ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 5 – BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
faculty. One of the two professors heads the department (25 %), the other
professor heads the doctoral programme, and both are engaged in teaching.
According to the report from the Head of Department (Form 2) the
other personnel involved in teaching are three lecturers, two adjuncts,
plus part-time engagement from a few doctoral students and others. The
limited size of the Department, and the permanent educational duties,
underlines the importance of external research funding. The documentation
(form 1.2) shows that the Department has had some success in this
area, including research grants from the EU.
3.3 Research quality and productivity
According to Form 1.3 the number of strict scientific publications in the
years 2002–2007 was 26. Original articles in refereed journals and chapters
in books represented the majority of the publications. The production
per staff member (full-time equivalent March 2007) was 5,2 publications
in these years, i.e. less than one publication per researcher per year, which
is rather low compared with departments in other scientific areas where
articles in refereed journals are the main publication form.
However, the publication statistics also include three books and three edited
volumes. Such publication forms are important in the social sciences
and the humanities, and are normally much more time consuming than
the shorter article format. In addition the researchers produced several
reports and popular science publications that have represented an important
contribution to the public debate.
Some parts of the research at the Department can, according to the
assessment standards of RQ-08, be characterized as having an excellent
research quality, documented by several publications in international
refereed journals and chapters/books published by international publishing
houses, both in English and French.
The more nationally oriented research from the Department, published
in Swedish, is within the Nordic research community known to have a
solid quality. In the fields of research given priority, like democracy, Net
media and public sphere questions and media and gender research, the
Department is in the forefront of media and communications research in
Sweden.
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