“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence
- Submitting institution
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Coventry University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 30879346
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1057/palcomms.2016.105
- Title of journal
- Palgrave Communications
- Article number
- 16105
- First page
- -
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 2055-1045
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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4
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This research investigates the usage of the term excellence within university research assessment. Through a critical analysis of policy papers, university mission statements and other desk research, Moore et al. argue that ‘excellence’ is not only meaningless as an indicator of research quality, but also that the push for excellence itself leads to increased amounts of error, fraud and, in the sciences, irreproducible research. While the term ‘excellence’ has been interrogated previously through, for example, the work of Bill Readings, Moore et al’s article is the first to propose an alternative to excellence that promotes soundness and capacity-building. As part of an international group of authors, Moore conceptualised, wrote and revised the study according to peer review feedback.
The research originated in a week-long Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded workshop on changing the political economy of scholarly publishing hosted by the University of North Carolina and Duke University in 2016. Shared as a preprint for initial dissemination and feedback, the article was subsequently revised, formally peer-reviewed and published open access as part of a special collection on the future of research assessment in the journal Palgrave Communications.
Since publication, the article has received over 120 citations and has been discussed in international press articles on the future of research assessment, including El Pais, Times Higher Education, Nature and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Moore et al. have since applied their research to a Mellon-funded project examining the peer-review reports of scientific publications in order to understand their assumptions around research quality (entitled ‘Reading Peer Review’). The results of this project will be published in a forthcoming monograph due for publication in 2021 by Cambridge University Press.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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