by Rebekah Smith McGloin and Rachel Handforth, Nottingham Trent University
Research excellence’ is a ubiquitous concept to which we are mostly habituated in the UK research ecosystem. Yet, at the end of an academic year which saw the publication of UKRI EDI Strategy, four UKRI council reviews of their investments in PGR, House of Commons inquiry on Reproducibility and Research Integrity and following on from the development of manifesto, concordat, declaration and standards to support Open Research in recent years, it feels timely to engage in some critical reflection on cultures of excellence in research.
The notion of ‘excellence’ has become an increasingly important part of the research ecosystem over the last 20 years (OECD, 2014). The drivers for this are traced to the need to justify the investment of public money in research and the increasing competition for scarce resources (Münch, 2015). University rankings have further hardwired and amplified judgments about degrees of excellence into our collective consciousness (Hazelkorn, 2015).
Jong, Franssen and Pinfield (2021) highlight that the idea of excellence is a ‘boundary object’ (Star and Griesemer, 1989) however. That is, it is a nebulous construct which is poorly defined and is used in many different ways. It has nevertheless shaped policy, funding and assessment activities since the turn of the century. Ideas of excellence have been enacted through the Research Excellence Framework and associated allocation to universities of funding to support research, competitive schemes for grant funding, recruitment to flagship doctoral training partnerships and individual promotion and reward.
We can trace a number of recent initiatives at sector level, inter alia, that have sought to broaden ideas of research excellence and to challenge systemic and structural inequalities in our research ecosystem. These include the increase of impact weighting in REF2021 to 25%, trials of systems of partial randomisation as part of the selection process for some smaller research grants, e.g. British Academy from 2022, the Concordats and Agreements Review work in 2023 to align and increase influence, capacity, and efficiency of activity to support research culture and the recent Research England investment in projects designed to address the broken pipeline into research by increasing participation of people from racialised groups in doctoral education.
At the end of June, we are hosting an event at NTU which will focus on redefining cultures of research excellence through the lens of inclusion. The symposium, to be held at our Clifton Campus on Wednesday 28 June, provides an opportunity to re-examine the broad notion of research excellence, in the context of systemic inequalities that have historically locked out certain types of researchers and research agendas and locked in others.
The event focuses on two mutually-reinforcing areas: the possibility of creating more responsive and inclusive research agendas through co-creation between academics and communities; and broadening pathways into research through the inclusive recruitment of PhD and early career researchers. We take the starting position that approaches which focus on advancing equity are critical to achieving excellence in UK research and innovation.
The day will include keynotes from Dr Bernadine Idowu and Professor Kalwant Bhopal, the launch of a new competency-based PGR recruitment framework, based on sector consultation, and a programme of speakers talking about their approaches to diversifying researcher recruitment and engaging the community in setting research agendas.
NTU will be showcasing two new projects that are designed to challenge old ideas of research excellence and forge new ways of thinking. EDEPI (Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation Programme) is a partnership with Liverpool John Moores and Sheffield Hallam Universities and NHS Trusts in the three cities. The project will explore how working with the NHS can improve access and participation in doctoral education for racially-minoritised groups. Co(l)laboratory is a project with University of Nottingham, based on the Universities for Nottingham civic agreement with local public-sector organisations. Collab will present early lessons from a community-informed approach to cohort-based doctoral training.
Our event is a great opportunity for universities and other organisations who are, in their own ways, redefining cultures of research excellence to share their approaches, challenges and successes. We invite individuals, project teams and organisations working in these areas to join us at the end of June, with the hope of building a community of practice around building inclusive research cultures, within and across the sector.
Dr Rebekah Smith McGloin is Director of the Doctoral School at Nottingham Trent University and is Principal Investigator on the EDEPI and Co(l)laboratory projects.
Dr Rachel Handforth is Senior Lecturer in Doctoral Education and Civic Engagement at NTU.
Wednesday April 26 saw the launch of the SRHE ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: prospects for space in higher education’ symposium series, delivered in partnership with series co-convenors Professor Sam Elkington and Dr Jill Dickinson. This blog was compiled and edited by Sinead Murphy.
