[csaa-forum] ERA rankings

[Ned Rossiter]

hi Greg

To be clear: (as if it matters) I do not wish to undermine the hard  
work and good intentions of those engaged in responding to the ERA  
with the aim of revising the current provisional journal rankings.

However, and as patronising as this may sound, I do question the  
purpose of such efforts. Whether the majority of those efforts are  
even registered in the final submission by universities is doubtful  
due to procedural reasons. Whatever the final outcomes, the results  
are most likely the same: a ranking system of journals will prevail.   
And that does not fare well for research and work conditions in the  
humanities. Irrespective of whether some journals get bumped up and  
others knocked down, the most likely effects will include: 1)  
increases in teaching/admin loads for those colleagues not publishing  
in the top ranking journals, and 2) possible closure of journals.   
The most likely journals affected will be open content, online  
journals, which I do not see as having much chance of moving up the  
ranks.  So goodbye borderlands, scan, rouge, transformations,  
fibreculture, m/c , etc.  Maybe other independent journals like  
Cultural Studies Review, Meanjin, Overland, etc also end up in the  
dustbin. That's not especially encouraging for innovative forms of  
publishing and intellectual practice.  But it does offer continued  
protection and subsidisation to established commercial publishers and  
thought that, I guess, holds some fear of change in the world.

Further: I was never suggesting people stop publishing, and doing so  
in whatever journals they like. That wouldn't be a very pleasant  
thing to do. And it is not what I meant by refusal. Fortunately  
Australia does not yet have a publishing and tenure system like the  
US, where intellectual timidity, political conservatism and scholarly  
blandness is built in to the instrument of tenure. If you don't  
publish in those dear A ranking journals, you don't get your tenure  
(at least in the mid-top ranking universities). The ERA is a step in  
that direction.

And yes, the RAE was costly, highly inefficient, a bureaucratic pain  
for many, etc.  It also produced an interesting patchwork of research  
excellence across the higher ed sector.  And the more powerful unis  
weren't always very happy with that.  I can't see the ERA, however,  
unsettling the ambitions of the G8 unis in Australia.

You are right Greg, at the formal level there is no other way of  
having input in the procedure of review. But there are informal  
options that comprise a strategy of refusal:

- with its constituency in mind, CHASS can refuse participating in  
the ERA and walk out of negotiations. Here, there might be something  
to learn from the negotiating strategies of so-called 'rogue-states'

- tenured/continuing academics can withhold reporting their annual  
publications

- no one submits an ARC grant application in 2009 (and since the vast  
majority get rejected anyway, why do such large numbers persist with  
this subtraction of time from life?)

- people continue to explore and produce alternative forms of open  
publishing

- the ARC website/contacts could be inundated with email noise

- universities could decide they were going to pay no attention to  
the ERA

- academics with international interests can keep in mind that  
national rankings of journals within the ERA in enough instances  
won't match up with  international developments in their fields

None of this is of course enforceable and most probably find it  
undesireable.  I'm not suggesting waiting about for some starry-eyed  
revolution that will never come, Greg.  But to participate in the  
current mechanisms of response to the ERA is basically to legitimate  
the imposition of a journal ranking system and its consequences.  
There will be no 'best result' with such a disaster.

Ned




On 10 Jul 2008, at 15:32, Greg Hainge wrote:

> It seems that many people are aware of the deeply flawed nature of  
> the exercise. It is interesting that in emails and discussions I've  
> had recently with people who know the UK system very well, it would  
> appear that in spite of the distinctly superior processes in place  
> there to draw up the ERIH lists, those lists are effectively being  
> abandoned for the purposes of judging research in the Humanities in  
> the UK because of a realisation that any form of bibliometrics in  
> the Humanities is rife with problems.
>
> On that front I agree with Ned entirely that the best thing to do  
> in many ways is simply to get rid of this attempt to do the  
> impossible simply because it's a cheaper way to do things (and this  
> surely is one of the incentives to using bibliometrics).
>
> However, where I differ perhaps is in how I think this might be  
> achieved. I'm not sure that at this stage in the game mass refusal  
> (to publish in A* or A journals, especially ones run by large  
> publishing houses, I think that's your ultimate recommendation  
> Ned?) is either possible or desirable. How can that be coordinated  
> or enforced? What does someone who is on probation and undergoing  
> annual appraisal say to his/her head of school when asked why s/he  
> is not trying to publish in A* or A ranked journals? I think that  
> if there is to be any kind of refusal of the system then the way to  
> do this is to point out the flaws of the system in as many public  
> for a as possible (as some of the excellent pieces in the HES have  
> done recently) and to get our associations, Academies and other  
> professional bodies to get the message heard by the ARC.
>
> There are certain difficulties here though.
> 1. There seems to be no other way to have input into the process of  
> consultation at this stage (as far as I can see, if I'm wrong  
> please let me know) other than through the excel spreadsheet to be  
> submitted by each institution. That being the case, as I said when  
> this thread started, what I've done is to put as many omissions and  
> misrankings forward as possible in order to make a point that this  
> exercise is far from complete.
>
> 2. Let's just imagine that the exercise is scrapped (at least for  
> the humanities, some other discipline areas seem to find this  
> eminently unproblematic): what other system can be implemented? As  
> Ned points out, some kind of peer review as the UK had with the RAE  
> would seem to be more desirable, a system wherein each individual  
> piece of work is assessed. However, as it stands at the moment, and  
> indeed at the time of the RQF, the amount of money linked to the  
> quantification of research publication outcomes in Australia simply  
> doesn't make it sensible to implement such a costly system. This  
> surely is why bibliometrics are being foisted upon us, because (I  
> think I'm right in saying this) at the present time ERA is not  
> linked to any funding mechanism. This is not to say that it won't  
> be used by institutions to change the way that block grants are  
> divvied up internally, but it would not appear that it's going to  
> change the amount of federal money flowing to Universities for the  
> present time. So who wants to implement as costly a system as full  
> peer review for that? Not the Unis, that's for sure.
>
> 3. We should also remember that even with a system such as the RAE,  
> which appears to be upheld here as a better model, it has now been  
> scrapped, in part because it created so many unintended  
> consequences. And that surely is precisely the same thing that we  
> are saying could happen here. So given that there is probably no  
> perfect system, what does one do?
>
> Well, given that we seem to be well on the way down a route that  
> has already been decided upon, I think it vital that we try to get  
> the best result we can out of an imperfect system. Given that I'm  
> taking very seriously the response I feed in to my institution's  
> spreadsheet if that's the only mechanism I've got. This doesn't  
> mean though that we have to just passively accept a fait accompli;  
> I think it equally important that we try to point out the flaws in  
> the system in the right places, that we show our real, justified  
> concerns (either as individuals or as collective responses from  
> societies) for the unintended consequences that this system could  
> bring to those who can actually make a difference in this process,  
> be that Associate Deans of Research, DVCRs, the Executive of  
> Academies, Societies and other bodies, the ARC directly, the Higher  
> Ed community via publications and letters, whatever. So I agree  
> with many many of the points you make here Ned, but where else can  
> they be made in order to make a difference that could buck the  
> system by doing something other than just refusing to publish?  
> Given the publication lag of many journals, if we do that we'll  
> have to wait a long time for our revolution to come.
>
> Greg
>
>
> 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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> -----Original Message-----
> From: csaa-forum-bounces at lists.cdu.edu.au [mailto:csaa-forum- 
> bounces at lists.cdu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Ned Rossiter
> Sent: Thursday, 10 July 2008 10:11 AM
> To: CSAA discussion list
> Subject: Re: [csaa-forum] ERA rankings
>
>
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