Kōtuitui and the social sciences in Aotearoa/New Zealand: into a new decade

I began my four-year tenure as Senior Editor of Kōtuitui with an editorial summarising progress on the journal over the first decade since its founding (Crothers 2017a), so as I end my term, a further review seems appropriate, together with, again, locating the journal within the overall context of NZ social science. The beginning of a new decade seems an appropriate time to examine the overall situation of social science research in New Zealand and to consider whether its capacity and infrastructure are adequate going forward. Kōtuitui offers several advantages: it is open access for readers, free to authors and of broad Aotearoa/New Zealand interest. It is the sole NZ multidisciplinary social science journal and its sponsorship by Royal Society Te Apārangi gives it gravitas together with providing increased visibility through the Society’s social media and newsletters. Several operational changes over this period include:

• A new RSNZ support team took over (thanks to Fei He and Jasmine Gabrielle-Hinchey for their developmental and operational work);

• Appointment of a broader editorial group has been built up comprising a reasonable mix of disciplinary range, university location, gender and ethnicity (again thanks for their efforts are due to both current and previous Associate Editors);

• A re-working of the contract with Taylor & Francis doubled publishing capacity from 148 pages to 296 which was fortunate as submissions continue to pour in;

• Given the increased flow of manuscripts, we needed to upgrade our procedures and ask referees to help article selection in terms of several quality dimensions built-into the evaluation forms

• Kōtuitui was included in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) as a new database in Web of Science in 2017 (retrospectively covering all papers back to 2006);

• Kōtuitui is now published gold open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license;

• Kōtuitui was indexed in the world largest open-access database – DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) in October 2019. On several measures, visibility has markedly increased.

As the webpages on the Aims and Scope for the journal advertise [https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=tnzk20] Kōtuitui has a broad remit covering all the social sciences, in relation to Aotearoa/New Zealand and with a particular responsibility to cover issues of relevance for the NZ social science community as a whole. (While our remit is Aotearoa/New Zealand we take this broadly as relevant to NZ.) Papers are published online immediately they clear editorial and production processes and are then amalgamated twice a year into issues (which add page numbers and elevate the status of the publication for some evaluation systems). The main ingredient is (citeable) research articles, but a limited extension to other genres is warranted with our aspirational model of a typical issue which might well comprise:

• A guest editorial;

• Nine or so research articles;

• A review article; and

• A book review.

Books chosen for review have been of broad NZ relevance. Review articles can be particularly useful in pulling together broader swathes of knowledge and several have been offered and are under consideration for future issues.

Special issues tend to attract more attention than regular issues and two were published (or in process) over the last four years:

• The 2017 Election;

• The Christchurch mosque shootings.

Both these topics seemed important for Kōtuitui to tackle, and it was hoped that the election issue might include material available to voters before the election, although only a couple of articles were published in time. Elections are a fertile ‘research-site’ for understanding of NZ society. The massacre issue sadly is a topic likely to attract considerable interest across the world so it seemed useful for Kōtuitui to bring together useful descriptive and explanatory material. The material being assembled covers a range of perspectives and is not focused on the victim-groups, while their views are represented.

Key information about Kōtuitui over the last 4 years includes input, throughput and output characteristics. Submissions have steadily increased since 2016 and run at about one per week. About two-thirds are sent out for review with a rejection-rate hovering around 40% over the period. From 2017, just over 20 articles per annum have been published (i.e. almost one per fortnight). About half of recent Kōtuitui articles have been cited, (although of course more recent ones are less likely) with an annual CiteScore approaching 0.85. The journal appears at about rank of 70th in the general social sciences category. In addition, an Altimetric ‘attention score’ (not reported) for social media mentions has high values. Downloads of Kōtuitui articles (YTD 2019 – last updated in September 2019) by global region are: Australasia (44.1%); US/Canada (21%); Europe (15%), Asia (14%) and Africa (4%). Within NZ, downloads were in line with the size of each University. Downloads have very considerably increased over the recent period.

