Information Research Weblog

This news is only likely to be of relevance to UK readers, but it may herald a trend.

The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) reports that the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) panels (which periodically assess the quality of all academic research in the UK, and which is next due in 2008) have been urged to give attention to the quality of the research rather than the journal in which it is published.

"Senior academics overseeing the 2008 research assessment exercise have urged universities to abandon their obsession with big-name journals such as Nature and Science.

If successful, the move could signal a major culture shift in universities where academics are pressured to publish 'career grade' papers in top-ranking general journals to gain appointments and promotions."

Of course, given the page limitations, print journals ('prestige' or otherwise) can only publish a certain number of papers in a year; consequently, if 'quality' is associated with only certain journals, there is a severe limit to what can be considered quality.

The RAE overseers have recognized this - as indeed they have since at least the RAE before last. The panel I was on was instructed to assess the quality of papers regardless of where they were published. It seems, however, that not all panels obeyed this injunction, hence the need for it to be repeated. Why the THES has picked on this item on this occasion to make it 'news', heaven only knows—presumably genuine news was scarce last week.

Where does Information Research stand in this story? Well, it is a properly peer-reviewed scholarly journal, with an acceptance rate of about 30%. Consequently, I think that the relevant panels of the RAE are likely to regard papers published in the journal as having at least undergone the same kinds of quality checks as the major print journals. With this re-emphasis of 'quality' for the RAE, I think that if you publish in IR, you stand as good a chance of any as being assessed as a 'quality' researcher.