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<FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>My understanding was that in the 2010 exercise the journal rankings in humanities areas were only used to inform a ‘general review process’. 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 can’t give a deep reading to this number of items in this time frame, so as far as I understand the journal ranking was one <I>optional </I>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.<BR>
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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 ‘circumstantial’ 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.<BR>
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If anyone has a better insight into the review process I’d love the hear it.<BR>
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Cheers,<BR>
Guy<BR>
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On 31/05/11 3:00 PM, "Jeffrey Browitt" <Jeffrey.Browitt@uts.edu.au> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT SIZE="5"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14pt'>"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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'><HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="100%"></SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><B>From:</B> csaa-forum-bounces@lists.cdu.edu.au [csaa-forum-bounces@lists.cdu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Rob Garbutt [rob.garbutt@scu.edu.au]<BR>
<B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, 31 May 2011 12:51 PM<BR>
<B>To:</B> csaa-forum@lists.cdu.edu.au<BR>
<B>Subject:</B> Re: [csaa-forum] removal of journal ranking system<BR>
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Hi Jon,<BR>
<BR>
Thanks for the link. I guess it sounds good but I'm wondering about <BR>
the replacement for journal rankings.<BR>
<BR>
Does anyone have an insight into what "the introduction of a journal <BR>
quality profile, showing the most frequently published journals for <BR>
each unit of evaluation" means?<BR>
<BR>
Cheers,<BR>
Rob.<BR>
<BR>
><BR>
>Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:13:21 +0800<BR>
>From: "Jon Stratton" <J.Stratton@curtin.edu.au><BR>
>Subject: [csaa-forum] removal of journal ramking system<BR>
>To: <csaa-forum@lists.cdu.edu.au><BR>
><BR>
> Hi Everybody,<BR>
> In case anyone missed the announcement, yesterday Kim Carr <BR>
>issued a press release relating to changes in the ERA scheme. One <BR>
>of the key changes is that journals will no longer be ranked--that <BR>
>is, no longer be allocated A*, A, B, C rankings. You can find the <BR>
>ministerial statement here: <BR>
><a href="http://minister.innovation.gov.au/Carr/MediaReleases/Pages/IMPROVEMENTSTOEXCELLENCEINRESEARCHFORAUSTRALIA.aspx">http://minister.innovation.gov.au/Carr/MediaReleases/Pages/IMPROVEMENTSTOEXCELLENCEINRESEARCHFORAUSTRALIA.aspx</a><BR>
><BR>
>cheers,<BR>
>Jon<BR>
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