Hobson’s choice: the effects of research evaluation on academics’ writing practices in England

Abstract

(2017),"Why do you publish? On the tensions between generating scientific knowledge and publication pressure", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 69 Iss 5 pp. 529-544 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0019">https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0019</a> Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by All users group For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.*Related content and download information correct at time of download. Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics' writing practices in three different higher education institutions and across three different disciplines. Specifically, the paper discusses how England's national research excellence framework (REF) and institutional responses to it shape the decisions academics make about their writing. Design/methodology/approach -In total, 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focussed on different aspects of academics' writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data were coded using the qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti. Findings -Academics' ability to succeed in their career was closely tied to their ability to meet quantitative and qualitative targets driven by research evaluation systems, but these were predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation. Research evaluation systems limited the epistemic choices available to academics, partly because they pushed academics' writing towards genres and publication venues that conflicted with disciplinary traditions and partly because they were evenly distributed across institutions and age groups. Originality/value -This work fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical and qualitative findings on the effects of research evaluation systems in context. It is also one of the only papers to focus on the ways in which individuals' academic writing practices in parti...

On Peer Review as the ‘Gold Standard’ in Measuring Research Excellence: From Secrecy to Openness?

“…A requisite number of papers judged through several layers of peer review to be of an adequately high standard ensure one is ‘REF‐able’. But, following McCulloch (, pp. 512–513), such judgements also enable academics to ‘be employable and promotable, and, ironically, to gain access to the time and support necessary to facilitate the production of good quality research … not only in order to progress in their career, but also to keep their current job and avoid sanctions’.…”

Factors influencing researchers’ journal selection decisions

“…Nygaard [9] summarises the potential reasons for this situation and proposes an academic literacy approach that focuses on 'the issues of identity, multiple communities, and different institutional expectations (at the local, national, and international levels)'. However, McCulloch [10], adopting a more critical stance, argues that university research evaluation schemes are predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation and pressurise academics towards genres and publication venues that conflict with disciplinary traditions.…”

Managing the “valley of death” between the management research and the management practice: An empirical academic evidence

“…Aunque los académicos desarrollaron habilidades bilingües para traducir la investigación a un público profesional, como hemos visto, las presiones impuestas por los sistemas de recompensa pueden obstaculizar estos esfuerzos. Como se ha explicado anteriormente, la evaluación del desempeño y las políticas de incentivos subestiman las publicaciones profesionales, por lo que no estimula ni incentiva a los académicos a invertir tiempo y esfuerzo en ellas, ya que sienten que no contribuyen al desarrollo de su carrera académica (Mcculloch 2017).…”

“…Estos hallazgos coinciden con trabajos previos que han caracterizado la actual cultura de publicar o perecer en la ciencia moderna, con un fuerte énfasis en la evaluación del rendimiento basado en la publicación científica (Hicks et al 2015;Fochler et al 2016;Hangel y Schmidt-Pfister 2017;Mcculloch 2017). Diferentes trabajos han sugerido que la prevalencia de indicadores de desempeño relacionados con publicaciones determina el comportamiento de académicos y fomenta una búsqueda sistémica para publicar grandes cantidades de artículos de valor medible, algo que no se limita a ciertas disciplinas y se aplica a todas las etapas de la carrera (Hammarfelt y de Rijcke 2015;Fochler et al 2016;Hangel y Schmidt-Pfister 2017;Mcculloch 2017;Hammarfelt 2017). Esto es lo que se conoce como reactividad, en referencia a cómo los actores reaccionan a la manera en que sus prácticas son evaluadas y cambian sus comportamientos para mejorar su desempeño de evaluación (Espeland y Sauder 2007;Fochler et al 2016).…”