Business School

The Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification codes are a way for the government to classify the research that is being done in Australia. It can then measure the volume and quality of research we are producing as a nation in various research fields – this information will help to guide funding decisions. These codes range from the general to the specific. Two digit numbers refer to a broad research area, four digit sub-codes refer to more specific fields within that broad area and six digit codes refer to very specific areas. For example: DIVISION 15 COMMERCE, MANAGEMENT, TOURISM AND SERVICES

1502 Banking, Finance and Investment

150201 Finance
150202 Financial Econometrics
150203 Financial Institutions (incl. Banking)
150204 Insurance Studies
150205 Investment and Risk Management
150299 Banking, Finance and Investment not elsewhere classified

1503 Business and Management
1504 Commercial Services
1505 Marketing
1506 Tourism
1507 Transportation and Freight Services
1599 Other Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services

When submitting a grant application, the university asks you to nominate a FoR area for its reporting purposes to the government.

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative assesses research quality within Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review. The aim of ERA is to develop a transparent and workable system to assess the quality of research in Australia. It provides a comprehensive overview of the quality of research undertaken in universities across the country in an international context.

ERA gives Australia, the capacity to rigorously measure our achievements against our peers around the world.

ERA ranks Australia’s research performance in subject areas and also ranks the performance of universities. For example, the table below shows how UWA ranked in several areas within business-related disciplines. A rank of 5 is the highest possible score, well above world average 3 is considered to be at world average and 1 is the lowest score, well below world average. We can measure how we rank against other Australian universities across our discipline areas. For example:

This is the second ERA assessment following the inaugural 2010 ERA.

Each year the Australian Government collects data from universities on their research publications and research income. The university collects and enters into a database, details of your publications for the preceding year which contributes to the overall institutional submission. The publications collection process is managed by the Research Office at the Business School.

Similarly, a collection of information on all research funding awarded is submitted by the university. All successful research grants are included in this aggregate reporting on research funding.

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature including theses, books, abstracts and articles, across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

You can use Google Scholar to search for your own articles and see who is citing your work. This will provide valuable insight into who else is working in your area and where your work is having influence.

The Journal Quality List is a collation of journal rankings from a variety of sources. It is published primarily to assist academics to target papers at journals of an appropriate standard. In addition to being a resource for various journal ranking tools, it provides numerous other tools and resources for academics in business-related areas, including professional association listings and ‘h-index’ measurement tools (by measuring your number of cites per paper, you can work out your ‘h index’ which gives insight into the level of influence your publications receive). Harzing’s publish or perish is a good ‘one stop shop’ for links to a wide variety of resources.

A searchable database of scholarly journal articles. It provides data on who has cited your work. It also provides information on journal quality. Journal Impact Factor (JIF) provides information on the quality of journals or level of influence they have in their field by counting average citations for published articles. Journal impact data is regularly revised for currency.

Although the ARC is no longer using the ERA journal ranking list, this is still widely used in many Australian institutions. It will have less and less influence over time and eventually become out dated and obsolete. Its inclusion in this is due to the fact that it is still being used extensively. If these rankings show your publications in a good light, then by all means, do continue to use them.

The Australasian Business Deans Council (ABDC) has compiled a list of journals in economics and business-related fields and ascribed rankings to them according to quality. This list was created prior to the aforementioned ERA list. It is currently being updated and so will continue to have relevance into the future.

Pivot is a database containing research funding opportunities. It lists available research grants, postdoctoral and scholarship opportunities and consultancy opportunities. It provides global and local connections that strengthen research by exploring new avenues for funding and collaboration for faculty, staff researchers, and graduate students.

It allows you to find funding using the advanced search and the funding advisor to hone in on the funding opportunities that are right for you. It also allows you to set up a profile and have relevant information sent directly to you via weekly email alerts on new and updated funding opportunities.

Research Gate is a repository for scholarly research articles. You can create a profile and make connections with other researchers who are uploading papers in your discipline area. This contains a reasonable amount of material from researchers within the social sciences but is more heavily subscribed to by science and medicine researches.

