Peter James Bentley

Academic staff and public communication: a survey of popular science publishing across 13 countries

This study is a cross-national empirical analysis of popular science publishing among university staff in a 13-country sample. The countries included in the study are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, the UK and the USA. The study seeks to quantify the extent of popular science publishing and its relationship with scientific publishing. Popular science publishing was measured as the number of articles written by scientists in newspapers and magazines over the three-year period 2005-07. Our findings suggest that popular science publishing is undertaken by a minority of academic staff and to a far lesser extent than scientific publishing. Despite the arguably fewer rewards associated with publishing for the non-specialist public, our data suggests that academic staff with popular publications have higher levels of scientific publishing and academic rank. The positive relationship between scientific and popular publishing is consistent across all countries and academic fields. The extent of popular science publishing varies with field and country.

Job Satisfaction around the Academic World

Higher education systems have changed all over the world, but not all have changed in the same ways. Although system growth and so-called massification have been worldwide themes, there have been system-specific changes as well. It is these changes that have an important impact on academic work and on the opinions of the staff that work in higher education. The academic profession has a key role to play in producing the next generations of knowledge workers, and this task will be more readily achieved by a contented academic workforce working within well-resourced teaching and research institutions. This volume tells the story of academics’ opinions about the changes in their own countries. The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey has provided researchers and policy makers with the capacity to compare the academic profession around the world. Built around national analyses of the survey this book examines academics’ opinions on a range of issues to do with their job satisfaction. Following an introduction that considers the job satisfaction literature as it relates to higher education, country-based chapters examine aspects of job satisfaction within each country.

Gender differences and factors affecting publication productivity among Australian university academics

This article examines gender differences in publication productivity and factors correlated with high productivity in Australian universities, during the periods 1991–3 and 2005–7. Measured as a weighted sum of books and journal articles, females reported significantly fewer publications than men during both periods. Gender differences appear to have reduced over time, with female publishing increasing from 57 percent of the male average in 1991–3 to 76 percent in 2005–7. Statistical analyses reveal that women published at similar levels to men of equal rank during both periods, except among Level A staff in 1991–3 where males published significantly more. Academic rank, doctorate qualifications, research time and international research collaboration were the strongest factors positively associated with publication productivity, but women typically reported significantly lower levels on each of these factors. Institutional and family characteristics were comparably poor predictors.

Academic Job Satisfaction from an International Comparative Perspective: Factors Associated with Satisfaction Across 12 Countries

In many ways, the academic profession is one of the “key professions” in the knowledge society. Academics hold central positions in the knowledge society through their traditional roles as producers of knowledge and educators of knowledge workers. Universities are also emerging as a key source of innovation and economic and social development, taking on responsibilities previously in the realm of business and government (Etzkowitz et al. 2007). However, the positive and opportunistic outlook of university-driven innovation is contingent upon individual academics successfully adapting to these new roles and balancing competing demands. Across a wide range of studies, job satisfaction has been shown to correlate significantly with job performance, with the strongest correlation found in jobs requiring complexity and autonomy (Judge et al. 2001). Change has always been a key feature of the university and the academic profession, but academics have rarely played a positive role in initiating or supporting institutional reform. Almost without exception, academics defend traditions and the status quo, regardless of whether such traditions serve the long-term interest of the university (Altbach 1980). The university’s durability can be partly credited to the conservatism of the professoriate. Conservatism protects the university from ill-advised change or change for the sake of change. On the other hand, conservatism can also obstruct desirable change. Undoubtedly, the rise of the knowledge society envisages changes to traditional academic roles, and a motivated academic workforce, satisfied with their reconstructed academic jobs, is most likely to produce the greatest benefit to research, innovation and society. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that stakeholders seeking to influence the university’s role in the knowledge society understand what motivates academics in their everyday work. This, of course, is equally true for those in charge of our universities, be they vice chancellors, deans, heads of school or research directors.

Factors Associated with Job Satisfaction Amongst Australian University Academics and Future Workforce Implications

Australian academics appear to be fairly critical when it comes to their valuing of the attractiveness of the academic profession. On the set of indicators constructed for this volume, Australians, together with their British colleagues, score the lowest. This chapter provides some possible explanations for this, drawing on the policy reforms that have confronted the sector over the last two decades. It also highlights a particular feature of the current profession that so far has not received much attention internationally, namely, its substantive use of casuals in both teaching and research. Combining these issues and trends with the imminent retirement of large groups of senior academics, this chapter concludes with a series of strategies that could be implemented to increase the attractiveness of the profession.

