As you will have seen by now, all too often any history of small magazines in Australia is partly a story of revolving crises mediated by particular circumstances. 2010 also saw the culmination of the collection of the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) data on publications in academicranked peer-review journals by the Australian Research Council — potentially yet another crisis to affect literary magazines. For several years, the Australian Research Council had been conducting this research. As had become the status quo in the sciences (where theories required evaluation by academic peers), peer reviewing had crept into the humanities. The process became central to research funding through the Australian Research Council, and despite protestations in the press and in private, academics were dutifully buckling down to the new guidelines. Results were to be posted early in 2011.

During 2008 and 2009, preliminary lists were published listing some of the established literary journals such as Meanjin, Overland, Southerly and Heat as either A, B, or C journals. Initially introduced in the sciences, this categorisation meant that humanities journals, whether specialist academic, or more generally literary, were coming under the spotlight. Dennis Tourish, a British academic, was, like some of his Australian colleagues, particularly scathing about the potential impacts of the process. He argued that academics were being steered towards publishing in preferred journals and ‘lambasted for their inadequacy if they do not’ (qtd. in Rowbotham, ‘Journal Rankings’ 37). This presented the possibility that academics would only submit to top publications.

The issue had implications for broader literary publications, in that it had the potential to make some academics less community-focused, less like public intellectuals, if, for promotion, they had to largely publish in peerreviewed journals. Under the guidelines, no research points were allocated for essays/articles or book reviews in the popular press or non-academic journals — raising the implication that academics who engaged with the public sphere would be effectively penalised for speaking to broad audiences. Also, no research points were allocated to editors of any journals, whether academic or non- academic. These developments were taking place in a landscape where academics in Australia (who have only ever partially supported the literary magazines) are, by all the evidence, becoming increasingly cultural spectators rather than critical participants. Broadly, an indirect form of self-censorship could be the result from the stringent new guidelines.