The intention of this Symposium Series is to bring together leading voices and space-based research from across the field to encourage critical discussion and debate with a view to generating and encapsulating key insights around contemporary landscapes of learning in HE. Traditionally, the needs of learning spaces have been often pushed into the background of institutional planning, decision-making, and curriculum design in favour of other, more visible performance measures of the student experience. Now the changing requirements of learning spaces are top of the agenda for university leaders, estates teams, and practitioners who must recognise and understand how learning can take place anytime and anywhere and, therefore, imagine new and radical strategies for student-centred, sustainable campus design.
We offer the concept of ‘learning landscape’ as a basis on which to explore how universities can use different ideas about learning spaces to reflect changing preferences, incorporate digital technologies, and critically consider future possibilities. This Symposium Series presents opportunities for key stakeholders to discuss and debate new possibilities for pedagogy, technology, and learning spaces. Enacted through separate, hybrid symposium events, and structured through the prism of one of three thematic lenses – networks, flexibilities, and assemblages – the Series has been informed by a ‘Kaleidoscope of Notions’ (Wang et al, 2011) for interrogating theoretical and applied perspectives and priorities for future learning spaces. We aim to encourage an overarching reflexive conversation with, and for, the sector.
Networks
The initial Networks themed symposium charted a focus shift in HE. It recognised that the contemporary learning landscape needs to be considered less in terms of singular learning spaces and more in terms of how spaces are becoming increasingly connective, permeable, networked, and interwoven (both physically and digitally) to provide inclusive and adaptive learning environments.
In her keynote address, Professor Lesley Gourlay offered a critical take on the concept of networks in HE learning and teaching. She highlighted an overemphasis on connection (defined in terms of interlinkages between discrete nodes) and the mediating role of technology in associated learning processes. Noting the inseparability of physical and digital space in and for learning, Lesley argued for the need to push beyond now established post-digital configurations of space and knowledge generation, towards a conceptualisation of ‘lived’ learning encounters as being more-than-digital, situated within an unfolding meshwork of formal and informal spaces. Lesley drew upon the work of Tim Ingold to animate her view of the meshwork of intertwined learning spaces in HE, pointing to the need to retain three critical components of the learning landscape: ephemerality, co-presence with others, and the significance of finding seclusion and stillness. From this perspective, the spaces ‘between-the-lines’ possess value for students in their coming-to-know about their subjects, as well as themselves, offering what Lesley described as ‘fugitive spaces’; fleeting yet meaningful assemblages of space and practice that help students to navigate the increasing sprawl of HE campuses and their digital appendages.
In her talk, ‘Mattering, meaning making and motivation: building trust and respect through multimodal social learning communities’, Sue Beckingham shared insights from work exploring how social media can be used to support student mattering, helping to mediate intentional communicative action and trust across formal and informal spaces for learning. Drawing on the ideas of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social capital, Sue challenged us to question assumptions we can sometimes make about the concept of mattering, it being more than an exercise in fostering social connections between individual learners. Sue’s work provided a compelling empirical basis for utilising multimodal strategies to help students understand what is expected of them in spaces both on and off campus. For Sue, such strategies function as ‘gestures’ that encourage, and model for, relational practices through shared experiences where students have learned to work cooperatively across contexts and boundaries.
Dr Julianne K Viola’s talk, ‘Nurturing meaningful connection in a new era of learning’, introduced longitudinal research that began before the pandemic and continued through periods of online and hybrid delivery, as well as taking in the more recent return to campus. Julianne’s research sought better understanding of the factors that influence students’ ability to navigate their university settings and build meaningful connections with campus space(s) and student communities. By encompassing student experiences prior to, during, and post-pandemic, Julianne provided unique insight into what matters most for students in building and maintaining a sense of belonging and community across different modes of delivery and experience. Key findings highlighted the significant impact that the lack, or absence, of physical contact with space, and the limited ability to connect and socialise with others, had on student engagement and motivation in, and for, their learning. Further insights pointed to the prevalence and persistence of certain structural barriers – viewed in terms of how certain physical (campus) and virtual spaces are set up and utilised – that can undermine or weaken meaningful connections for students. Supporting similar insights shared in Sue Beckingham’s earlier talk, students reported a positive or enhanced sense of belonging and community with their university settings when a mix of formal and informal spaces were available to them as ‘touch points’ in their wider experiences. Crucially, this merging of spaces points to the affective dimension of networked space as a means of nurturing meaningful connections for students on both an individual and collective level.
