Australian academics are being squeezed from all sides, facing ever-intensifying bureaucratic expectations around research output, coupled with increased teaching commitments and mounting administrative duties. These demands are occurring in an environment where most academics are still employed under traditional arrangements whereby, notionally,…

In this article, we investigated the publishing practices of Australian sociology PhD students during enrolment. It examines a five-year cohort of PhD completions 2013-17 from sociology departments and interdisciplinary schools of social sciences for all Australian universities. The key question considered is: do sociology PhD students publish in…

The research is complete, the article written, there's just one last job-think of a great title, one that not only elegantly summarizes your research, but that is also going to grab the attention of a fickle and perpetually time-poor readership. Article titling is a challenge for experienced researchers, and even more so for young academics…

Traditionally, threats to academic freedom are associated with repressive government actions, and sometimes also with compliant university managers. In democracies, academic freedom can be undermined in more subtle ways. Where public funding for university research and teaching has diminished, universities have increasingly pursued relationships…

Digital and social media have grown exponentially to become highly influential spheres of public communication -- increasingly crowded, contested, and corrupted, and increasingly in need of scholarly engagement. As public debate is conducted more through social and digital media, alternative metrics ('altmetrics') that are generated from social…

This article discusses the role of university academics as researchers. In present-day society which touts instant gratification, the primary role of a university is being undermined. In Malaysia, academics no longer teach and research as they please but are 'guided' by government agencies and influenced by the priorities of funding agencies. One…

This article discusses the University as an institution in three parts, moving from the abstract to the concrete. The first and longest section begins with the University as a social form or type: what it is, its inner motors, what holds it together; and its outer drivers, what holds it in society. The second section remarks on tendencies in the…

Australian universities are increasingly resorting to the use of journal metrics such as impact factors and ranking lists in appraisal and promotion processes, and are starting to set quantitative "performance expectations" which make use of such journal-based metrics. The widespread use and misuse of research metrics is leading to…

Neoliberalism exults the ability of unregulated markets to optimise human relations. Yet, as David Graeber has recently illustrated, it is paradoxically built on rigorous systems of rules, metrics and managers. The potential transition to a market-based tuition and research-funding model for higher education in Australia has, not surprisingly,…

This paper provides a review of institutional authorship policies as required by the "Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research" (the "Code") (National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC) & Universities Australia (UA) 2007), and assesses them for Code compliance.…

This paper reviews three developments relating to professional staff in UK higher education. The first of these is a major report undertaken for the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE), which has re-conceptualised the activities of professional staff within a theoretical framework of identity (Whitchurch, 2008a). The other two…

It is argued that academic plagiarism is not addressed as vigorously as needed because the university code of professional conduct is not fully evolved and does not consider plagiarism as malpractice. In treating the problem, it is suggested that one place to start is teaching proper use of citation and annotation. (MSE)

A study of the relationship between faculty publishing and career advancement at the University of Sydney (Australia) controlled for both gender and discipline. Results revealed some previously unseen dynamics of authorship, bringing into question common assumptions about solo vs. multiple authors and order of author names. Some discipline-related…