State of social science in New Zealand

This editorial turns now to building up a brief profile of the parameters of the contemporary NZ social science community, with details presented in the supplementary material. It concludes with a roster of improvements that should be considered. The portrait of contemporary social research in NZ begins with an indication of the types of organisational setting in which social scientists are employed, and this is followed by attempts to provide some estimates of the manpower involved. Further sections provide some statistics on funding and other resource provision and on research outputs and impacts.

It is important to see Kōtuitui’s role within the overall setting of the NZ social science research community. Kōtuitui is one of a few central ‘institutions’ remaining. Indeed, systematic development of New Zealand social sciences in general has regressed in some ways over the last decade, with several coordinating mechanisms having collapsed (namely: UNESCO Commission on Social Sciences, RSNZ Social Sciences Committee, StatsNZ advisory group, Superu and its science advisory group). In particular, there are no institutional mechanisms straddling the University, Government and other sectors of social sciences. (For a review of NZ reports on Social Sciences, see Preston 2018 and for a depiction of the NZ social science journal system, see Crothers 2017b.)

The data drawn on in the supplementary material come from a wide variety of sources and are used only to build up a description, pointing to gaps and where more analytical work needs to be done. Sources include: the Tertiary Education Commission (PBRF data: demographics, research outputs, quality ratings of research-active tertiary staff), the State Services Commission Human Resources Capability Survey, the NZ Census; SNZ R&D Survey, Pubic Service research survey, SciVal and other bibliometric sources, the SIA ‘Hub’ and various surveys (e.g. Curtis 2008; Witten and Hammond 2010; Sedgwick and Proctor-Thomson 2019).

It was found that there is a wide range of organisational settings within which social science is accomplished, although universities, other tertiary education institutions and the government are the major employers. There are some 1500 Tertiary academics and researchers in the social sciences, with at least 10 times this number of semi-professions (e.g. policy analysts) whose knowledge bases lies in the social sciences. A glance at funding indicated large sums have been made available to social scientists over the last few decades although the range of funding sources is not large, and comparative analysis against other disciplinary areas has not been attempted. Pinning down research outputs showed that there were some 2000 research articles published by NZ-based social researchers per annum, and at least 50 social science books with NZ-relevant content, and there was some evidence of policy take-up of some of this output.

In sum, far more analytical work is needed to reveal the dimensions and relevance of the output of NZ-based social science authors and of NZ-relevant outputs of non-NZ-based social science authors. Clearly, there is a very considerable production of social science-related material. Much of it is carried out as part of authorial teams which are widely scattered, and much of the subject-matter studied is not NZ-related, as is appropriate, but better tracking and consolidation of NZ-related outputs would be useful.

Kōtuitui plays a role in keeping some (particularly highly relevant) social science material more accessible to NZ authors and in publishing review material.

Recent developments

There have also been major recent developments which some NZ social researchers may not be sufficiently aware of – some of which have been discussed in Kōtuitui through guest editorials or research notes – including:

• The 2018 census despite its shortcomings (see Kukutai and Cormack 2019);

• The explosion of social research and of expert committees of inquiry unleashed by the Labour-led Government (see SSC 2019b);

• The setting up of Ministry Science Advisers and Forum under the auspices of the Chief Science Adviser;

• Development of the extensive platform of Well-being research (e.g. see reviews by Dalziel 2019 and Weijers and Morrison 2018, and StatsNZ and Treasury websites https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators-and-snapshots/indicators-aotearoa-new-zealand-nga-tutohu-aotearoa/ and https://treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/nz-economy/higher-living-standards/measuring-wellbeing-lsf-dashboard);

• Continuing exploration into the NZ-specific values which underlie social science research in NZ (e.g. see exploration of NZ-specific concepts of ‘evidence-based research’: Bullen et al. 2019);

• RSNZ’s development of an updated ethics framework [https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/who-we-are/our-rules-and-codes/code-of-professional-standards-and-ethics/];

• Building up of extensive indigenous methodologies (e.g. Kaupapa Maori) and frameworks (e.g. Maori data sovereignty: see Calude et al. 2019; Kukutai and Cormack 2019; NZ Science Review 2019).