In his talk ‘Physical learning spaces and networked landscapes of learning: Prismatic mediations’, Dr Brett Bligh problematised how physical learning spaces mediate networked landscapes of learning, arguing that physical spaces exhibit multiple mediation on what is expected and made possible for students and educators therein. Brett challenged the established logic of ‘built pedagogy’, and associated proliferation of solutions in modern campus development, on the grounds that such solutions are typically based on a model of deploying different types of learning spaces to mediate certain forms of educational practice.
Brett was quick to highlight the limiting nature of such an attitude towards learning space and how it encouraged certain ways of interacting and speaking about space production. Brett’s view is that, in the practice realities of learners and educators, such activities constitute a wider learning landscape comprised of a range of environments, people, social structures, and resources. It is within these ‘mediations’ that physical learning spaces are appropriated, and their agentic qualities and rhythms revealed. Building on established research, Brett made the case for an alternative language for conceptualising how space is a “mediating factor” within the actual practices of HE that is based around six core concepts, wherein space is understood to be transparent, enabling, stimulating, associative, cognitively integrated, and socially integrated. Whereas earlier research conveys distinctly normative views on space, focused largely on stability, this alternative framework is oriented towards encouraging stakeholders to reflect on their experiences and explore future possibilities within their institutions. Brett wants the associated vocabulary to support reflection, re-thinking, and re-conceptualisation – as stakeholders use it to explore their experiences and aspirations together.
In the afternoon panel discussion contributors were given licence to expand, elaborate, and cross-examine the work presented with the aim of considering more deeply the ‘prospects for space’. Discussion identified the importance of connection, mattering, belonging, and a clear need to move away from performative paradigms in learning space and campus design towards a more participative paradigm of practice. Such a paradigm shift would acknowledge the rhythms of connections, of continuities and discontinuities in space, of working socially and solitarily, identifying, and intentionally inviting touchpoints that converge at the boundaries of experience (physical, virtual, and emotional). New strategies for enabling learning and accommodating the multiple demands on today’s students necessitate a rethinking of the uses and locations of learning space. Increasingly, this will require universities, educators, and students to be flexible and network-minded in how they seek out, and bring together, formal and informal activities in an environment that recognises that learning can take place any time, in either physical and/or virtual spaces.
The powerful insights emerging from this first symposium have encouraged us to think about how we can help scaffold the spaces that students are already using for learning. We can draw on their experiences of using these locations and technologies to adopt student-centred approaches to designing landscapes of learning that extend across and beyond the campus. Our next symposium considers these, and related, ideas through the lens of Flexibility: we will explore how learning is situated relative to the demands of students for greater control in fitting their studies around their learning needs and preferences, as well as other aspects of their lives. Such a view implies a necessity for widening and loosening of the boundaries of conventional learning spaces to provide greater potential flexibility in how, where, and when learning happens. We hope that you will join us on 14th June, online or in person at SRHE’s offices, to continue this conversation.
Sam Elkington is Professor of Learning and Teaching at Teesside University where he leads on the University’s learning and teaching enhancement portfolio. Sam is a PFHEA and National Teaching Fellow (NTF, 2021). He has worked in Higher Education for over 15 years and has extensive experience working across teaching, research and academic leadership and policy domains. Most recently Sam worked for Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) where he was national lead for Assessment and Feedback and Flexible Learning in Higher Education. Sam’s most recent book (with Professor Alastair Irons) explores contemporary themes in formative assessment and feedback in higher education: Irons and Elkington (2021) Enhancing learning through formative assessment and feedback London: Routledge.
Dr Jill Dickinson is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Leeds. As a SFHEA, Jill was also selected as a Reviewer for the Advance HE Global Teaching Excellence Awards, and she has been shortlisted for National Teaching Fellowship. A former Solicitor, specialising in property portfolio management, Jill’s dual research interests are around place-making and professional development, and her work has been recognised in the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence. Jill holds a number of editorial roles, including board memberships for Teaching in Higher Education and the Journal of Place Management and Development. She has recently co-edited a collection entitled Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia: Pracademia which involves contributions from the UK and internationally, and is being published by Springer. Jill has also co-founded communities of practice, including Pracademia in collaboration with Advance HE Connect.