Scopus is a searchable database of scholarly journal articles. It allows you to search by institution and map affiliations. It also has a journal analyzer tool which provides graphs on impact and citations. It also allows users to set up a profile and receive notifications relevant to them.

The Scopus Citation Tracker is a simple way to find, check and track citation data. It lets you track data year by year for a specific author or topic.

With the Scopus Citation Tracker you can evaluate: ·

• The most highly cited author in a field and check that author's relevance ·
• The real-time citation data of articles and authors of interest ·
• What topics are hot in familiar or unfamiliar subject areas ·
• What subjects are being cited by other subjects

Socrates is a research quality management tool used at UWA. All UWA academic staff have a Socrates profile. You can access your profile using your staff ID and Pheme password Socrates compiles information on staff research publications, research grants, and HDR supervision.

What if I notice something missing or incorrect on my Socrates profile?

Socrates is a display and analysis tool, so inaccurate or missing information is likely to be either a problem with the data at the source (ie Minerva, InfoEd, Callista, Alesco), or a problem with the way Socrates is drawing in the information from the source databases. To get Socrates updated, the data must be corrected or entered into the source databases. On Socrates, there is a yellow envelope icon that staff can use to send queries to the Socrates Development Team. There is some text on the email form that lists who to contact for specific queries about missing or incorrect data. ·

• For publications queries, contact [email protected]
• For grants queries, contact Olivia Langensiepen in the Research Grants Office [email protected]
• For student supervision/completion queries, contact the Graduate Research School [email protected]
• And for questions about inaccurate or outdated personal or employment information (eg name, title, qualifications), contact the relevant faculty contact in HR.
• The “Esteem”, “FoRs” and “ERA” information on staff profiles on Socrates are ERA-related records, and as such as not updated on an ongoing basis.

Please note – there will always be some lag in what will appear on your Socrates profile due to the fact that verification processes must be undertaken ahead of uploading to Socrates.

Very comprehensive in business-related disciplines with specific networks in: Accounting research, economics research, financial economics research, cognitive science research, entrepreneurship research, and management research amongst others. It differs from some of the other repositories in that it also collects abstracts and working papers. This allows researchers to communicate around work which is not published in a scholarly journal.

The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 437,900 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 352,100 downloadable full text documents in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. The eLibrary also includes the research papers of a number of Fee Based Partner Publications.

Very comprehensive in business-related disciplines with specific networks in: Accounting research, economics research, financial economics research, cognitive science research, entrepreneurship research, and management research amongst others. It differs from some of the other repositories in that it also collects abstracts and working papers. This allows researchers to communicate around work which is not published in a scholarly journal.

The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 437,900 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 352,100 downloadable full text documents in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. The eLibrary also includes the research papers of a number of Fee Based Partner Publications.P>

We are all aware of the requirements to publish in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.  However, it is not always easy to distinguish between quality conferences and ‘junk conferences’ with the latter often invoking seemingly legitimate terminology and high profile names in order to create a perception of legitimacy. For example, claims of being peer reviewed can mask what is in reality an inadequate review process. So what are some indicators that a conference may not be reputable? A few general indicators are listed below and some links below that. (this material will be published on the Biz research website in coming days)

Conference location:  Is the conference to be held in an ‘exotic’ or desirable location? A conference being held at a resort for example may be a red flag.

Registration fees: Are the fees particularly high? Conferences run by commercial businesses rather than universities or professional associations often charge high fees due to their profit-driven motivations. It should be noted that universities/professional bodies can engage a professional conference organiser, it should be clear by looking at the website which organisations are affiliated with the conference.

Paper acceptance: If your paper is accepted unusually quickly, it can be an indication of lack of a thorough peer review process. If papers submitted are accepted without comment, this could be a red flag. If the conference requires upfront fees to be paid with submission of the abstract and if the conference charges substantial additional fees for the full paper to be published in the conference proceedings, these too can be red flags.

Discipline area(s) and conference theme(s): Does the conference cover a very broad array of discipline groups? Whilst reputable cross/multi-disciplinary conferences do exist, junk conferences can be very broad in their themes in an effort to attract a wide array of researchers.

Spam: How did you find out about this conference? Reputable conferences will not resort to spam. You may receive emails if you are an organisation’s mailing list but advertising via unsolicited spamming is not a hallmark of a reputable conference.

