Tertiary Education Union branch co-president Dr Brent Lovelock said the redundancies came about because universities were "desperately trying to maintain or improve" their positions on Performance-based Research Fund (PBRF) tables.
"Otago being the No 1 research university [in the last PBRF round in 2006] want to retain that as a marketing tool to attract students and staff."
Dr Lovelock, who is a senior lecturer in the department of tourism, said this resulted in large numbers of "so-called research-inactive staff" losing their jobs.
"The PBRF process ... has put alot of stress on staff and resulted inthe largest number of redundancies,in terms of academic staff, inmy memory and I have been here for 12 years," he said.
Departments with more of an applied focus and those which have traditionally not had a "culture of research", including the accounting and finance departments and the College of Education, had been particularly hit hard, he said.
"Those staff may have been taken on because they were wonderful teachers."
The PBRF also put the stress of added workload on other academic staff.
This meant "something's got to break" and because promotion was "increasingly" related to research, it often came at the cost of teaching.
Research on local topics, including Maori issues, was also being "whittled away" because articles which were published in international journals scored higher, he said.
Associate editor of the New Zealand Journal of Psychology Associate Prof Neville Blampied agreed the PBRF had directed some academics away from studying local issues.
"[Some may] have chosen to study something that is a hot topic internationally ... and not to study stuff which is of very local interest but isn't likely to sell internationally," Prof Blampied said.
Tertiary Education Commission (which runs the PBRF) manager David Nicholson said it had not pushed academics away from researching local issues.
"Articles in journals can be world-class and published in a New Zealand journal. Research concerning Maori or Pacific topics or themes may rank with the best research of its type conducted anywhere in the world," Mr Nicholson said.
Otago University vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne said universities were in the business of creating new knowledge through research and "the difference between a great university and the others is the quality of the research it produces".
She added that "many of our most famous researchers are also our best teachers".