Professor Rachel Brooks and Professor Sarah O’Shea (editors of the SRHE/Routledge Book series) recently ran a Professional Development Programme event on ‘Writing a Book Proposal’. Sarah and Rachel offered their insights as authors and editors, discussing some questions frequently asked by those thinking of putting a book proposal together; they also include some advice from a publisher’s perspective offered by our colleagues at Routledge. This summary has been compiled and edited by Sinead Murphy, SRHE Manager, Conferences and Events.
Publishing a book is a significant undertaking – so why do it? Writing a book is a means for researchers to provide an in-depth and coherent account of their work, that often isn’t possible in shorter articles or other formats. Books are accepted in social sciences (including higher education research) as appropriate outputs, and provide opportunities to reach a larger, sometimes international, audience for your work.
Before embarking on such a project, it is important to consider the different options available for disseminating your research, and the advantages and limitations of each. Firstly, you may wish to weigh up the distinctions between edited books and monographs:
The labour of producing a co-edited book is distributed across a group authors and editors, and the format can facilitate a greater range and diversity of perspectives around a single topic or theme. At the same time, co-edited volumes demand a lot of time and project management from the editor(s), who must also ensure the overall quality of the finished product.
Monographs, on the other hand, are generally sole-authored or sometimes involve a small author team, such that the writing can be well-integrated, with ideas and arguments explored in significant depth. A sole-authored book involves a great deal of time, energy, and labour, but is an excellent addition to your CV.
Some of the most innovative books in the field of higher education research are based on doctoral research. However, turning your PhD thesis into a book often requires a substantial amount of work, and there are some specific considerations worth bearing in mind during this process:
Thesis chapters do not automatically translate to book chapters – restructuring, rewriting, revision, and addition is often required. Books typically do not, for example, tend to feature the same level of detail around methodological decisions and process as is found in a doctoral thesis. You may also need to ‘slice’ your thesis and explore a specific area or theme more deeply.
Consider any overlaps with previously published journal articles. Some publishers may be concerned about what will be novel or original about your book if you have already published extensively from your PhD research, while for others this may not be a significant issue. It’s therefore worth discussing this topic with your target publisher at an early stage, to establish what kind of changes or developments may be expected for a book proposal to be successful.
Discuss your publication plans (and/or draft proposal) with your current or former supervisor, or other experienced academics in your department or field. The transition from publishing works in progress and journal articles to publishing books can seem like a big leap, but supervisors – who know your work very well – are generally happy to discuss and advise on this process.
With your initial preparation complete, you may feel ready to approach a publisher. What are the next logical steps?
Research your publishing options, and consider not only what would best suit your field and specific topic, but also your motivation for writing the book. Are you, for instance, trying to apply for a job or promotion? If so, which publisher is highly regarded in your field?
Once you have decided on your publisher of choice, consider sending an informal e-mail to the editor(s). Your e-mail should provide a brief overview of your idea or focus and seek to gauge some feedback on whether this would appeal to the series – the response you receive can help you to quickly establish whether a publisher is the right fit for your work.
Check the different publication options offered – is a paperback option available? Hard copies can be prohibitive in terms of cost to the prospective reader, and so a paperback option could be a key selling point down the track. Are there options for open access – and if so, what are the fees and charges? Some contracts or research projects include funding for these costs.
Once you have conducted this initial research, a publisher may invite you to write a proposal – this is a formal expression of what you hope your book will contain, which provides the basis for the publisher (and others) to make a final decision regarding a potential book contract.
Usually there is a form or template available on the publisher’s website or which they can send you, which must be carefully followed. These forms vary across publisher, so it is important to access this early in your process to tailor your proposal to what the publisher is asking for. While completing this form:
Consult examples of successful proposals – colleagues in your department or wider network will often be happy to share.
Provide details of your writing or editing experience – this is an opportunity to outline what you have already published from your PhD.
The proposed timeline for someone drawing on their finished thesis will be much shorter than that of someone starting from scratch with a new research project. It is important to be realistic about how much writing you have done already, and your existing commitments. A typical timeline may be around one year from the date on which the book contract is signed, but this varies greatly depending on individual circumstances.
Many publishers prescribe a minimum and maximum length for the finished book (normally around 80,000 words) but this varies between publishers, and there is increasing variety in length.
