Subject: Legal research in South Africa and its contribution to academia and society

Description: Research evaluation in the humanities is far from perfect. Humanities research has inadequate representation in the main international publication databases, and (the few) methods and frameworks to assess research impact were not necessarily developed with the humanities in mind. The project aims to address these challenges by focusing on one specific area of humanities research, namely legal research, and to reflect on appropriate procedures to support assessments of the contribution of South African legal research to academia and society. The main objectives of the project are to make explicit the different pathways to impact of legal research, and to investigate the trends and patterns of article and book output in the case of legal research. The study involves a bibliometric analysis of research publications in law in South Africa and an analysis of qualitative interviews focussing on specific examples of impactful research. The qualitative interviews will be preceded by a short web survey in order to select appropriate cases for interviewing.