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Gender data are presented from a study into sociology PhD completions and student research outputs during enrolment at Australian 'Group of Eight' interdisciplinary schools of social science. Findings confirm views and impressions offered by Australian sociology academic leaders. The present data contributes to this wider discussion by describing patterns in the contemporary cohort of sociology PhD students. First, we document a stable gender composition of the discipline in Australia reflective of the literature across several decades rather than a recent feminisation process. Second, we report for this cohort of contemporary PhD sociology completions in Australia women and men publish at similar rates during candidacy. Third, there is no significant gendered difference between students at any level of research output production. Fourth, methodological approaches used by sociology doctoral students confirm the epistemological domination of qualitative analysis in this current cohort of sociology PhD theses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigated the publishing practices of Australian sociology PhD students during enrolment. It examines a five-year cohort of PhD completions 2013-17 from sociology departments and interdisciplinary schools of social sciences for all Australian universities. The key question considered is: do sociology PhD students publish in sociology journals? We used the Web of Science (WoS) to analyse disciplinary classification of journals where students' articles were published. By a ratio of 1:10, students' articles mostly appeared in non-sociology journals. We then compared these data with a recent study of new sociology faculty in the United States, who showed a similar diversity in publication patterns beyond recognised sociology journals. These empirical data contribute to debates about the adequacy of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) framework: is practically technically correct if that can be done in measuring sociology's contribution when a major part of this exists outside conventional output metrics. Formal systems like Scopus and WoS provide extensive sets of data for comparing research outputs including by disciplinary classification; these journal indexes of research articles are commonly taken as a basic measure of research quality by universities and ERA. WoS journal disciplinary classification provided a useful basis of comparison with Warren's data on sociology in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]