditional humanities publication patterns were largely maintained throughout the period under investigation.


Author(s):  
Marta Natalia Wróblewska

AbstractThe introduction of ‘impact’ as an element of assessment constitutes a major change in the construction of research evaluation systems. While various protocols of impact evaluation exist, the most articulated one was implemented as part of the British Research Excellence Framework (REF). This paper investigates the nature and consequences of the rise of ‘research impact’ as an element of academic evaluation from the perspective of discourse. Drawing from linguistic pragmatics and Foucauldian discourse analysis, the study discusses shifts related to the so-called Impact Agenda on four stages, in chronological order: (1) the ‘problematization’ of the notion of ‘impact’, (2) the establishment of an ‘impact infrastructure’, (3) the consolidation of a new genre of writing–impact case study, and (4) academics’ positioning practices towards the notion of ‘impact’, theorized here as the triggering of new practices of ‘subjectivation’ of the academic self. The description of the basic functioning of the ‘discourse of impact’ is based on the analysis of two corpora: case studies submitted by a selected group of academics (linguists) to REF2014 (no = 78) and interviews (n = 25) with their authors. Linguistic pragmatics is particularly useful in analyzing linguistic aspects of the data, while Foucault’s theory helps draw together findings from two datasets in a broader analysis based on a governmentality framework. This approach allows for more general conclusions on the practices of governing (academic) subjects within evaluation contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-193
Author(s):  
Jonas K Lind

Abstract This article investigates the influence of changes in the research funding environment on hierarchy in Danish universities. The article concludes that the claims made by some scholars in the field—that external funding of research and the introduction of ‘strong’ research evaluation systems have penetrated or weakened hierarchy in universities—need to be moderated. In some ways, the developments in the resource environment, in tandem with the implementation of a management reform in Danish universities, have worked to underpin hierarchy in universities.


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