A book proposal should also include a concise overview expressing the unique selling point of your book, a chapter-by-chapter summary, a list of competing titles in the same area as your proposed book (and what makes your book distinct from these) and the potential market for your book (academics, students, researchers, others?). Some of this can be more challenging with edited collections if you are planning a call for proposals, but both publishers and peer reviewers need to see what you are planning to include to assess the proposal fully.
Some further writing advice from a publisher’s perspective offered by Routledge, but widely applicable across many academic publishers, is:
Take your time writing
It is obvious to those assessing a proposal if it has been rushed. Use the proposal as an opportunity to best advertise yourself, your author voice, and your ideas. Ensure you answer all questions on the template provided by the publisher or series editor fully – missing out on questions can imply to the publisher that your idea is not fully developed.
Be clear and accessible in your language
While the editor you submit your proposal to at the publisher will work within your subject area, eg education, they are unlikely to be an expert in your specific topic. Make sure you spell out acronyms or technical terms the first time you use them and reference the work you are building upon.
Think about the market/intended audience for the book
Publishers need to know that there is a clear route to market for your book, in addition to its academic merit. Make sure you express who you think your reader will be and how they are going to use your book. What are the key objectives of your book, and why is it needed? Making this clear in your proposal shows that you are serious about writing a book and that you have a good awareness of your key market and what else has published in the area.
Recommend potential reviewers
The publisher may ask you to recommend peer reviewers as part of the proposal stage, generally requesting that they are at a different institution to you and spanning a range of locations if you are aiming at an international audience. Routledge does not guarantee to contact all of these people – and their peer review process is anonymised so you won’t know this for definite – but they provide another indication of who you are writing for. This can help the publisher search for other potential reviewers and ensure your book is correctly positioned within their publishing programme.
Supply abstracts, table of contents, and a description of the book wherever possible
At the formal proposal stage, you should have a good idea of what the book will be about. Supplying this material can be more difficult when it comes to edited collections particularly if you are planning a call for proposals, but the publisher needs to see what you intend to include to assess the proposal fully – as do peer reviewers.
Professor Rachel Brooks is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of Surrey, UK. As well as being co-editor of the Routledge/SRHE book series, she is editor-in-chief of Sociology and an executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education. She has published widely in the sociology of higher education. Recent books include Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities (with Johanna Waters); Reimagining the Higher Education Student (with Sarah O’Shea) and Sharing Care (with Paul Hodkinson).
Professor Sarah O’ Shea is a national and international recognised educator and researcher, who applies sociological perspectives to the study of higher education equity. Sarah has also held numerous university leadership positions, which have directly informed changes across the Australian higher education sector, particularly in the field of educational equity. She is a prolific writer, with over 80 publications including books, book chapters, scholarly journal articles, media articles and commissioned reports produced in the last decade.
How healthy is the area of higher education studies? When we look at the extant literature, there seems to be cause for concern. Scholars have noted: the frequent absence of theory and short-term focus of such research; the proximity of researchers to policy-makers which, it is argued, can make critical distance hard to achieve; and the fragmentation of the field. Higher education research has also been critiqued for occupying a relatively marginal place within the wider discipline of educational research. Nevertheless, I suggest that an analysis of recent data paints a rather different, and more optimistic, picture.
Indeed, there is mounting evidence that higher education research is an increasingly vibrant area of enquiry. In relation to research funding, for example, data from the UKRI’s Gateway to Research on the number of grants awarded from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (Figure 1) indicate that, since the turn of the century, higher education-focussed projects have regularly been funded, albeit still not to the same extent as those that are schools-orientated. The grants from these bodies are relatively large (for the arts, humanities and social sciences), and are typically expected to make a theoretical, not only empirical, contribution.
Figure 1. Number of ESRC and AHRC grants awarded by ESRC and AHRC, with higher education or school in title, 2006-2022, by date of award*
Source: UKRI Gateway to Research database
*The data show only the date of the award, not the years over which the award was spent.
NB Data are available from 2004, but no education grants are recorded for either 2004 or 2005.
