O鈥橠onnell article named among 狈补迟耻谤别鈥檚 top 50 humanities papers of the decade
October 22, 2025
免费福利资源在线看片 of Lethbridge English professor Daniel Paul O鈥橠onnell has been honoured by 狈补迟耻谤别鈥檚 humanities imprint, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, for co-authoring the journal's and one of its and the
The paper, titled 鈥溾楨xcellence R Us鈥: 免费福利资源在线看片 Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence鈥 (), was originally published in 2017 in Palgrave Communications, the predecessor of HSS Communications. The journal鈥攐ne of the most prominent interdisciplinary platforms in the humanities and social sciences鈥攕elected the top five papers from each of its ten annual volumes to mark its tenth anniversary. Selections were based on combined measures of citation impact, download rates, and Altmetric attention scores.
O鈥橠onnell鈥檚 article, co-authored with Samuel Moore, Cameron Neylon, Martin Paul Eve, and Damian Pattinson, has been accessed more than 64,000 times and cited 192 times. It ranks in the 99th percentile of all research tracked by Altmetric and is the top publication in the journal鈥檚 Humanities and Social Sciences category.
The study examines how the rhetoric of 鈥渆xcellence鈥濃攁 term that dominates university mission statements, funding competitions, and evaluation frameworks鈥攈as come to shape research culture worldwide. The authors argue that this language, while intended to promote quality, often produces the opposite effect: rewarding conformity and competition rather than intellectual curiosity, collaboration, or long-term value.
鈥淭he rhetoric of excellence turns out not to be excellent at all,鈥 the paper concludes. 鈥淯sed in its current unqualified form, it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship.鈥
The article traces how 鈥渆xcellence鈥 operates less as a measurable quality than as a linguistic interchange mechanism鈥攁 flexible, self-reinforcing label that institutions use to signal prestige. Through extensive analysis of funding systems, peer review, and publication practices, the authors show that this performance of excellence can encourage questionable research behaviour, from publication bias to exaggerated claims of impact. They advocate instead for a new scholarly language based on soundness and capacity鈥攑rinciples that emphasise methodological rigour, transparency, and distributed opportunity over competitive hierarchies.
O鈥橠onnell鈥檚 involvement in the project reflects his long-standing engagement with questions of research culture and scholarly communication. As founding director of the Humanities Innovation Lab and a pioneer in open-access publishing, he has championed community-governed and data-driven approaches to academic dissemination. His work with initiatives such as the Journal Incubator and the Open Library of Humanities has positioned the 免费福利资源在线看片 of Lethbridge as a global contributor to re-imagining how humanities research is shared and assessed.
The Top 50 list, published in January 2025, celebrates the journal鈥檚 tenth anniversary and includes research spanning global governance, social media, misinformation, and artificial intelligence.