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The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the Excellence Research in Australia (ERA) process in boosting research quality at Australian universities, this paper presents an analysis of a policy initiative, ERA, and compares the results of its measures as calculated in 2018 with those observed in previous implementation, namely, 2015 and 2012.

Two approaches are implemented in this study; Excellence Index (EI) scores for both cited and peer-reviewed 4 digits FoR codes and citation per paper (CPP) approach for the cited 4 digits FoR codes.

The authors show that the higher education providers' (HEPs') performance in the cited FoRs in ERA in 2018 was improved by 27% compared to that in 2015, and that HEPs' performance in the cited FoR codes in ERA 2015 was improved by 80% compared to that in 2012. A reason for this visibility of research improvement may be due to the universities are simply getting better at reporting outcomes using ERA-driven criteria. Moreover, even though EI scores steadily increased in ERA rounds, there is no significant statistical evidence available of improvement in research quality between two consecutive ERA rounds.

These findings underpin the importance of more future research and deep analysis using the other complementary variables, like Relative Citation Impact (RCI), citation centiles and distribution of papers based on the centiles and RCI classes and more transparency and data availability from the Australian Research Council (ARC) site. Given the introduction of the Engagement and Impact Assessment by the ARC to accompany the ERA exercise in 2018, the authors expect that the results of these findings will be useful as well as prompting further debate and scholarship to the relevance and value of the ERA process.

This paper explores the impact of contemporary calculative practices, termed “accountingisation”, on Australian accounting academics' values. Also, it seeks to understand the rationale underlying the development of various university performance measurement systems (PMSs), and their implementation and evaluation.

A case study approach uses accounting academics' responses to an online survey and also semi-structured interviews with senior research-related leaders in a group of Australian universities. This is supplemented by document analysis. A narrative story-telling approach explores and presents the combined data observations, over the period 2010–2018, of two characters: a “typical” accounting academic and a “typical” vice-chancellor.

The study contributes to the literature on PMSs in understanding “accountingisation”, the rationale behind the development, implementation and evaluation of performance metrics by senior management and its impact on accounting academics. It juxtaposes and unpacks the complexities and nuances of PMSs and provides empirical evidence by highlighting the perceptions of both the Australian accounting academics and senior university management. The findings demonstrate a level of discontent among accounting academics in reconciling the expectations of increased “accountingisation” within university PMSs. These are juxtaposed against the views of senior university leaders who are influential in determining PMSs.

This paper is novel in considering the implications of “accountingisation” in a contemporary setting, focusing on accounting academics, values and individual PMSs within business schools.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the establishment of a Research Working Group at Flinders University Library, a mid‐sized teaching and research university located in South Australia. The group was founded to encourage staff to develop a more reflective, research‐oriented and evidence‐based professional practice initially for a three‐year term. This paper comes at about two years into the pilot and provides an interim report of the group's experiences and achievements.

As a case study, this paper describes the introduction and background of the Flinders University Library Research Working Group, its purpose, the selection of projects, and its work to date.

The paper reports on the management‐driven practical supports that have been implemented to assist practitioners undertaking research at Flinders University Library.

The paper can be used as an exemplar for other academic libraries with staff with non‐tenured staff which lacks a culture of research.

This paper adds an Australian perspective to the existing literature on support for academic librarians undertaking research. The literature is dominated by US and Canadian experiences based on academic status.

With their former role as “cash cows” under threat owing to COVID-19, Australian business schools are fighting not only to maintain their status but also their survival. This study aims to look at how the sector might best approach these challenges.

The study reviews the recent literature on business and management education in Australia and compares that with emerging trends and policy directions.

This analysis of current and emerging trends suggests that business education needs to find alternative arguments for legitimacy, and that business schools in public universities can no longer be regarded automatically as the “keepers of knowledge”.

The study contends that public resources would be better channelled towards fit-for-purpose business and management education, with this being administered by an array of entities, some of which would include private providers, public–private partnerships or public entities other than “business schools”.

The study articulates the current and emerging challenges faced by decision and policy makers in the field of public business education and contends that the largely homogeneous business education provided by public universities in Australia is not always in the public interest.

The value of business education provided by public institutions is becoming increasingly contested, with many stakeholders, including employers, questioning the utility of contemporary business education.

Previous studies have looked at the aspects of the future of business and management education, but no overview has hitherto synthesised the findings of such studies and drawn out the practical implications.

Research impact has taken on increased importance at both a micro- and macro-level and is a key factor today in shaping the careers of real estate researchers. This has seen a range of research impact metrics become global benchmarks when assessing research impact at the individual academic level and journal level. Whilst recognising the limitations of research impact metrics, this paper uses these research impact metrics to identify the leading research impact researchers in real estate, as well as the leading real estate journals in the real estate impact space. The nexus between research quality and research impact is also articulated. As well as focusing on research quality, strategies are identified for the effective incorporation of research impact into a real estate researcher's agenda to assist their research careers; particularly for Early Career Researchers in real estate.

The research impact profile of over 150 real estate researchers and 22 real estate journals was assessed using Google Scholar and Publish or Perish. Using the research impact metrics of the h-index, total citations and i10, the leading high impact real estate researchers as well as the high impact real estate journals are identified.

Based in these research impact metrics, the leading real estate researchers in impactful real estate research are identified. Whilst being US focused, there is clear evidence of increasing roles by ERES, AsRES and PRRES players. The leading real estate journals in the impact space are identified, including both real estate-specific journals and the broader planning/urban policy journals, as well as being beyond just the standard US real estate journals. Researcher career strategies are also identified to see both research quality and research impact included as balanced elements in a real estate researcher's career strategy.

