Journal-Ranking System Goes Down Under Weight of Controversy

May 31, 2011, 11:52 am

The Australian government abandoned its journal-ranking system yesterday, amid complaints that haphazard ranks—reported in The Chronicle—were affecting research financing and the careers of academics. The system was part of an overall initiative called Excellence in Research for Australia, which helps the government decide how much money goes to a given research unit at a university. Aspects of the journal rankings had been considered for possible adoption in the United States and Europe.

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salestax

I have no idea how the rankings were for non-US journals, but in areas I have some familiarity with, the Australian ranks for US journals are radically different from those developed in the US. The Australians may have ranked on the basis of the name of the journal rather than the content of the journals, the quality and reputation of editorial boards, impact factors, etc. Who knows?
vatican

HAH! I never thought I would read this. Bravo Senator Carr for the wisdom to see that the ERA doesn’t work!!! After all that ridiculous, painful and costly overhaul, we’re back to square one. I’ve always maintained that the tier system of journal rankings is ridiculous.

To your question salestax – a bunch of “anointed” Aussie academics were asked, I believe, to determine how the journals should be ranked. When you look at the list, as in the case of business for me, most of the journals mirror that of the American’s. They are of high impact factors. Personally I don’t have a problem with impact factor and I play that game to some extent but what I have a problem with is that the ERA discourages multidisciplinary research. You could be publishing in really good journals in other disciplines outside your own but you/your school or department don’t get credit for it.

I say scrap the funding for conferences because some academics disappear when they are scheduled to present their papers. Furthermore, conferences are becoming more and more like a cash cow for the organizers. Networking? I’ve been able to network with people without attending conferences! At least the Australian government is willing to fund research publications. We don’t have that in Canada and the US but we are assessed when it comes to tenure and promotion and/or when we want to jump ship. So kudos to the Feds in Canberra for continuing to fund research and recognizing that the tier system creates more problems than solutions.
raymond_j_ritchie

It was all a silly idea in the first place. Personally I work on photosynthesis. There are two key journals in the field. They publish the same type of material and the papers are refereed by people drawn from the same pool of world researchers. Yet one had an A rating and the other was rated C. Why? Who knows. I have published in both and perceived no difference in the quality of research required to get papers over the line.
Then there was the issue of researchers working on animals or plants unique to Australasia. If you publish a paper on kangaroos in Austral Ecology for example, not many zoologists in Europe and Nth America will cite it. Is a paper on kangaroo ecology inherently inferior to a similar study of red deer? No – of course not!
vatican

The problem as we know it is that the university administrators and politicians are not interested in the flora, fauna and business issues in Australia. They seem to think that American-centric publications are far superior than Australian based journals. It’s a sad reality. This is symptomatic of an inferiority complex coupled with a lack of self respect!

One of the best advice I received when I was a junior academic was “Publish in a top tier journal to show that you can do it. After that who cares?! If you always b!tch about not being able to get into a “top tier” (open to interpretation), you are seen as a whiner.”
11159766

Journal-ranking is widely used by U.S. universities, where it causes all sorts of silliness, especially in multi-disciplinary fields and between disciplines; the social sciences and the humanities, for example, have very different habits of citation, producing very different ratings for “impact.”