Dear All,
One would imagine that the percentiles can only be applied to the list as a whole. One would therefore hope that disciplines would not attempt to degrade all journals in another discipline area so as to get more of their own into the top rankings and that, therefore, the percentage of journals in each band within each discipline would more or less correspond to the overall picture. In areas where a discipline is systematically ranked low, however, this very fact provides particularly compelling evidence, I feel, for the reconsideration of rankings assigned. However, taking into account the big picture and percentage questions, it is probably equally important to 'demote' certain journals that you feel have been over-ranked for whatever reason, and to give reasons as to why (hard to demote any film studies journals at present though!!!). This is of course a tricker area to reach consensus on because of the obviously problematic politics of suggesting such things in on online forum such as this.
It seems apposite in light of this discussion to pass on this, just in from the AAH.
Dear humanities colleagues,
I am writing to follow up on my email of two weeks ago regarding the ARC's work on the ERA journal rankings. There have been some good developments.
Since that time, the draft rankings have generated a significant volume of responses (both directly to the ARC and indirectly through the Academy and other organisations). This clearly indicates that the sector needs more time and additional channels for the provision of advice on necessary improvements to the rankings.
The ARC has agreed to extend the submission period by three weeks until 14 August 2008. Institutions and scholarly societies are asked to make responses based on the excel workbook that suggest propose additions, deletions, promotions and relegations to the journal rankings.
As mentioned earlier, the Academy is unable to make a direct response, but I would encourage all discipline societies and associations to consider submitting their views. Individual scholars should contact their research offices and/or their societies to ask how they can feed in their expert opinion. More information on the consultation process is here:
http://www.arc.gov.au/era/submissions_ranking.htm <http://www.arc.gov.au/era/submissions_ranking.htm>
Again, I would like to emphasise that this is a genuine consultation process, which is why the rankings are not yet perfect - they need the further input of humanities scholars to get them into shape. A further step will be to ensure that other indicators are developed and refined to avoid over-reliance upon rankings. Your contributions will be vital to ensuring that ERA is the most effective quality assessment process that our sector can build. Once it has had sufficient humanities input, I have no doubt that ERA will be a vast improvement on the current set of indicators that are used to proxy for quality (which stack the game considerably against our disciplines).
Once again, please pass this on to colleagues who may be interested in ERA development issues.
With kind regards,
John
Dr John Byron
Executive Director
The Australian Academy of the Humanities
Dr Greg Hainge, Senior Lecturer in French, French Coordinator,
School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Qld 4072, Australia.
tel: (Int. + 61) (07) 3365 2282 fax: 3365 6799
personal web page: geocities.com/ghainge/
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President of the Australian Society for French Studies
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_Culture Theory and Critique_ Editorial Board.
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_Contemporary French Civilization_ Editorial Board.
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_Etudes Celiniennes_ Editorial Board.
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Australia and NZ Representative of the Société d'Études Céliniennes
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