The Shifting Sands of Academic Output:
University of Cape Town Research Output
in Education and Social Anthropology
(1993–2013)
Crain Soudien and Derek Gripper
Introduction
In this article we investigate the publication strategies and decisions of
academics in two key fields, social anthropology and educational policy,
at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. We ask how research
output in South Africa has been shaped over the last two decades by the
increasing priority attached to international rankings and its pressure to
publish in internationally recognised and accredited journals.
Structurally, the article begins with a brief description of the contem-
porary higher education South African landscape and the policies it has
developed with respect to publishing. It then provides a brief background
of the four academics from the fields of education and social anthro-
pology who were interviewed for the study. As part of this background
the article also describes the nature of their fields and the place of these
C. Soudien
The Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
D. Gripper (B )
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
A. Welch and J. Li (eds.), Measuring Up in Higher Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7921-9_12
275