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INDUSTRY & RESEARCH concerned that if good people are opting out of that system, the quality of both the specific publications and the journals might fall dramatically over time.
What is deterring good academics from wanting to be involved in the peer review process? There’ s nothing that’ s actively stopping them from participating. What’ s happened in the past is that it’ s essentially been done on a goodwill basis. It’ s part of your professional service. [ But now ] we’ re seeing more and more pressures on people to publish in international journals. We’ ve been creating sharp incentives for some aspects of the academic profession, with particular respect to publication in international journals. That’ s become the mantra and all of the incentives to do that are strong. All we’ re arguing is that other important aspects, things like refereeing and editing, are perhaps suffering because [ there are no ] strong incentives to do them. So you’ re getting more and more time dedicated to research publications and less and less to the stuff that’ s historically been more voluntary, and certainly hasn’ t been as well financially supported, I suppose.
Incentives seem to be the key issue here. You’ ve previously mentioned that academics need to be recognised for this type of work. What are some of the ways you think academics could be rewarded, or what kind of incentives should there be? I think that’ s exactly right. It is an incentive problem. People are still keen on doing this work, it’ s just a question of being so busy, and if you’ re being asked to commit five hours a week or 10 hours a week, or whatever it is, towards a refereeing or an editing activity, what aren’ t you going to do in order to do that five or 10 hours? And so you have got to get the incentives right to make sure people make the best decisions they can about how to allocate their time. I completely agree it’ s an incentive problem.
What can we do? It’ s certainly not the case that there are no incentives to do that work. When people go up for promotion here at the University of Melbourne, those sorts of professional service activities are acknowledged, so they are formally part of the process. You can certainly make a strong case that if you’ ve been editing an important journal, that’ s making a contribution to the profession, and it is recognised in that sense.
I suppose what we’ re arguing is that’ s happening within the system [ but ] it’ s not happening from the top down. We’ d like to see some recognition from the government with regard to the way money flows around the university system, some recognition of the fact that this does take time. This is not a free good. We are not providing these editorial services and refereeing services for nothing, and that needs to be recognised.
That’ s what’ s lacking at the moment, because I think any academic is already busy and then is told, or asked, if they would like to do this additional work. Something has to give. You have to crowd out something else or give up something else. If it was properly financially rewarded you would find that there would be many more academics prepared to commit to providing those services. That’ s not to say that the money should directly flow to the individual academic; that’ s not what I ' m advocating. What I’ m saying is that if there’ s an acknowledgement in the way block grants are provided to institutions that should include some recognition of these editorial and refereeing activities.
In regards to the letter, have you heard back from universities and research bodies? Have they responded to the campaign? Not as yet. This is a long-term, big-picture issue, and we haven’ t heard directly back from either the government or from universities, per se, but this is an issue that I don’ t think is going to go away and I think this is just an initial salvo to say,“ Look, there’ s a large group of people here who are actively involved in the research publication process, so we’ re saying this is potentially a serious problem, so it’ s not going to go away.”
I think in due course there will be an appropriate response, [ I hope ], from the university and the government. ■
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