Vibrancy within the field of educational studies is also evidenced in data from the most recent national research assessment exercise in the UK (REF2021). As the exercise allowed researchers to be much more selective about the work they submitted for assessment than in previous exercises (ie they were required to submit a minimum of one research output and, across submissions as a whole, an average of 2.5 such outputs per full-time member of staff, compared with a minimum of four submissions per staff member in REF2014), the work submitted is clearly only a relatively small proportion of the overall research conducted within the area. Nevertheless, the data do facilitate comparative judgements over time, as well as giving a good sense about what is considered, by both individuals and institutions, to be high quality work within education. As Table 1 shows, the percentage of outputs submitted to the Education unit of assessment for REF2021 that focussed on higher education, at 14 per cent, was markedly higher than the corresponding proportion in the previous exercise, at nine per cent. A similar increase was evident in relation to the impact case studies submitted for both exercises, with the number of higher education-focussed impact case studies increasing from 15 per cent of all those submitted to the Education unit of assessment in REF2014 to 21 per cent in REF2021 (see Table 2). The increased vibrancy of higher education scholarship was also noted within the final report for the Education unit of assessment, which explicitly remarked on the growth in this area since REF 2014.
Table 1. Submission to REF2021 Education sub-panel: outputs
The third source of evidence for the vibrancy of higher education within educational research is individual journals. The British Journal of Sociology of Education is a well-established international journal, based in the UK, which publishes work across many areas of education from pre-school to adult education and workplace learning. A comparison of the content of articles published in this journal since the turn of the century indicates that the proportion of work focussed on higher education has seen a steady growth, with a particularly large number of articles published over the most recent period (see Figure 2). Alongside this, new higher education journals have emerged over recent years. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, for example, was launched in 2017, with the remit of publishing articles that engage explicitly with topical policy questions and significant areas of higher education policy development.
Figure 2. Percentage of articles focussing on higher education published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, by issue number: 20 (1999) to 43 (2023)
Evidence from these three sources – research funding bodies, the UK’s national research assessment exercise, and education journals – indicates that higher education research now occupies an important place within the wider educational research landscape, and has grown in vibrancy over the past ten to twenty years. Moreover, it appears to have successfully addressed some of the weaknesses identified by scholars a decade or so ago, which were outlined above. The success of higher education researchers in securing grants from prestigious funding bodies suggests that they are no longer dependent on the short-term grants from policy organisations, enabling the exploration of issues in more depth across longer timescales. All three sources of evidence discussed above also indicate that the ‘absence of theory’ is no longer an accurate characterisation of the field. As noted above, UKRI grants typically require grant-holders to make a theoretical contribution, as well as an empirical one, through their work, while a robust conceptual framework is obviously important to work published in high status journals (such as the British Journal of Sociology of Education) and likely to be a consideration for work selected for submission to REF2021, given the relatively low number of submissions required per individual.
The vibrancy of higher education research can be explained by factors at a variety of levels. First, despite the points above about the ‘critical distance’ between researchers and policymakers, it seems very likely that much higher education research is related to the wider national policy context in the UK (and other parts of the world), in which politicians and policymakers have shown a high level of interest in the higher education sector, and taken up an increasingly interventionalist stance. Researchers are likely to be, in part, responding to this political prioritisation. The ongoing massification of higher education in the UK, with around 50 per cent of each cohort going on to degree-level study, may also have driven research activity in this area – with researchers cognisant of the importance of the sector to many people’s lives. As scholars have noted previously, higher education research is also encouraged at the institutional level – not only through the work of academic development units (or similar) – but also through the funding made available by universities to their academic staff to better understand their student populations and/or to pursue pedagogical research, with the aim of improving processes of teaching and learning. Often these are bound up quite closely with the wider policy environment: a desire to use research to improve ‘the student experience’ may be underpinned by market imperatives – for example, to improve an institution’s performance in the National Student Survey. Increased support from professional organisations (such as the SRHE and the network of Early Career Higher Education Researchers) is likely to have also played a role in the stimulation of higher education research. Finally, the ease and low cost of access to research participants (ie students and higher education staff) may also have driven enquiry in this area, in a context where research funding has become extremely competitive. While there are many reasons to be concerned about the focus of researchers’ gaze (ie the state of UK higher education itself), the current vibrancy of higher education studies is, in many ways, to be celebrated.
This blogpost is based on an article that has recently been published in the British Journal of Educational Studies.
