1 Research in Action: Enquiry and Debate 1 Harmen Oppewal Professor of Marketing Monash University Summary This contribution argues that academic researchers operate in two contexts: the context of discovery and the context of justification. The contribution will elaborate on this distinction and thereby illustrate how research actually evolves and ‘works’. An understanding of this dual context will help researchers to be smarter in developing their own research. Introduction The original brief and title for this contribution was ‘working smarter’. The phrase ‘working smarter, not harder’ is often heard when pressure mounts to become more productive and people are expected to deliver more or higher quality outputs with the same amount of resources, or the same level of output with reduced resources. In academia such pressure has been increasing for years from both sides: while university funding decreased, demands increased on academic staff to enhance their teaching, take on more administration and, above all, increase their research output. As a consequence the academic system has little left to stretch and advancing a career in academia nowadays means working harder and smarter. The recent arrival of research assessments such as PBFS and RQF has not only added to this pressure but has also required academics to shift their targets, from publishing as much as possible, whatever the outlet, towards publishing fewer papers but of the highest possible quality. For example, at this moment in Australia each publication produces an equal amount of funding for the academic’s institution. However, in the forthcoming RQF, similar to elsewhere, Australian academics can only submit their best four outputs (publications) over the last six years for assessment. Consequently there is no longer an incentive to produce many outputs; instead it is all quality (and industry ‘impact’) that counts and that will determine funding allocations in the future. Producing four ‘good’ outputs is however not an easy task and requires academics more than ever to be smart about how they develop and plan their research. Being smart about research development and research collaboration requires an understanding of the research process as it actually progresses. It is this author’s impression that researchers, and research managers, in our field often lack a proper understanding of this process and are setting goals (and associated ‘key performance indicators’) without knowing how to reach these goals, how feasible these goals are and what alternative or substitute goals may be available. This lack of insight into how the research process works is partly due to a lack of understanding of the divide between, what philosophers have called, the context of discovery and the context of justification. Especially Popper argued that the latter is the key to the development of scientific knowledge. He claimed that regardless of how ideas are generated it is the 1 Oppewal, Harmen (2008), “Research in Action: Enquiry and Debate”, Australasian Marketing Journal, 16 (2), 88-93.