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

Panel 6 – social SCIENCEs
defined and transparent reward structure within the Faculty, for example,
in relation to a conscious publication strategy. We see as important to
explicitly support and reward publishing activities through a coherent
incentive structure that not only rewards participation and contributions
to international scholarly discussion and research activities, but which
offers incentives for contributions to the development of professional
areas, public and policy discourses in Sweden. Equally important in our
opinion is to offer benefits for efforts to expand intellectual debates in
Sweden in the Swedish language, for example through textbooks, and to
reward successful endeavours to transmit Swedish research findings to
the international arena. We suggest that departments consider actively
enhancing the co-operation with neighbouring ones, to make strategic
choices to promote dynamism, innovation and excellence in their respective
fields. A deliberate policy could also make visible a too great weight
on provincialism/parochialism which otherwise might be a risk.
During the site visit in which the chair and vice-chair of the panel took
part, some more general problems for Lund research and Lund scholars
arose. Many of these problems are dealt with in the executive summary
of the RQ08 exercise. For example, it seems as if some efforts have been
made, but perhaps not continued, to overcome the so called leaking pipe
line resulting in loosing women scholars in the trajectory between PhD
and professorial level. In the Social Sciences there was only one more
female professor in 2007 compared to the situation in 2003. Women
made up 30 per cent of the professorial staff in 2007, which hardly can be
regarded as a high proportion, considered the specific field, and a system
that allows the promotion to professor of all merited ones.
Some Social Science departments tend to favour individual research rather
than team research or team-based projects. Although it is recognised that
individual scholarship might be appropriate for some type of research, the
absence of collaborative research might be a problem. In particular, international
joint research and co-operation customarily leads to higher impact
through international publications and heightens the international visibility
and recognition of Lund’s research capabilities. It is recommended,
therefore, that these departments make a substantial effort to integrate their
research agendas in wider co-operative research programmes. Efforts of this
kind would also improve long-term planning which in some cases could be
more elaborated than shown in the self-evaluations. Such initiatives merit
efficient support of all administrative levels of the university.
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