Professor Rachel Brooks is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of Surrey, UK. As well as being co-editor of the Routledge/SRHE book series, she is editor-in-chief of Sociology and an executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education. She has published widely in the sociology of higher education. Recent books include Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities (with Johanna Waters); Reimagining the Higher Education Student (with Sarah O’Shea) and Sharing Care (with Paul Hodkinson).
One of the benefits of SRHE membership is exclusive access to the quarterly newsletter, SRHE News, www.srhe.ac.uk/publications/srhe-newsletter. SRHE News typically contains a round-up of recent academic events and conferences, policy developments and new publications, written by editor Rob Cuthbert. To illustrate the contents, here is part of the April 2023 issue on recent developments in Publishing. If you would like to see a sample issue just email rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk or rob.gresham@srhe.ac.uk.
John Sherer (North Carolina) blogged for The Scholarly Kitchenon 23 March 2023 about a recent initiative to publish open access monographs in history, reporting technical problems, author resistance but also much greater take-up/use, with about three times as many reported individual engagements as even a successful paywalled monograph.
An article on 6 March 2023 by Alexander B Belles and colleagues from Penn State in the Journal of Science Policy and Governance made recommendations about how to handle the US Office of Science and Technology Policy requiring that all federally funded scholarly research be accessible to the public immediately upon publication. The article said: “While this open access policy will ultimately benefit society by increasing the availability of data and research outputs, it could place a heavy burden on researchers due to the relatively high cost of open access alongside an academic culture that tends to favor publishing in high impact subscription journals. We … offer recommendations for agencies, universities, and publishers to mitigate the impacts on researchers.” One recommendation was to consider cancelling publisher subscriptions and divert funds to author processing charges.
Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education/insidehighered.com on 16 March 2023 on the suspiciously remarkable expansion of Swiss open-access publisher MDPI, which published no fewer than 240,500 articles in 2021, “just slightly fewer than Springer Nature and Elsevier’s combined open-access total that year, levying an average article processing charge of 1,258 Swiss francs ($1,364) per paper.” Jack Grove had reported for Times Higher Education on 15 March 2023 that analysis by economist Paolo Crosetto (National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, France) showed “the number of MDPI’s special issues continued to rise sharply in 2022. Focusing on 98 MDPI journals with an impact factor, there were 55,985 special issues with a closing date in 2023, as of 23 February, Dr Crosetto told Times Higher Education. That compares with 39,587 open special issues identified at the end of March 2021, although only 10,504 of these eventually published anything. In 2022, 17,777 special issues published content.” Mark Hanson (Exeter) blogged about the predatoriness of MDPI on 25 March 2023.
Web of Science reported on 20 March 2023 that it had this year already disqualified some 50 journals, including an MDPI flagship journal, from having an impact factor in future. Christos Petrou of Scholarly Intelligence blogged for The Scholarly Kitchenon 30 March 2023 about the recent delisting of 50 journals, its implications for publishers, including MDPI, Hindawi and Wiley (which recently acquired Hindawi), and the consequences of the ‘guest editor’ model which underpins the recent growth of MDPI and other journals.
Shaping the field of lifelong education
The editors of theInternational Journal of Lifelong Education looked back on 40 years of the journal to develop themes which had shaped the field. They chose “citizenship and its learning; learning in, through and for work; and widening participation and higher education”. The article by John Holford (Nottingham) and his co-editors was part of the journal’s retrospective issue 41(6) (2 November 2022).
Books with DOIs are more discoverable on Google Scholar
Lettie Y Conrad (independent) and Michelle Urberg of EBSCO blogged for The Scholarly Kitchenabout their funded study to find how metadata contributes to the successful discovery of academic and research literature via the mainstream web. “Initial results indicated that DOIs have an indirect influence on the discoverability of scholarly books in Google Scholar — however, we found no direct linkage between book DOIs and the quality of Google Scholar indexing or users’ ability to access the full text via search-result links. Although Google Scholar claims to not use DOI metadata in its search index, the results of our mixed-methods study of 100+ books (from 20 publishers) demonstrate that books with DOIs are generally more discoverable than those without DOIs.
Why journal submissions get rejected
Alex Edmans (London Business School) reflected on his experience as editor of the Review of Finance and analysed his reasons for rejecting nearly 1000 submissions, for SSRN on 9 February 2023.