Whilst some of these indicators can be difficult to detect – a reputable conference may be held in a desirable location or may be cross-disciplinary, the presence of numerous of these indicators should warrant further exploration. If unsure, do some quick research into the affiliated organisations and keynote speakers – have you heard of them?  Are they reputable? Do they make sense given the theme of the conference? Do email addresses given match the purported organisation/university?  Does the conference website contain sufficient detail or are you having trouble finding information? Even in conference databases such as ‘academic conference alerts’, not all conferences listed are of equal repute. If unsure about the quality of a conference, it is worth running by someone else in your discipline area.

Good conferences, bad conferences and academic scams: https://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Teaching/learning/junk.conferences.html

NY Times article “Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)”. A parallel world of pseudo-academia, with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that will print seemingly anything for a fee, has the scientific community alarmed.

A couple of blogs on fake/junk conferences:

https://scholarlyoa.com/?s=conferences
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/27832/title/Another-fake-conference-/
https://junkconferences.blogspot.com.au/

The UWA Publications Manual, outlining the Australian Government’s HERDC requirements for conference publications to count in the annual research data collection can be found here: https://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/publications (p47 specifically refers to conference publications)

The Open Access (OA) movement has been gathering strength over some years now, with three key drivers of its development.

• New information communication technologies have made it possible for researchers to share knowledge and have opened up new possibilities for collaboration and dissemination of knowledge.
• These new possibilities have sometimes been limited by publishing models which are restrictive - both in terms of allowing researchers to share and use knowledge and in terms of very high journal subscription costs for libraries and others to access knowledge created by researchers.
• Funding bodies increasingly require that researchers make their publicly funded research publicly available.

Recent developments in Australia

While international funding bodies have established mandates for research findings to be made available, Australian bodies have only recently adopted an Open Access policy for their funding recipients. Both the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) now have policies in place that will require future funding recipients to make their research publicly available.

ARC requirements

The policy requires any publications arising from an ARC supported research project to be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve month period from the date of publication.

• The policy applies to publications resulting from ARC grants for which the Funding Rules and Agreements were released after 1 January 2013 and is not retrospective.
• The policy applies to all publications (articles, books, etc) resulting from work supported by the ARC.
• The policy commences on 1 January 2013, but the first publications are not potentially due to be made available in an institutional repository until after 1 January 2014.The Chief Investigator is responsible for deposit.
• Post-print or publisher’s version is acceptable but must be available or linked from an Institutional Repository.
• If researchers are unable to comply this must be justified in the Final Report.  

What can I deposit and where

In Australia the deposit must be made into an institutional repository. UWA researchers will need to deposit their research publications into the UWA Research Repository. A process for this deposit is currently being developed by Information Services and further information will be provided in the funding mandates section in the Open Access Toolkit once confirmed.

The post-print version OR the published version is acceptable. The pre-print (before peer review) is not acceptable.

Since authors generally assign their copyright to publishers when they negotiate contracts, your right to self-archive in an OA repository may be outlined in your copyright transfer agreement. Alternatively you can consult the SHERPA/RoMEO database of publishers' policies regarding the deposit of journal articles on the web and in OA repositories.
Detailed information about considerations for researchers in depositing their work is available from our Open Access Toolkit.

A note on predatory publishing

Over the last decade many new publishers and journals have appeared hoping to attract authors who wish to publish Open Access – and in a few cases these publishers’ motives are questionable.

If you decide to publish in an OA journal, it is important to carefully evaluate the scholarly credibility of both the publisher and the journal. Our Open Access Toolkit devotes a page to Publisher Evaluation. A useful link from this page is to Jeffrey Beale’s blog 'Scholarly Open Access: Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing’, where Beale has a list of predatory publishers and the criteria he has used to determine which OA publishers are predatory.

Further queries

The information above is summarised from the Open Access Toolkit which Information Services has developed to assist researchers with their Open Access questions. If you have any queries arising from the guide you can contact the eResearch Support & Digital Developments Unit or Philomena Humphries, Faculty Liaison Coordinator for the Business School.