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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Hobson’s choice
T2 - the effects of research evaluation on academics’ writing practices in England
AU - McCulloch, Sharon Ann
N1 - This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
PY - 2017/10/27
Y1 - 2017/10/27
N2 - 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/method/approach – 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one STEM discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focused on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data was 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 particular are shaped by such systems.
AB - 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/method/approach – 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one STEM discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focused on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data was 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 particular are shaped by such systems.
KW - Academic writing
KW - knowledge creation
KW - research evaluation
KW - epistemology
KW - REF
U2 - 10.1108/AJIM-12-2016-0216
DO - 10.1108/AJIM-12-2016-0216
M3 - Journal article
VL - 69
SP - 503
EP - 515
JO - ASLIB Journal of Information Management
JF - ASLIB Journal of Information Management
SN - 2050-3806
IS - 5
ER -