Scholarship and Scholarly Practice Procedures

  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.

  1. Scope

All current and prospective academic staff at the Institution, including sessional staff, casuals and contractors.

  1. 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 Chair of the Scholarly Practice Committee oversees the administration of scholarship, learning and teaching grants and awards, and ensures that the selection process conducted by the Committee, is fair, transparent basis and aligned with Institutional priorities.

3.3 A Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel (HREAP), constituted by the Scholarly Practice Committee and overseen by its Chair, is responsible for facilitating lower risk ethics reviews and approvals of research involving human participants or data in accordance with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research.

3.4 A fit-for-purpose and user-friendly Scholarly Output and Activity Register (SOAR) is maintained to capture scholarly outputs and activities from staff. The Associate Dean (Scholarship) regularly analyses aggregated data to monitor the Institution’s performance in scholarship. They subsequently prepare reports and recommendations for the Scholarly Practice Committee and the Academic Board.

3.5 Academic staff are informed about the categories and specific types of scholarly outputs and activities the Institution recognises and prioritises.  They develop an Annual Scholarship Plan 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.

  1. 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 join scholarship clusters, where staff with diverse discipline, industry and/or research experience can exchange ideas, share resources and good practices, identify problems and develop scholarly projects to find and implement innovative solutions.

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 and scholarship development needs at their annual performance review based on the promotion criteria in the Academic Titles and Promotions Procedures.

  1. Dissemination and impact

5.1 The Institution encourages staff to collaborate with academics internally and externally to produce quality and impactful scholarship outputs and/or activities.

5.2 In addition to traditional dissemination channels, such as journals, conferences and media, staff can disseminate their scholarly research or work via scholarly events created/hosted by the Institution, for instance, discipline-specific seminars, forums and symposiums, to establish presence and reputation in the higher education sector.

5.3 Evidence and narratives of the impact related to the scholarly outputs and activities are collected in the form of case studies and reported by the Institution in annual reports.

  1. 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 manages the scholarship grants and awards as well as the human research ethics approval process for lower risk research projects facilitated by the HREAP.

6.3 The Associate Dean (Scholarship) 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) on issues pertaining to compliance with the Higher Education Standards Framework and TEQSA’s regulatory requirements.

6.5 All academic staff members are expected to be scholarly active demonstrated through regular SOAR reporting, which can be in original research, learning and teaching practice, industry or professional practice, and civic engagement. The breadth, quantity and quality targets are set at their annual performance review and subsequently assessed as part of the performance appraisals.

6.6 Academic managers support their staff in performance goal setting and identifying opportunities for professional and scholarly development.

  1. 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

Academic Staff Professional and Scholarly Development Guidelines

Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) Framework

Academic Staff Professional and Scholarly Development Guidelines 

 

Approved by Academic Board on 18 July 2025