Intermittent Transparency: Findings from a Freedom of Information Request into the Excellence in Research for Australia Journal Ranking Process

This article examines the results of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request into the journal ranking process that took place as part of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) project between 2008-2010. We discuss the background to the request and the information that was received. We analyse the data, as well as the gaps in the data, relating this to the rankings process with respect to 13 journals in the Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) cluster. We note some anomalies in the rankings of specific journals and relate this to the information about the ranking process. We conclude by commenting on the degree to which the FOI request sheds light on what was essentially a secretive process, and whether academics ought to have confidence in exercises that attempt to fix quality on such a large scale. We suggest that the FOI data demonstrates that attempts to produce and fix a quantitative measure of quality in the Humanities publishing cannot adequately account for the diversity of opinion or approaches that constitute the field