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

Panel 7 – ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT (LUSEM)
Even though the department is probably larger than an average business
law department, it still is too small to form research groups. The department
has to cover various legal fields in order to be able to cover all the
teaching needs of LUSEM. Despite that, the department has succeeded
quite well in research and in attracting new doctoral students.
5.3 Research
When evaluating the research in business law, one should bear in mind
that legal studies, legal research and its publishing tradition differs quite
a lot from that of for example economics. Firstly, the legislation in every
country is still very national and that is why legal research quite often
focuses in national questions and is written in the national language. It
also has to be that way because the society needs knowledge about national
legislation. The second difference is that dissertations in legal studies
typically are large monographs which require at least three to four years
to complete and during that time, the doctoral student rarely publishes
anything else than perhaps some working papers. Also post doc research
is often published in books. A large monograph might require the same
amount of work as many articles. Therefore the number of publications
of legal researchers is normally much lower than what the researchers
in other disciplines publish. The third difference is that there are not so
many possibilities to publish in international journals, at least it is very
much dependent of the subject, i.e. the field of law in question.
Quality. The delivered material consists only of the topics of the publications.
The research is mostly published as monographs. A few articles
have also been published in international journals (especially in law and
economics). Compared to other business law units, at least in the Nordic
countries, this is a positive development and one could say that the
Business Law Department in Lund is much more internationally oriented
than the other similar units. It is not possible to evaluate the total quality
without seeing all the actual publications. Based on earlier encountered
articles, the research can be considered as excellent or very good; the
research output of this unit has a good reputation in the community of
law researchers. Some of the staff members have also been awarded with
international and national awards.
Productivity. When considering the productivity, one has to bear in
mind the publishing traditions of the discipline. The department has
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