Reporting from an ongoing project about sociology PhD students publishing during enrolment in Australia and New Zealand

Date: November 24, 2023 (Friday)
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:45 pm
Venue: Room 203, 2/F, Runme Shaw Building, HKU (HKU map) and Zoom
Chair: Dr Hugo Horta, HKU
Speaker: Mr Adam Rajčan, Macquarie University

Registration: https://form.jotform.com/232575942862466

A full dataset has been collected over several years on Australian and New Zealand sociology PhDs for the latest decade 2010-19 (n=718). In the worldwide culture of publish or perish these doctoral students are also active in publishing during enrolment, almost two thirds producing at least one refereed output. Sociology occupies an intermediate place between science fields where publishing and co-authoring in laboratory situations is the standard, through to humanities where the finished thesis monograph is still the norm. Several features characterise the Australian and New Zealand sociology PhD cohort: the highly feminised gender composition of candidates; the surprising similarity in the number and quality of outputs between PhDs from elite and non-elite universities and men and women; new policy ideas such as thesis by publications (TBP); the wide diversity of academic journals outside sociology in which students publish. This talk will also discuss methodological aspects of data collection and future directions for this project.

Bio:

Adam Rajčan is a PhD candidate at Macquarie University and Adjunct Research Officer in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University. He is currently researching publishing patterns of Australian and New Zealand sociology doctoral students along several lines: gender, destination journals, university ranking, and co-authoring. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2559-1949