• RSNZ interest in the social sciences topic of inequality (being researched as an RSNZ report);

• The general availability of economic and social surveys (e.g. the General Social Survey developed by StatsNZ – but also surveys from Health Promotion Agency, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Justice and a swathe of other Government departments: see also Crothers 2015);

• The integrated data infrastructure as a massive storehouse of governmental data (e.g. Kukutai and Cormack 2019; Milne et al. 2019);

It is worthwhile adding that although the 2018 census was injured by over-reliance on virtual data-collection, some census operations have been strengthened and certainly methodological lessons learned. A new spatial architecture has been developed – adding a further spatial layer between meshblocks and area units to allow better display of data without tripping over confidentiality suppressions, which has strengthened the potential for spatially-based data analyses.

However, more institutional or infrastructure developments might better integrate the production and utilisation of NZ social science research. Our lacks can be compared to the extensive network of facilities anchored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the UK or even to New Zealand’s Health Research Council (see MOH 2017 which is a substantial review of research strategies in this area). Indeed, NZ needs to learn more about the experience of social research infrastructure developed by other jurisdictions. A ‘Wish-List’ to be considered of needed Social Research Infrastructure for NZ would include:

• Governance/coordination of social science research (perhaps even bringing back a Social Science Research Fund – in part to divert social researchers pitching to the Health Research Council);

• Explore possibility of setting up multidisciplinary structures (e.g. a Social Sciences Academy);

• Means of coordination across Central Government, Local/regional government, Consultancy, Community, Iwi-based and Academic Social Research sectors;

• Development of research priority frameworks (cf. Auckland City Council 2015; Superu 2015);

• Consideration of ensuring research capacity in areas of the 12 Government Goals (Adern 2018) which are very large in areas potentially underpinned by social science knowledge;

• Increases in funding compared to overseas funding levels (note: at the time of writing the promised 36 indicators to measure change in relation to these goals is yet to appear);

• Long-term continuing support for key studies: e.g. a more Academic version of the General Social Survey (GSS) or the regular assessment of NZ Elections (NZ Election Study - NZES) – see Crothers (2015);

• Provision of funding in gap areas: e.g. that between blue-sky and applied research where most funding is located;

• More secure Funding/Career development opportunities;

• Explore possibilities for more focused reward-systems (e.g. prizes);

• Support for development of social research within the broad Government ‘policy analysts’ occupation (cf. The Policy Project);

• Further development of methodological standards and assessments of research experiences to undergird stock of local social research skills;

• Advanced Social Research Methods Training (particularly given the deficit in quantitative analysis skills recognised across many jurisdictions);

• Further NZ social science journals where there are gaps (e.g. Social Policy: see Crothers 2017b);

• Data Archive (with a Government requirement that funded studies must file their data – possibly the Australian Data Archive would accommodate more NZ datasets);

• A system-centered Clearinghouse (information, articles etc.) and its wider distribution list cf. Index New Zealand (INNZ).

• Policy translation (e.g. Parliamentary briefings) and Public diffusion (e.g. reports in the media).

The PBRF and considerable financial support by government has driven up the research output from NZ-based social scientists and imposed some slight order on a portion the topics which are looked at, but these opportunities and pressures have led to a wide scattering of topics being researched and outputs published across a slew of national and international journals and other publishing formats. The long-run ordered development of a social science system is not being addressed and this detracts from the capacity of NZ social science work to enable better understanding of NZ society, while also backing up better ways of developing and evaluating social policy and effecting social change. It is hoped that this editorial might help raise the requisite concerns and lead to the establishment of improved social research infrastructure.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).