Research Selectivity and the Destruction of Authentic Scholarship?

The View from the (semi) Periphery

Simon Warren, NUI GalwayMarcin Starnawski, Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa (University

of Lower Silesia) Marcin Gołębniak, Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa (University of

Lower Silesia)

Research selectivity – Ireland

Selection as the Struggle for Visibility

• Global

• Institutional

• Individual

Global University Rankings

National Auditing and Differential/Competitive Funding – HEA Compact/REF

Institutional Audit

NIAMH’S STORY

• PRIVATE TROUBLES/PUBLIC ISSUES

• TRANSFORMING DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE

• EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE

…publishing what I think is important,where I think it is important..

…and you have to make decisions all the time: is it something you want to devote your time to, is it going to be worth your while, will it be regarded in your home institution as being worthy of your time...

…the system keeps everybody in a constant state of anxiety,trying to meet sometimes reasonable, but oftenundreasonable targets across so many differentarenas of academic activity...

If I was to look at the ratio over the last ten years in my own academic writing life, the balance between writing in Irish and writing in English, writing in English for international academic publishers, and writing and producing material for local publishers, it’s definitiely the direction of English, definitely the pull is towards international publishers rather than Irish publishes; and the presumption there is that it is superior.

What I am publishing in English language outlets is a synopsis, a précis, a general overview of the real work I do, published in places with very small readerships which [instiutional managers] completeley devalue and the system compels you to devalue.

Silenced societies are, of course, societies in which talking and writing take place but which are not heard in the planetary production of knowledge managed from the local histories and local languages of the ‘silencing’ [the dominant powers]