Australian universities are increasingly resorting to the use of journal metrics such as impact factors and ranking lists in appraisal and promotion processes, and are starting to set quantitative "performance expectations" which make use of such journal-based metrics. The widespread use and misuse of research metrics is leading to…

The introduction of the Excellence in Research for Australia scheme has heightened debate amongst research institutions over the use of metrics such as citations, especially given the ready availability of citation data. An analysis is presented of the citation performance of nine Australian universities and the Commonwealth Scientific, Industrial…

Wikis are widely promoted as collaborative writing tools and are gaining in popularity in educational settings. However, while wikis include features that are designed to facilitate collaboration, it does not necessarily follow that their use will ensure or even encourage collaborative learning behaviour. The few empirical studies that have…

An investigation of factors which differentiate between university lecturers in relation to publication output is reported. The study drew on data from lecturers working full-time at two large Australian universities. Measures of research publication output were used to select two groups of lecturers (N[subscript 1] = 119; N[subscript 2] = 119);…