Re: Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access Mandate

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:21:23 -0500

All this means is that RAE also considers unpublished papers. It has
nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not those papers were self-
archived on the web. (Plus, as we know, and as many studies by
Charles himself has shown, the RAE outcome is highly correlated with
the citation counts of the journal articles submitted; and
Departments place high -- too high -- emphasis on the "citation
impact factor" of the journal in which the 4 articles selected for
submission were published.)

So although the RAE nominally considers all papers, and it definitely
does not count citations directly, there is considerable emphasis on
journal articles on both sides. Moreover, I profoundly doubt that
many RAE submissions actually get read (let alone read by someone as
competent to evaluate them as the referees of the journal in which
the originally appeared). So the fate of an unpublished manuscript
amounts to the fate of a book judged by its cover (without even the
help of its publisher and his prior track record for quality)...

Stevan Harnad

On 15-Mar-06, at 6:00 AM, C.Oppenheim wrote:

> I don't agree with Les.
>
> Panels are instructed to consider *any* sort of published output,
> and this would consider something that had only ever appeared on an
> IR, or on a web page; indeed, statistics from the last RAE show
> that a small proportion of the items examined by the panels were in
> web page form only. However, if you want to impress the RAE panel,
> the item should have been through a proper refereeing process.
>
> Charles
>
> Professor Charles Oppenheim
> Department of Information Science
> Loughborough University
> Loughborough
> Leics LE11 3TU
>
> Tel 01509-223065
> Fax 01509-223053
> e mail C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leslie Carr" <lac_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> To: <JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 10:10 AM
> Subject: Re: Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access
> Mandate
>
>
>> Whether articles are disseminated by an institutional repository
>> is irrelevant to RAE assessment.
>>
>> It is whether they have been published by a journal (or conference
>> or whatever the assessment panel uses as a criterion) that matters.
>>
>> In other words, appearing in an IR does not make an article
>> "published" in the eyes of the RAE.
>> --
>> Les Carr
>>
>> On 15 Mar 2006, at 09:50, Wolfgang Greller wrote:
>>
>>> Can anyone tell me whether articles published in an institutional
>>> e- print repository count as publication in UK RAE terms?
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Wolfgang
>>>
>>> Dr Wolfgang Greller
>>> Head of e-Learning
>>> University of Klagenfurt
>>> Austria
Received on Wed Mar 15 2006 - 12:19:32 GMT