[csaa-forum] removal of journal ranking system

[Guy Redden]

My understanding was that in the 2010 exercise the journal rankings in
humanities areas were only used to inform a Œgeneral review process¹. From
what I have gleaned this means that the reviewers each had a couple of
hundred items (book chapters, journal articles, books) to peer review in 2
months on top of their other workloads and they could pretty much review
them as they wished (with reference to a notion of world standard). You
can¹t give a deep reading to this number of items in this time frame, so as
far as I understand the journal ranking was one optional way of arriving at
a rating of a journal article without giving it a reading, or much of one,
i.e. the piece generally got the rating of the journal, or at least this was
a default that could have been changed by peer review.

If journals get some kind of quality profile instead, reviewers could
potentially use them in a similar way ­ just using the description instead
of letter grade to inform their rating of the piece. It could still be used
for a Œcircumstantial¹ review of a journal article instead of reading it.
That said I think it is certainly better for journals to be freed of the
public ratings.

If anyone has a better insight into the review process I¹d love the hear it.

Cheers,
Guy
> 
> 
> On 31/05/11 3:00 PM, "Jeffrey Browitt" <Jeffrey.Browitt at uts.edu.au> wrote:
> 
>> "the introduction of a journal quality profile, showing the most frequently
>> published journals for each unit of evaluation" sounds like a bullshit
>> statement to buy time while they figure out what to actually do to replace
>> the ranking system they had. Sounds MontyPythonesque.
>> 
>> From: csaa-forum-bounces at lists.cdu.edu.au
>> [csaa-forum-bounces at lists.cdu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Rob Garbutt
>> [rob.garbutt at scu.edu.au]
>> Sent: Tuesday, 31 May 2011 12:51 PM
>> To: csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au
>> Subject: Re: [csaa-forum] removal of journal ranking system
>> 
>> Hi Jon,
>> 
>> Thanks for the link.  I guess it sounds good but I'm wondering about
>> the replacement for journal rankings.
>> 
>> Does anyone have an insight into what "the introduction of a journal
>> quality profile, showing the most frequently published journals for
>> each unit of evaluation" means?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Rob.
>> 
>>> >
>>> >Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:13:21 +0800
>>> >From: "Jon Stratton" <J.Stratton at curtin.edu.au>
>>> >Subject: [csaa-forum] removal of journal ramking system
>>> >To: <csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au>
>>> >
>>> >    Hi Everybody,
>>> >        In case anyone missed the announcement, yesterday Kim Carr
>>> >issued a press release relating to changes in the ERA scheme.  One
>>> >of the key changes is that journals will no longer be ranked--that
>>> >is, no longer be allocated A*, A, B, C rankings.  You can find the
>>> >ministerial statement here:
>>> >http://minister.innovation.gov.au/Carr/MediaReleases/Pages/IMPROVEMENTSTOEX
>>> CELLENCEINRESEARCHFORAUSTRALIA.aspx
>>> >
>>> >cheers,
>>> >Jon

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