Today while catching up with what materials qualify as research for funding purposes in Australian universities (my new job requires me to refresh my memory on all this stuff) I came across an exclusion clause that should mean that no Historical Jesus book like Crossan’s or Casey’s should qualify as a research output of a publicly funded university.
It is in the guidelines under the section to do with authored books.
This category also refers to books written solely by the author(s). The publication must be a substantial work of scholarship . . .
The following are excluded:
- creative works such as novels, which depend mainly upon the imagination of the author rather than upon a publicly accessible body of agreed fact (possibly J1); . . .
Now J1 refers to the section titled “Major Original Creative Works”. So if such a book is to be registered as an output of a public university it must be categorized as an “original creative work”.