The ethics of peer review
The endless lament of journal editors about finding reviewers continued, as Dirk Lindebaum (Grenoble Ecole de Management) and Peter J Jordan (Griffith) mused in Organization(30(2) 396-406) on reviewer disengagement: “… an audit culture in academia and individual incentives (like reduced teaching loads or publication bonuses) have eroded the willingness of individuals to engage in the collective enterprise of peer-reviewing each others’ work on a quid pro quo basis. … it is unethical for potential reviewers to disengage from the review process … we aim to ‘politicise’ the review process and its consequences for the sustainability of the scholarly community. We propose three pathways towards greater reviewer engagement: (i) senior scholars setting the right kind of ‘reviewer’ example; (ii) journals introducing recognition awards to foster a healthy reviewer progression path and (iii) universities and accreditation bodies moving to explicitly recognise reviewing in workload models and evaluations. … the latter point … aligns individual and institutional goals in ‘measurable’ ways. In this way, ironically, the audit culture can be subverted to address the imbalance between individual and collective goals.”
Identity theft prompts scientists worldwide to contemplate legal action
Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education/insidehighered.com on 10 February 2023 that many leading scientists had been wrongly named as authors or editors on AI-generated papers and predatory journals. Some were considering legal action, which might be supported by UKRIO.
The gaming of citation and authorship
Stuart Macdonald (Leicester) wrote a truly terrifying analysis of the extent of misrepresentation in academic publishing, in Social Science Information(online 7 February 2023): “Many authors in medicine have made no meaningful contribution to the article that bears their names, and those who have contributed most are often not named as authors. Author slots are openly bought and sold. The problem is magnified by the academic publishing industry and by academic institutions, pleased to pretend that peer review is safeguarding scholarship. In complete contrast, the editors of medicine’s leading journals are scathing about just how ineffectual is peer review in medicine. Other disciplines should take note lest they fall into the mire in which medicine is sinking.”
APCs are a heavy burden for middle-income countries
Alicia J Kowaltowski (São Paolo) and colleagues from Brazil blogged for The Scholarly Kitchen on 9 March 2023 about the way author processing charges can be a major problem for middle-income countries like Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
Predatory journals and the mislocated centres of scholarly communication
Franciszek Krawczyk and Emanuel Kulczycki (both Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland) argued in their article in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society (2021, 4(1)) that so-called predatory journals may have a significant role in enabling otherwise marginalised scholars to maintain their academic careers despite a location on the periphery of mainstream academic debate. “Knowledge production is an important factor in establishing the geopolitical position of countries … we introduce the term “mislocated centres of scholarly communication” to help better understand the emergence of predatory journals, and journals that bear similarities to them, in geopolitical peripheries. Mislocated centers of scholarly communication are perceived in the peripheries as legitimized by the center but are in fact invisible or illegitimate in the center. Thus, we argue the importance of viewing these mislocated centers as the result of unequal power relations in academia. … predatory journals are a geopolitical problem because the geopolitical peripheries of science are much more often harmed by them than the center. Unlike predatory journals, mislocated centers of scholarly communication are not necessarily fraudulent but rather they are geopolitical roles imposed on some journals by a dynamic between center and peripheries.”
Routledge/Taylor & Francis acquire US publisher Stylus
The founder of Stylus Publishing announced in an email to authors on 2 March 2023 that the publisher will be sold to Taylor & Francis and operate as part of its Routledge division, as Doug Lederman reported for insidehighered.comon 3 March 2023. “Founded in 1996, Stylus’ publishing focuses on higher education, covering such areas as teaching and learning, student affairs, professional development, service learning and community engagement, study abroad, assessment, online learning, racial diversity on campus, women’s issues, doctoral education, adult education, and leadership and administration.” The publisher seems mainly to produce practical guides for US HE, with no obvious impact more widely.
Rob Cuthbert is the editor of SRHE News and Blog, emeritus professor of higher education management, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Fellow of SRHE. He is an independent academic consultant whose previous roles include deputy vice-chancellor at the University of the West of England, editor of Higher Education Review, Chair of the Society for Research into Higher Education, and government policy adviser and consultant in the UK/Europe, North America, Africa, and China. He is current chair of the SRHE Publications Committee and of the Editorial Advisory Board for Studies in Higher Education.
