Innovative Strategies for Creating and Assessing Research Quality and Societal Impact in Social Sciences and Humanities

Contemporary academic evaluation regimes, aiming to quantify and rank research quality, scholars and institutions, mostly rely on criteria such as metrics and citation scores. However, researchers started questioning recently whether these are the most appropriate instruments to evaluate academic excellence, especially in social sciences and humanities. Predominant evaluation criteria, such as peer review and citation index reflect only a limited scope of the research quality and relevance, as many dimensions cannot be seized through these traditional indicators, such as societal impact. In response to this criticism, a number of innovative research quality evaluation methods emerged in recent years, aiming to better reflect the complexity of often transdisciplinary research in social sciences and humanities. In this article, we attempt to review some of the most innovative strategies for assessing research quality, especially concerning transdisciplinary research in social sciences and humanities, as well as the societal impact and ‘productive interactions’. We conclude that while other innovative strategies are still in the pioneer phase, requiring more research and practical implementation, measuring societal impact emerged as a reliable, relevant, comprehensive and applicable strategy for evaluating research quality in social sciences and humanities

Relying on Technology for Countering Academic Dishonesty: The Impact of Online Tutorial on Students’ Perception of Academic Misconduct

Over the last several decades, the issue of academic integrity has emerged as one of the major concerns of higher education institutions throughout the world. Amongst different strategies for combating academic dishonesty, educational interventions in the form of online tutorials are becoming increasingly popular. In this paper, we empirically examine, using a sample of Montenegrin students and the matching method, the relation between online tutorials and four forms of student misconduct, namely cheating, plagiarism, fabrication or falsification, and aiding and abetting academic dishonesty. In addition, we examine whether students that received the certificate after passing an academic integrity test in online tutorial perceived different forms of academic misconduct more seriously than students who participated in the online tutorial but did not receive the certificate. Our results indicate that online tutorial can be useful for enhancing students’ awareness of certain types of academic dishonesty (cheating, fabricating/falsifying, and aiding/abetting), while for others (plagiarism), it remains ineffective. Similarly, we found that getting a certificate after completing tutorial did not amplify students’ attitudes towards certain dishonest behaviors (cheating or fabrication/falsification), but it enhanced students’ perceived seriousness of plagiarism and aiding/abetting dishonesty. The result of this analysis may have important implications for university managers and policy makers when designing strategies for combating particular types of dishonesty in academia