Academic rankings and pluralism: the case of Brazil and the new version of Qualis

Ian Almeida, Rafael Galvão De Almeida and Lucas Carvalho
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Ian Almeida: Cedeplar-UFMG

No 569, Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG from Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Abstract: The paper approaches the theme of the relatively higher level of pluralism in Brazilian economics, when compared to the other countries, from a different approach used in the literature. Considering the Qualis as an instrument of great impact in the research of the Brazilian graduate education centers, mainly because of its impact in the CAPES evaluation of the centers, we analyze the abrupt change in the journal ranking that occurred in 2016. Before presenting this data, we first focused in understanding the metrics that are part of the Qualis, and how relevant the biases from other indexes than the Impact Factor are. Afterwards, we present a review of the national literature concerning the academic production in economics, showing how some problems due to incentives and structure still persist. We, then, present our results: we found out that the increase of journals in the higher strata of the Qualis without a research agenda bias, and with a great inclusion of specialized sub-fields of the discipline. Besides, the impact that this change will cause in the 2017 CAPES’ evaluation cannot be seen as favoring centers by their division in mainstream and non-mainstream. Having this in mind, we argue that the modifications keep incentives to pluralism, besides correcting many problems in the ranking.

Keywords: Qualis; academic production; pluralism; bibliometrics; mainstream economics; heterodox economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 A23 B00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hme, nep-pke and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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