According to the British specialist journal "Qualitative Research", it publishes articles with "a clear methodological focus".
Academics are invited to submit research that appeals to multidisciplinary communities, discusses qualitative methods, and explores the possibilities of established types of research.
This means social research that, in contrast to quantitative data collection, focuses on the subjective perception of certain phenomena.
In the case of an article published in April, the methodological focus was on the masturbation of the author Karl Andersson while viewing "Shota", Japanese comics with suggestive drawings of underage boys.
The essay entitled "I'm Not Alone - We Are All Alone: Masturbation as an Ethnographic Method in Research on the Shota Subculture in Japan" resembles a field report rather than a scholarly treatise.
Andersson, a Swedish doctoral student at the University of Manchester, describes how he realized that "my body is equipped with its own research tool that literally allows me to give a first-hand understanding of Shota".
The essay is the result of his three-month "field research" in which he recorded exactly which material he used when, where and how and what he thought and felt while doing so.
His conclusion: he learned from this experiment to attach greater importance to the act of masturbation, especially in comics.
What neither Andersson, who published a magazine in Sweden, wanted to see adolescents again perceived “as one of the ideals of gay culture”, nor the colleagues who released the contribution for publication, wanted to note the dubiousness of an experiment with drawings by puberty and pre-pubescent boys.
Nobody seemed to care until a Conservative MP started a Twitter storm asking why taxpayers would have to fund such a report.
Without having read Andersson or knowing that he considers Shota to be a form of artistic expression that is rejected by society in the same way as Hitler's "degenerate art" was, numerous academics reflexively jumped to his side because the deputy's Question combined with the criticism sometimes leveled by conservatives that colleges produce too much in the humanities field that is not socially useful.
In the meantime, "Qualitative Research" and the university have announced investigations.
Recently, students have protested against the supposedly phallic features of a statue by Antony Gormley and universities have once again issued many trigger warnings to protect "snowflakes", i.e. particularly sensitive people.
Rarely has the confusion of standards in higher education become as clear as in the Andersson case.