OFFICIAL STATISTICS: ABOVE AND BELOW THE PUBLIC DEBATE. THIRTIETH GEARY LECTURE, 1999

Roy Geary was a person of great distinction, recognised for a wide range of achievements. He was a first class mathematician who made significant contributions to statistical theory. He was an Official Statistician of distinction and he made great contributions to the development of economic statistics and to the use of statistics for policy purposes in fields as diverse as demography and economic statistics. He was the first Director of the Central Statistics Office when it was created in 1949 and I am delighted to be asked to present this lecture in the CSO’s 50th birthday year

How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research. A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management

This study provides quantitative evidence on how the use of journal rankings can disadvantage interdisciplinary research in research evaluations. Using publication and citation data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity and the research performance of a number of Innovation Studies units with that of leading Business & Management schools in the UK. On the basis of various mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) Innovation Studies units are consistently more interdisciplinary in their research than Business & Management schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business Schools' rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower-ranked journals; (iii) this results in a more favourable assessment of the performance of Business & Management schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. This citation-based analysis challenges the journal ranking-based assessment. In short, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly 'excellence-based' journal rankings exhibit a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in particular how the bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary research organisations, and may result in researchers becoming more compliant with disciplinary authority over time.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure

References to past designs

Designing by adaptation is almost invariably a dominantambiguity feature of designing, and references to past designs are ubiquitous in design discourse. Object references serve as indices into designers' stocks of design concepts, in which memories for concrete embodiments and exemplars are tightly bound to solution principles. Thinking and talking by reference to past designs serves as a way to reduce the overwhelming complexity of complex design tasks by enabling designers to use parsimonious mental representations to which details can be added as needed. However object references can be ambiguous, and import more of the past design than is intended or may be desirable

How Journal Rankings can suppress Interdisciplinary Research – A Comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management

This study provides new quantitative evidence on how journal rankings can disadvantage interdisciplinary research during research evaluations. Using publication data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity and the research performance of innovation studies units with business and management schools in the UK. Using various mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) innovation studies units are consistently more interdisciplinary than business and management schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business Schools’ rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower ranked journals; (iii) this pattern results in a more favourable performance assessment of the business and management schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. Lastly, it demonstrates how a citation-based analysis challenges the ranking-based assessment. In summary, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly ‘excellence-based’ journal rankings have a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in particular how resulting bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary organisations, and may encourage researchers to be more compliant with disciplinary authority.Interdisciplinary, Evaluation, Ranking, Innovation, Bibliometrics, REF