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deemed appropriate can change, without warning, from one year to the next.
The other problem that’ s often raised is this: journal rankings are inherently conservative. They promote uniformity and stifle creativity. Publishing in the top-ranked disciplinary journals means, more often than not, running the gauntlet of gatekeepers whose job it is to maintain a discipline’ s conventions. Research that challenges this, or fails to speak the right language and use the favoured methodologies, will find itself unlikely to pass the supposedly objective peer review. Innovative research that does not fit into neat disciplinary moulds becomes collateral damage in a system that pegs rankings to quality.
However frustrating rankings become though, it’ s important researchers don’ t abandon them. There are ways to play the rankings game and still publish what you want, how you want and where you want. A key strategy in this regard is adopting what’ s known as triple publishing. The idea behind this concept is that any piece of research should ideally speak to more than one audience. Researchers should be engaging not just with their sub-disciplines but the entirety of their discipline. This of course means publishing one’ s research in specialist journals, even unranked ones. But it also means revising that same research so it does speak the language favoured in the top-ranked disciplinary journals. However, triple publishing goes further than speaking to“ a very small audience of hyper-knowledgeable, mutually acquainted specialists”, as Joshua Rothman put it [ last February ] in The New Yorker. It asks researchers to think seriously about how their research might or should engage with public debates. For the philosopher John Armstrong, this is perhaps the most regrettable by-product of the rise of rankings and metrics: that university research no longer seeks to influence what goes on in the public realm. Whilst contemporary academics probably can’ t live on op-eds and non-fiction alone, particularly if they want jobs and promotions within the university, triple publishing might help provide a way to satisfy university administrators and, with any luck, one’ s own intellectual integrity.
SHANNON BRINCAT RESEARCH FELLOW, GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
N. A. J. TAYLOR DOCTORAL RESEARCHER, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND
As early-career researchers and journal editors, we have a unique perspective into how journal rankings – which are not without their merits – have created a host of problems. Some of these are well-known enough. Take bandwagoning: the practice of encouraging research on subjects where the highest-ranked publication outlets are found. Or jingoism: where certain journals are elevated for reasons other than their content. Or gaming: the practice of encouraging scholars to write into journals or subject areas the rankings favour.
All of these practices work to narrow the possible knowledge claims within research. Despite this, research that’ s published in A * journals, which most often favour conventional approaches, continue to be encouraged and rewarded – with tenure, promotions and funding. But at the other end of the scale, the reverse is true. Research published in C or even unranked journals is disregarded, irrespective of its actual quality or contribution to knowledge. Some researchers have even been forced to disseminate their work via other means, for example blogs. Denigrating forms of knowledge in the name of some [ supposedly ] objective standard is the most dangerous thing we can do with ideas.
It’ s good to recall the warning sounded by then-tertiary education minister Kim Carr in abandoning the ERA rankings system in 2012:“ There is clear and consistent evidence that the rankings were being deployed inappropriately within some quarters of the sector, in ways that could produce harmful outcomes, and based on a poor understanding of the actual role of the rankings. One common example was the setting of targets for publication in A and A * journals by institutional research managers.”
We see no reason why this frank yet damning assessment no longer holds.
Nor can any revised journal rankings system – such as those discipline associations have devised – be considered objective. The criterion of assessment continues to be opaque, leading to vast differences in how individual journals have been assessed. Take the 1606 and 1605 code for example. Most journals were ranked according to their impact factors, but also their editorial boards or other subjective factors. Journals were elevated or demoted sometimes due to very arbitrary concerns. A look at the discrepancy between the ERA 2010 list and the Australian Political Studies Association list of 2013 shows, for instance, the demotion of certain critical journals or the disregard paid to multidisciplinary research( only six journals out of 122 are listed as multidisciplinary).
Of course, we must have a basis to assess research quality. But journal rankings have moved from being an indicative measure to a fetish. Performance metrics divorced from an individual’ s actual academic output and public engagement are insufficient and misleading.
Committing to a genuine plurality of research outlets, resourcing the peer-review process, having a number of indicators of research excellence( rather than just rankings), and ensuring search committees actively engage a candidate’ s work rather than just glancing at a CV for their rankings, are far more robust means of assessing research excellence than a deeply politicised list of journals. ■
Jason Sharman is an ARC Future Fellow and deputy director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University.
Mark Chou is an associate professor of politics at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. He is co-editor of Democratic Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Shannon Brincat is a research fellow in the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University. He is co-editor of Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought.
N. A. J. Taylor is a doctoral researcher in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. He is an associate editor of Global Change, Peace & Security.
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