Voices from a small discipline: How the Australian Vocational Education and Training discipline made sense of journal rankings

The topic of quality rankings of academic journals generated a great deal of debate and opinion in Australia during their time at the forefront of interest in the mid-to-late 2000s. However, there has been little empirical research to inform the debate. This paper reports on and analyses the journal ranking experiences of one small discipline - Vocational Education and Training - at the time of the now-defunct Australian Research Quality Framework, and discusses the differences between the discipline's own rankings and those allocated to its journals by the broader Education discipline. The paper then reports on a 2010 survey of members of the discipline's research association, showing broad-based support for journal rankings among practitioner as well as academic members of the Association. The findings in this paper are set against an explanation of the broader Australian journal ranking process and its national introduction and abolition, and in the broader context that rankings of journals continue to be used in some disciplines and in other countries. The findings form a contribution that may help to inform future debates about journal quality and rankings in Education and more broadly across disciplines.