The prevalence of academic research relevance — Part one
The criticism of academic research relevance and usefulness has garnered heightened attention from both the general public and within the academic sphere, sparking ongoing discourse. Prior to devising solutions, it is imperative to understand the underlying issues at play. This article elucidates the reasons causing the disparity in academic research relevance by using business disciplines as a focal point for analysis.
#Issue one: Are we what we evaluated? The lack of creativity in academic research
In today’s elite business schools, research performance primarily hinges on publications in only A-listed journals, typically referring to the UT Dallas Journal list which collects a mere 24 journals deemed as top-tier across business schools. But when considering the broader spectrum, there are nearly 3,000 different journals as per benchmarks like ABDC (Australian Business Deans Council). That means, that what accounts as a top-tier journal list is less than 1% in business school. What’s the implication behind this statistic? Does it mean that the 1% accepted journals generated innovative research that enlarges that social impact? The fact is, firstly, the use of such narrow journal lists is likely to encourage researchers to prioritize publishing specific journals rather than fostering the development of original knowledge by identifying and challenging the assumptions underlying existing literature. Secondly, the journals tend to emphasize incremental gap-spotting research over innovation and intellectual boldness. Thirdly, the tenure decision frequently hinges on publications per se but not the essence of what is being published. Generating creative research usually demands time and a willingness to take bolder approach, yet it very likely will be turned down within the confines of the conventional journal review process.
#Issue two: More is being produced but the big impact is limited
Critics within the academic community have noted the over-quantification of finance research and almost producing ‘not much new thing’. Same in the field of Management research where top-tier journals acceptance rate is as low as 5 percent, more is being produced but the big impact is limited. This issue, akin to the aforementioned, is partially rooted in the motivation and incentivization structure in Higher Education. The research component, compared to others such as teaching and engagement, contributes a much higher weight to the Worldly Higher Education Ranking. Moreover, in the short term, quantifying research output is far simpler than measuring teaching and community satisfaction. Consequently, this top-down approach compels business schools and thus researchers to fixate the journal list index and contribute to the ‘big cake’. For instance, some universities would expect researchers to publish 2–3 articles within 3-year window if one wants to alleviate the teaching load. While some evidence shows that top-tier economics journals, appropriately 10% of papers take more than four years from submission to publication. The adverse consequence is to nudge researchers toward low-tier research to get it to survive in academia.
#Issue three: The gap between academic research and the practice
Most business academics, such as the fields of Finance, Accounting, and Economics, do not seem to be much interested in producing practitioner-oriented research, unless practitioner-oriented research is factored in annual evaluation. This poses a twofold challenge. On one hand side, most practitioners-oriented research is difficult to fill into the academic literature gap which is one of the most evaluated checklists to get the paper published, particularly to top-tier ranked journals. On the other side, not many practitioners are interested in understanding what researchers are doing and what research is about. Another reason that practitioners refuse to share proprietary data is the unforeseen complications that may arise from researcher scrutiny.
