Letters:
Second joint AAP/APA/BPA letter written to senior management and Chancellor at Middlesex University, urging them to reinstate the staff and students and to conduct a full review, with external panel members, of the University's philosophy provision - full text here 
(127 KB)
31st May 2010
Joint AAP/APA/BPA letter written to senior management and Chancellor at Middlesex University - full text here (139 KB)
8th May 2010
For further information about Philosophy at Middlesex see the BPA website
Full text of the AAP's letter to the Higher Education Section of The Australian, which appeared in heavily edited form on 21 April 2010:
Stephen Buckle, in his article ‘Philosophy betrays its first principles’ (/HES/ 31/3) makes a number of surprising allegations against the Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) and its involvement in the Excellence in Research for Australia journal rankings exercise. He says, for example, that the AAP ‘has expressed no reservations about the exercise (in sharp contrast with its British peers)’. In fact, in a letter to the Australian Research Council of 14th August 2008 (then and now publicly available on our website at <http://aap.org.au/publications/submissions.html>), the AAP said, ‘We share many of the extremely grave misgivings that have been publicly expressed by others over the ranking exercise. A number of the considerations of concern to us parallel those that have been highlighted by the British Philosophical Association regarding the ERIH rankings . . .’ [and the letter then explains these considerations at length].
Buckle goes on immediately to allege ‘Instead, it [the AAP] has allowed factional interests to reign supreme’, and cites as purported evidence the composition of the ‘trio’ which supposedly form ‘the AAP’s watchdog — its committee of advisers to the ERA’. The ‘committee’ of whose composition Buckle is critical is in fact a group of three philosophers whom the ARC itself (without consulting the AAP) engaged to serve on its Research Evaluation Committee for the 2009 Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) trial, which conducted its business without reference to the AAP.
The ARC had previously invited the AAP to make a submission and we formed our own committee of four people to deal with journal ranking. That committee’s membership had no overlap with the group to which Buckle refers, and its composition and procedures were aimed precisely at not allowing ‘factional interests to reign supreme’. Our view was that, despite our reservations, since the ranking exercise was clearly going ahead, it was better to respond rather than ignore it. As many philosophers will remember, we conducted a long process of public consultation, which informed our final submission, while we also encouraged members of the philosophical community to make independent submissions to the ARC through their own universities. Our position throughout has been that research evaluation should be conducted through peer review rather than by relying principally upon journal rankings and bibliometrics, and the ERA in its current form, at least with respect to the HCA disciplines, is closer to the former than the latter.
Graham Oppy, on behalf of AAP Council
Submissions:
| Research Journal Rankings | Submission to the Australian Research Council, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative | Covering letter (146.4 KB)
Rankings workbook NB.2. Journals are displayed by FOR code. To change the FOR displayed, select the FOR column heading in the spreadsheet. |
14 August 2008
(Revised 1st October & 2nd December 2008) Note: The ARC's current journal rankings list can be accessed via the ARC website. |
| Review of Higher Education Discussion Paper | Submission to Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)) | Submission (133.7 KB) |
31 July 2008 |
| ERA Consultation Paper | Submission to the Australian Research Council, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative | Preamble (104.3 KB)
Consultation Paper |
30 June 2008 |
| Australia 2020 Summit | Submission to the Federal Government | Submission (#7381) | 9 April 2008 |
(3.6MB)