National research assessment frameworks, publication output targets and research practices: the compliance-habitus effect

In this paper we consider relationships between national research assessment and publication output targets within academic workload models, theorising their potential impact on research practices and the academic habitus. Thinking with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, we draw on examples from higher education systems within the United Kingdom and Australia to argue that what an agent has done in the past plays a potentially significant role in the reformation of their own habitus. In relation to academics complying with publication output targets, whatever form those targets may take, we posit that this has implications for what research is done, how, by whom and where, and also for how researchers are disposed, or not, towards what research is perceived to be possible or desirable.