He was named as an outstanding reviewer at the 2018 Emerald Literati Awards. 

Dr Callaghan, a Warrnambool Deakin University academic and lecturer, has peer reviewed journal articles for the past 22 years. His research centers around ethics, especially in corporate governance, malfeasance and misbehaviour. He said all reviews were anonymous and blind.

“It’s not something you see coming (the award),” he said. “You don’t disclose that you have done it.”

Dr Callaghan also won a prestigious award in 2012 for the European Business Review, and said his work increased after that honour.

“After that I did as many as two-to-three times more reviews,” he said.

He expects that will be the case again. Reviewers do not get paid for their services, however Dr Callaghan said it helped with professional development.

“When you comment on someone’s work you have to have a knowledge of the subject,” he said. “It requires you to maintain a broad knowledge. It forces you to go to literature to brush up on that area. It is a good process in terms of making you a good academic.” 

This year he completed his PhD, which was in devising a quantitative measure of codes of ethics. It was the first prior-publication PhD Deakin has granted by the Faculty of Business and Law.

“They are incredibly rare because it is rare to publish without a PhD,” he said. 

So far it has had 15 replications in seven countries and 41 peer reviewed publications.

He also lectures and publishes articles about marketing. 

“That is the very nature of being an academic in Warrnambool,” he said.

“We have to have a very broad knowledge.”