Conditions of the Production of Knowledge Today

Abstract

In the beginning of 2011, the Dean of the Humanities at Aalborg University invited researchers to forward project proposals in response to her strategic effort at boosting “the integration of research, teaching and knowledge interaction” across the faculty. The idea of Students’ Minutes was proposed by the present editors, accepted by the dean, and allocated funds. This special issue, then, attempts to facilitate the conversion of the energy present at the interface of research and education at universities into legitimate and BFI-recognized research. The call for the issue describes it as consisting of articles which are edited and rewritten projects and theses from our students from all study programmes at the Faculty of but emphasizes that the supervisor of the projects and theses becomes responsible as an active co-author, who must guarantee the scientific level of the articles: You must make sure that they fulfil the demands of research quality and communication, as the articles are subject to normal, external and anonymous reviews. So you must tell the students about the conditions of research that their articles can receive review feedbacks based on these questions: Can the manuscript be published as it is? Can the manuscript be published with minor adjustments?, Can the manuscript be published with major adjustments?, or Should the manuscript be rejected? We received articles from almost all the departments with a wide variation of subjects, as the present special issue of Academic Quarter demonstrates. It is obvious that the students whom the researchers and supervisors encourage to publish academically even under these strict conditions may feel tempted to pursue a researcher career, and this is one of the motivations for the special issue. The wider academic context of the issue is the subject of the article by the editors Conditions of the Production of Knowledge Today Case Students’ Minutes. Jorgen Riber Christensen and Jens Kirk Conditions of the Production of Knowledge Today Case Students’ Minutes. The article demonstrates how the Danish Bibliometrical system works and attempts to evaluate its effects. As an incentive does it motivate and encourage researchers? Does it further the communication and spread of their research? What effect has it had on universities? The article discusses and describes the working conditions in research groups at Aalborg University, and it also focus on how the present research journal, Academic Quarter, has sought to meet the demands of the bibliometrical system and on the achievements of the journal within this system, locally, nationally and globally. The article attempts an outline of what we perceive as the key conditions that have formed the knowledge and research available in Students’ Minutes. We begin with the context of the Danish performance-based research funding system. We move on to what we consider to be a fundamental condition, i.e. BFI and to show how it permeates research and research management at Aalborg University, in particular the Faculty of the Humanities, the departments and the research groups. Then, we show how BFI paradoxically has given rise to the recognition of the very research activities it excludes in the form of what we see as the third condition, or BFI+. Lastly, we introduce the fourth basic condition of the present publication, i.e. a strategic initiative at the level of the faculty.