Yesterday, I suggested asking for more papers, in a world of more accessible data, was not a good idea & even toxic for early career faculty: https://lnkd.in/dMT8pHBW
Rather than demanding more papers, my contention is that uni's should focus early career faculty on writing high-quality papers.
Why?
Because the scientific endeavor does not benefit from more low-quality papers.
We need our brightest minds to focus on answering tough questions using the best possible research designs and the highest-quality data.
To make that happen, we need to realign incentive systems.
I've seen three plausible, faculty-led approaches to realigning incentive systems to manage the demand for more volume - one dysfunctional & two functional - in my estimation.
All depend on leadership by senior faculty.
The first was a lower bar for quality papers.
The Uni downgraded its journal list and its volume requirement.
The argument being it was too hard to publish in top journals vis a vis the broader academic landscape.
The place had been known for conducting quality research.
Lowering the bar resulted in retaining more early-career faculty & promoting terminal Associates to Full Professors, yet the vibrancy of the intellectual community was much diminished.
The place is no longer known for its research.
The second was leaving the bar unchanged tenure requirement but using a dynamic journal list.
The Uni continually revised its journal list to reflect the best journals published on the topics studied by its faculty. It left its tenure requirements for quality unchanged.
The place has generated several timely, important papers & has been able to retain its early career faculty.
The third was to maintain a rigorous tenure requirement with a much-diminished service requirement.
The Uni updated its journal list to include one more high-quality journal BUT also took steps to offer early career faculty more time & resources.
This shift required senior faculty and non-tenure track faculty to step up and take action to make available time for the early faculty to work on papers.
At this uni, you can see vesting on the part of the senior faculty in the success of the early career faculty - but also - a lack of mercy if the tenure bar for quality publications is not met.
I am sure there are ways to navigate escalating publication requirements.
What is important here, is that all three responses required senior faculty to to recognize that more data does not translate to more publications & recognized that early career faculty now required more time to be successful.
However.
They will require senior faculty to ensure that early career faculty have the necessary time to conduct high-impact research without compromising the classroom experience.
We can make the academy more reasonable, we all just need to chip in to make it happen!
Have a great weekend!
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