RAISING ISSUES AND OPENING THE DIALOGUE
- PROMOTION
Initiate a discussion of promotion criteria among your colleagues.- In particular, you may want to raise issues relating to the quantity vs. quality issue in tenure consideration.
To assure quality and reduce proliferation of publications, the evaluation of faculty should place a greater emphasis on quality of publications and a reduced emphasis on quantity.
While a fundamental factor contributing to the rapid increase in the volume of published research is the rapid expansion of knowledge, the academic credentialing system encourages faculty to publish some work that may add little to the body of knowledge. In the spirit of creating an environment that reduces emphasis on quantity across the system and frees faculty time for more valuable endeavors, faculty in research institutions should base their evaluation of colleagues on the quality of and contribution made by a small, fixed number of published works, allowing the review to emphasize quality. This de-emphasis of quantitative measures could moderate the rate of increase in new titles and numbers of articles published. Some universities have already modified faculty evaluation in this manner and federal granting agencies, such as the NIH, have implemented policies to limit the number of articles cited in the grant application process.
From the Tempe Principles - And you may want to raise the issue of merits given for publishing in quality Open Access journals, which increases readership potential.
Despite significant growth in the number of research papers available through open access, principally through author self-archiving in institutional archives, it is estimated that only about 20% of the number of papers published annually are open access. It is up to the authors of papers to change this. Why might open access be of benefit to authors? One universally important factor for all authors is impact, typically measured by the number of times a paper is cited (some older studies have estimated monetary returns to authors from article publication via the role citations play in determining salaries). Recent studies have begun to show that open access increases impact, although more studies and more substantial investigations are needed to confirm the effect.
From The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies.
- In particular, you may want to raise issues relating to the quantity vs. quality issue in tenure consideration.
