By examining in more detail the subject of publication peer review (PPR), the ultimate aim of the research proposed here is to understand better and thus enhance the connection between research and teaching in higher education (HE). PPR is little researched yet its form is likely to be highly important. By dictating the form in which research is reported, understood and read (or not read) – there is the probability that forms and styles of peer review publication influence the articulation between research and teaching in HE.

Research questions and methods

There are three foci to the proposed research:

• The nature of text, readability and accessibility in PPR in different academic areas.
• The degree to which HE teachers and students engage with PPR in the different areas examined in (1).
  • Analysis following the collection of data from (1) and (2) will seek associations between the nature of text and degree of engagement by teachers with the scholarly forms of dissemination in PPR. This analysis will lead to a third focus:
• The extent to which forms of PPR appear to enable, or by contrast inhibit, their use by teachers in different areas of HE for the dissemination of what they consider to be their best or most important research.

Our first research question, related to issue (1) above, is therefore:

What are the indications that accessibility and readability differ in social science and STEM subjects?

Method

Our examination here will be divided into two parts:

• Articles and papers in two different social science (education and psychology) and STEM subjects (maths and medicine) will be examined for similarities and differences in their form and format. 30 articles and papers will be examined from each, with articles drawn from ISI listed UK journals in each case. Readability will be assessed using the Flesch Reading Ease score. Methods of discourse analysis will be used to examine a) ‘global’ structures such as the overall topics and the organization of the writing, for example by use of devices such as form of abstract, use of summary, use of sub-titles, sectioning, headlines, leads, use of bullets etc, and b) ‘local’ structures of the discourse, such as relations between sentences, paragraphs or propositions. Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) will be used in this analysis.  The latter will identify a number of parameters that are suitable for stylistic assessment, and then analyse the variation of the parameter values between texts. The parameters we examine will be based on metrics which can easily be computed automatically, such as the average length of words or the proportion of pronouns in the text.
• Vehicles for research reporting will be examined for the extent to which opportunities for engagement and discussion are offered by these vehicles in different academic areas. Using journals in the same subject areas from which articles and papers were selected for (i) above, a search will be made for indicators for general dialogue and critique. These may include, for example, numbers of ‘responses’ and ‘replies’ per volume, existence of letters, ‘debate’ or ‘challenge’ sections in PPR, and use of online response resources

Our second research question, related to issue (2) above is:

How do teachers in HE relate to and engage with the text of PPR and what are the indications that this has an effect in their teaching?

Method

Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a sample of 20 teachers in HE directed at discovering whether there are differences in perception of and attitude to PPR in each subject domain. The sample of HE teachers will be drawn from the subjects identified for the first research question (above) and questioning will centre on constructs emerging from that question. Thus, respondents, from pre- and post-1992 universities local to the West Midlands will be asked about elements of readability, accessibility, opportunity for dialogue, and the sense of engagement in a community of research practice. The aim will be to discover the extent to which the form of the discourse facilitates or inhibits the use of that discourse as a medium for engagement, learning and teaching.

Analysis here will compare the answers from the STEM subjects and the social sciences and relate this comparison to the findings of the analysis of the first research question. This subsequent analysis will seek relationships between the kinds of form, discourse and presentation being used in these areas with their uses.

Our third research question, also related to issue (2) above is:

How do students in HE relate to and engage with the text of PPR?

Method

Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a sample of 20 students (stratified by status and university type: postgraduate and undergraduate; pre- and post-1992) from the subject areas identified above. Students will be asked about their reading habits and in particular about their engagement with PPR, its accessibility and meaningfulness.

Our fourth research question, related to issue (3) above, is:

Are different choices made by HE teachers in different academic areas for their publication outlets?

Method

The teachers in the same sample used for the second research question will be asked for their views on publication outlets. Again via semi-structured interviews they will be asked about the extent to which peer review journals appear to enable, or by contrast inhibit, the dissemination of what they consider to be their best or most important research. They will be asked about the extent to which the constraints associated with PPR force them to use alternative non-peer review outlets and what they consider to be the most effective means of communication for their research.

Funding Body – Society for Educational Studies

Start Date – October 2007

End Date – March 2009