Report on Grouped Peer Review of Scholarly Journals in the Agricultural and Related Basic Life Sciences

In 2003, the Department of Education (now the Department of Higher Education and Training – DHET) introduced the ‘Policy and Procedures for the Measurement of Research Output of Public Higher Education Institutions’. The purpose of the policy is to “encourage research productivity by rewarding quality research output at public higher education institutions”. The policy defines research output as “textual output where research is understood as original, systematic investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge and understanding”. Therefore, the policy is a tool for the distribution of subsidy in lieu of research publication which, in turn, is regarded as proxy for the research productivity of institutions. It is in this regard that the allocation of subsidy is only to authors who are officially associated with the claiming institutions and not anyone outside the public higher education sector. The distribution of subsidy or allocation of funds against approved publications is, therefore, to the institutions and not the individual authors or academics.
The policy recognises the following categories of research outputs for subsidy:
• Journals – defined as ”peer-reviewed periodical publications devoted to disseminating original research and new developments within specific disciplines, sub-disciplines or field of study”. Only articles in journals which appear on approved journal lists qualify for subsidy.
• Books – defined as “peer-reviewed, non-periodical scholarly or research publications disseminating original research on developments within specific disciplines, sub-disciplines or fields of study”. Monographs, book chapters and edited works are included in this category.
• Conference proceedings – defined as the “published record of a conference, congress, symposium or other meeting whose purpose is to disseminate original research.
and new developments within specific disciplines, sub-disciplines or fields of study”.
Only peer-reviewed proceedings are considered.