1. Governing policy
The purpose of the Scholarship and Scholarly Practice Procedures (“procedures”) is to operationalise its parent policy across the Institution through support, academic management processes and funding initiatives. As a higher education institution, all academic staff have access to advanced knowledge and support in scholarship. These procedures are one aspect of the Institution’s Scholarship and Scholarly Practice Framework.
2. Scope
All current and prospective academic staff at the Institution, including sessional staff, casuals and contractors.
3. Systematic support for scholarship and scholarly practice
3.1 Guided by the Scholarship and Scholarly Practice Framework, the Institution provides systematic support for academic staff to undertake scholarly activities and produce scholarly outputs. This includes adequate project funding, workload allocation and incentives in form of grants and awards.
3.2 The Scholarly Practice Committee manages those grants and awards, and ensures they are awarded on a fair and transparent basis.
3.3 Overseen by the Scholarly Practice Committee, a human research ethics review process that is compliant with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research is in place to enable negligible to low-risk projects.
3.4 A fit-for-purpose and user-friendly Scholarly Output and Activity Register (SOAR) is maintained to capture outputs from staff. The Associate Dean (Scholarship and Civic Leadership) will regularly analyse aggregated data to monitor the Institution’s performance in scholarship. They will subsequently prepare reports and recommendations for the Scholarly Practice Committee.
3.5 Academic staff are informed about the categories and specific types of scholarly outputs the Institution prioritises Their outputs are planned and agreed with their manager at the beginning of each performance review cycle.
3.6 An online information hub is provided to academic staff where they can access the latest policies, procedures, guidelines and news about scholarship.
4. Culture and capability building
4.1 The development of a positive scholarship culture is recognised as essential. It requires the participation of and commitment from all academic staff.
4.2 Academic staff are strongly encouraged to form or join scholarship clusters, where like-minded people who share similar values, interests and goals come together and support each other for scholarship.
4.3 Scholarship clusters are also a vehicle for capacity building in that staff can learn from and build on each other’s strengths. The Institution provides additional professional development support or training to each cluster depending on their goals and needs.
4.4 Capability building on an individual level is facilitated by performance goal setting, appraisals and promotions. Staff should determine their goals and professional development needs at their annual performance review based on the promotion criteria in the Academic Titles and Promotions Procedures.
5. Dissemination and impact
5.1 The Institution encourages staff to collaborate with academics internally and/or externally to produce rigorous and impactful outputs.
5.2 In addition to traditional dissemination channels, such as journals, conferences and media, staff can disseminate their outputs via scholarly events created/hosted by the Institution, for instance, discipline-specific seminars and symposiums, to establish presence and reputation in the higher education sector.
5.3 Evidence and narratives of the impact created by the scholarly outputs are collected in form of case studies and reported by the Institution.
6. Roles and responsibilities
6.1 The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) is responsible for overseeing the implementation of these procedures ensuring appropriate funding support and resources are provided to academic staff.
6.2 The Scholarly Practice Committee oversees the scholarship grants and awards as well as the ethics approval process for negligible to low-risk research projects.
6.3 The Associate Dean (Scholarship and Civic Leadership) is responsible for providing systematic support for scholarship and scholarly practice, and for reporting on scholarship activities across the Institution.
6.4 The Chief Quality Officer provides advice to the DVC (Learning and Teaching) and Associate Dean (Scholarship and Civic Leadership) on issues pertaining to compliance with the Higher Education Standards Framework and TEQSA expectations.
6.5 All academic staff members need to produce a minimum number of scholarly outputs per calendar year, from either their discipline or learning and teaching. The quantum and quality targets are set at their annual performance review, and outputs subsequently assessed as part of the performance appraisals.
6.6 Academic managers support their staff in performance goal setting and identifying opportunities for professional development.
7. Related documents
Scholarship and Scholarly Practice Framework
Scholarship and Scholarly Practice Policy
Human Research Ethics Policy
Academic Titles and Promotions Policy
Academic Titles and Promotions Procedures
Approved by Academic Board on 17 November 2023