Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/802850v1
Academic criteria for promotion and tenure in faculties of biomedical sciences: a cross-sectional analysis of 146 universities
ABSTRACT
Objectives
To determine the presence of a set of pre-specified traditional and
progressive criteria used to assess scientists for promotion and tenure
in faculties of biomedical sciences among universities worldwide.
Design Cross-sectional study.
Setting Not applicable.
Participants 170 randomly selected universities from the Leiden Ranking of world universities list were considered.
Main outcome measures
Two independent reviewers searched for all guidelines applied when
assessing scientists for promotion and tenure for institutions with
biomedical faculties. Where faculty-level guidelines were not available,
institution-level guidelines were sought. Available documents were
reviewed and the presence of 5 traditional (e.g., number of
publications) and 7 progressive (e.g., data sharing) criteria was noted
in guidelines for assessing assistant professors, associate professors,
professors, and the granting of tenure.
Results
A total of 146 institutions had faculties of biomedical sciences with
92 having eligible guidelines available to review. Traditional criteria
were more commonly reported than progressive criteria (t(82)= 15.1, p=
.001). Traditional criteria mentioned peer-reviewed publications,
authorship order, journal impact, grant funding, and national or
international reputation in 95%, 37%, 28%, 67%, and 48% of the
guidelines, respectively. Conversely, among progressive criteria only
citations (any mention in 26%) and accommodations for extenuating
circumstances (37%) were relatively commonly mentioned; while there was
rare mention of alternative metrics for sharing research (2%) and data
sharing (1%), and 3 criteria (publishing in open access mediums,
registering research, and adhering to reporting guidelines) were not
found in any institution reviewed. We observed notable differences
across continents on whether guidelines are accessible or not (Australia
100%, North America 97%, Europe 50%, Asia 58%, South America 17%), and
more subtle differences on the use of specific criteria.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates that the current evaluation of scientists
emphasizes traditional criteria as opposed to progressive criteria. This
may reinforce research practices that are known to be problematic while
insufficiently supporting the conduct of better-quality research and
open science. Institutions should consider incentivizing progressive
criteria.
Registration Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/26ucp/)
What is already known on this topic
- Academics tailor their research practices based on the evaluation criteria applied within their academic institution.
- Ensuring that biomedical researchers are incentivized by adhering to best practice guidelines for research is essential given the clinical implications of this work.
- While changes to the criteria used to assess professors and confer tenure have been recommended, a systematic assessment of promotion and tenure criteria being applied worldwide has not been conducted.
What this study adds
- Across countries, university guidelines focus on rewarding traditional research criteria (peer-reviewed publications, authorship order, journal impact, grant funding, and national or international reputation).
- The minimum requirements for promotion and tenure criteria are predominantly objective in nature, although several of them are inadequate measures to assess the impact of researchers.
- Developing and evaluating more appropriate, progressive indicators of research may facilitate changes in the evaluation practices for rewarding researchers.
Copyright
The
copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has
granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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