Cross-country differences in publishing productivity of academics in research universities

Abstract The main bibliometric databases indicate large differences in country-level scientific publishing productivity, with high growth in many East Asian countries. However, it is difficult to translate country-level publishing productivity to individual-level productivity due to cross-country differences in the size and composition of the research workforce, as well as limited coverage of publications in the social sciences and humanities. Alternative data sources, such as individual-level self-reported publication data, may capture a wider range of publication channels but potentially include non-peer reviewed output and research re-published in different languages. Using individual-level academic survey data across 11 countries, this study finds large differences across countries in individual-level publishing productivity. However, when fractionalised for English-language and peer-reviewed publications, cross-country differences are relatively smaller. This suggests that publishing productivity in certain countries is inflated by a tendency to publish in non-peer reviewed outlets. Academics in large, non-English speaking countries also potentially benefit from a wider range of domestic publication channels. Demographic, motivational and institutional characteristics associated with high individual-level publishing productivity account for part of the publishing productivity differences within and between counties in English-language and peer-reviewed publishing productivity, but not in total publishing productivity where such workforce characteristics only account for within-country differences.

Australian Academics, Teaching and Research: History, Vexed Issues and Potential Changes

The traditional expectation that academics in Australian universities divide their time roughly equally between teaching and research has become challenged. Australian universities have increased their use of specialised teaching-only and research-only positions, while academics in combined teaching and research positions include academics with only limited engagement in teaching or research. We examine the extent of the changes in academic work by presenting a historical account for the roles of teaching and research in Australian universities over the past 150 years and more recent policy initiatives influencing the relative balance between teaching and research. Based on the CAP data, we argue that the relative engagement in teaching and research partly reflects individual interest and institutional emphasis on these activities.

Academic Job Satisfaction from an International Comparative Perspective

This chapter examines academic job satisfaction and factors associated with higher levels of satisfaction in the 19 CAP countries. Job satisfaction varies considerably across countries, both in term of overall satisfaction and its components. Academics tend to be most positive regarding their career choice, whilst holding negative views on the current prospects for newer entrants. Utilising Hagedorn’s (Conceptualizing faculty job satisfaction: components, theories, and outcomes. In: Hagedorn LS (ed) New directions for institutional research, vol 2000. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp 5–20, 2000) Conceptual Framework for Academic Job Satisfaction, we find job satisfaction is related most strongly to perceptions of adequate institutional resources, supportive administrative processes and perceived departmental influence. However, the relative strength of the independent variables varies considerably across countries. The proportion of variance in job satisfaction explained by the model also varies, with greater explanatory value in the English-speaking countries. Although the diversity in job satisfaction and its correlates may be an accurate reflection of cross-national and intercultural differences, one must be cautious about measurement error associated with the translation and interpretation of terms in different contexts.

Introduction: Satisfaction Around the World?

The initial working title of this book was I Can’t Get No....: Job Satisfaction Around the Academic World. Advice from the CAP Survey. Intended as a play on the words of the Rolling Stones’ classic 1965 hit, the publishers, however, felt that the editors were showing their age and that few readers born after 1960 would get the “joke”. Nonetheless, the degree that academics are contented with and committed to their scholarly careers is increasingly becoming a key ingredient in social, cultural and economic well-being everywhere. A vibrant academic profession attracting the best and brightest of the next generation may indeed be what gives a nation a competitive edge in a global knowledge-based economy. Hit tunes may come and go, but the importance of academics’ teaching and research efforts in producing highly skilled human capital and enhancement of innovation is an enduring feature of most if not all societies.

Development and Future Directions of Higher Degree Research Training in Australia

The doctoral degree (PhD) was introduced into Australian higher education relatively late, with the first PhDs graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1948. Since then, Australian universities have awarded around 100,000 PhDs. Research is the defining characteristic of the Australian doctoral degree, and compared to many other countries, Australia has a relatively high proportion of international students and a substantial number of mature-age, part-time domestic students studying at the doctoral level. Very few PhD graduates are unemployed, but with half of all PhDs not working in education or research positions, there is an ongoing policy debate about the need to rethink the structure and content of the PhD to make it more relevant to the employment prospects and opportunities available to graduates. At the same time, the need for highly trained knowledge workers to fuel the development of an innovative Australian economy capable of successfully competing in a global knowledge network is being emphasised.