With research impact playing an increased role in all real estate researchers' careers, the insights from this paper provide strong empirical evidence for effective strategies to expand the focus on the impact of their real estate research agendas. This sees a balanced strategy around both research quality and research impact as the most effective strategy for real estate researchers to achieve their research career goals.

Research impact has taken on increased importance globally and is an important factor in shaping real estate researchers' careers. Using research impact metrics, this is the first paper to rigorously and empirically identify the leading research impact players and journals in real estate, as well as identifying strategies for the more effective inclusion of impact in real estate researchers' agendas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ten highly ranked journals in finance, and identify the most published authors, most cited articles, top publishing countries, top publishing universities, top publication years and the most discussed topics using keywords.

Using the services of the Web of Science™ (WoS), all the available data about each journal’s published articles were extracted. A total of 6,029 articles containing 23,521 keywords and 208,905 cited references were analysed.

Results indicate that Viscusi, Chemmanur and Statman are the most published authors. The most cited article is Fama and French’s (1993) article – Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds – with 522 citations. The most cited author is Eugene Fama with 2,848 citations followed by Michael Jensen with 1,367 citations. USA and England contributed more articles than any other country, where US University of California System ranked first. “Information”, “risk” and “market” were the most discussed topics. Findings from this study reveal not only the popular authors, articles and topics in the scholarly finance literature, but also the lesser-known areas of research, which may need attention.

It is the first large-scale citation analysis study of its kind, representing data from 178 years of combined publication history.

The purpose of this paper is to make an explicit case for the use of data with contextual information as evidence in arts and humanities research evaluations rather than systematic metrics.

A survey of the strengths and limitations of citation-based indicators is combined with evidence about existing uses of wider impact data in the arts and humanities, with particular reference to the 2014 UK Research Excellence Framework.

Data are already used as impact evidence in the arts and humanities but this practice should become more widespread.

Arts and humanities researchers should be encouraged to think creatively about the kinds of data that they may be able to generate in support of the value of their research and should not rely upon standardised metrics.

This paper combines practices emerging in the arts and humanities with research evaluation from a scientometric perspective to generate new recommendations.

Online open access (OA) to research publications comes to scholarship as a vision that makes sense and is congruent with the aims of science and scholarship. It is argued that research, often funded out of the public purse, should be a public good. Given its visionary characteristics and its congruence with the aims of scholarship, the purpose of this paper is to examine why OA is not practiced by all researchers, all the time, or more encouraged by library managers.

The findings reported in the paper are built upon analyses of the literature, the current discussion occurring in e‐lists and other public forums, and upon qualitative research using observation, document analysis, interview techniques and thematic analysis conducted as part of a PhD study in two Australian universities.

One of the universities had a long‐standing institutional mandate to encourage OA and the other did not. In terms of findings, of the universities studied, the institution with the mandate not only had a far greater proportion of its research output in its OA institutional repository but also the researchers and authors interviewed there had a deep understanding of, and engagement with, issues surrounding not just scholarly publishing but also OA and other publishing options. Further, OA and the mandate policy were reported by university executives as providing benefits both to individual researchers and to the institution as a whole.

In analyzing the relationships and entanglements that exist between authors, universities, publishers and other actors we see how these reinforce the current publishing paradigm. While proposals for mandates are not new, this paper illustrates how one is acting in practice. It proposes that despite reservations among academic library managers a mandate can work in practice. Sometimes, a new actor, such as a mandate or deposit policy is required, to assist library and repository managers, to encourage authors to look beyond their existing frames and embrace OA.

The core business of universities is learning. Cognitive thinking is critical for learning and the development of new knowledge which are essential in higher education. Creative, reflective and critical thinking are negatively affected by unrealistic demands and stress. The purpose of this paper is to argue that key performance indicators (KPIs) and performance management are detrimental in the higher education sector, as they cause undue stress which impacts negatively on an essential criterion of academia, cognitive thinking.

To explore this issue, the authors discuss the impact of stressful demands in the context of Australian higher education. The paper draws on literature that describes managerialism and on neuroscientific evidence to develop a hypothesis that supports a more holistic approach to human resources management of academics.

Performance management and measures (including KPIs) add to the complex demands of academic work despite a lack of evidence that they are appropriate in the higher education sector.

Performance management systems and KPIs undermine creative, reflective and critical thinking. Principles governing education should supersede the ever-growing emphasis that is being placed on quantitative measures and bureaucratic demands in higher education.

While there has been extensive commentary and research on issues relating to student academic integrity, the behavior (or misbehavior) of faculty has been less explored. Research misconduct and misbehavior is shaped by environmental forces acting at four distinct levels: individual, organizational, educational system, and social (Anderson, 2011; see also Bertram Gallant & Kalichman, 2011). This chapter explores the current climate in higher education whereby academics are under increasing pressure to publish, and how this pressure impacts standards of ethical conduct in academic publishing in the online environment. The chapter argues that to maintain integrity in online publishing environments, there needs to be a multi-stakeholder approach that encompasses each of the environmental levels, from educational policy makers, to senior managers, to teaching academics and advisors, to editors and finally to individual researchers/authors. In addition to recognizing the value of including standard protocols in online journals' instructions to authors, this chapter makes the case for a politicized response to the seemingly limitless pressure on academics to prove their worth by measuring their intellectual outputs.