scholarly journals The rhythms of scholarly publication: suggestions for academic research administrators making bibliometric comparisons across disciplines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Olejniczak ◽  
William E. Savage ◽  
Richard Wheeler

In the tables presented here (https://osf.io/myaut/), we show data pertaining to publication rates and publication venues across 170 academic disciplines. We model the publication patterns of faculty members at U.S. research universities at different career stages, and in so doing we hope to provide a nuanced and up-to-date reference for faculty members, administrators, and staff charged with interpreting publication outputs across disciplines and in a comparative context. Not all active scholars in any field will follow the same pattern of publication, and not all articles or books are of equal value: these data do not reflect quality measures. Our goal is not to establish a template against which individual scholars should be measured, but to contextualize a general picture of publication patterns representative of each discipline, with the knowledge that there will be notable individual variations.

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas P. Dotterweich ◽  
Sharon Garrison

Administrators and faculty are grappling with the relative importance of teaching and research by professors in higher education. While various opinions exist, both faculty and administrators will likely agree that research will remain prominent in the near future. Faculty frustration can result from inadequate support for research. A national survey of business school faculty examines support adequacy by type of school. Of the ten categories of research support studied, six are receiving less than adequate support. Administrators who allocate their limited research budgets based on the findings of this study will likely remove many of the obstacles their faculty members face in meeting the research objectives of their institutions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Amanda M. Kulp ◽  
Lisa E. Wolf-Wendel ◽  
Daryl G. Smith

Background/Context The research on promotion to full professor is sparse. Research that does exist has largely emerged from single campuses and studies conducted through disciplinary associations. Extant studies strongly suggest the presence of equity issues in advancement throughout the academic pipeline. Our study uses cross-institutional results to offer analysis of and potential solutions for the problem. Purpose/Objective/Research Question We explore the extent to which tenured faculty members at four-year postsecondary institutions are clear about their prospects of being promoted to full professor and how their background characteristics, institutional characteristics, and satisfaction with various aspects of academic work predict their perceptions of promotion clarity. We are focused on whether cultural taxation in the form of heavy service and advis-ing—often associated with underrepresented minority faculty and women faculty—is a factor. We examine the influence of ideal-worker norms and work/family demands on perceptions of promotion clarity. Lastly, we focus on the structural elements of the academy to frame the topic, rather than focusing on individual agency. Population/Participants/Subjects This study uses data from the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) survey, a large, national study of postsecondary faculty. Our sample consists of 3,246 individuals who held full-time, tenured positions as associate professor at four-year institutions when they responded to the surveys between 2010 and 2012. The sample was roughly divided between males (54%) and females (46%), and most faculty were employed at research institutions (59%). The sample was predominantly White (82%). The characteristics of the associate professors in the sample are representative of the larger U.S. faculty population at the time of the survey. Research Design This quantitative study uses descriptive statistics to examine patterns in promotion clarity across various demographic and institutional characteristics. We examine how satisfaction variables intersect with perceptions of promotion clarity for associate professors. Then we conduct a series of linear regression analyses to explore the influence of predictors on associate professors’ sense of clarity about promotion. Conclusions/Recommendations Being unclear about expectations of promotion to full professor is clearly of concern to faculty members at four-year universities in the United States, but it is especially of concern to women. Satisfaction with service is a very important variable in predicting perceptions of promotion clarity. For all associate professors, working at certain types of institutions or in particular academic disciplines had an inverse relationship with promotion clarity. The factors associated with lack of clarity about promotion are more structural than individual.


2020 ◽  
Vol 177 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan McKee

Thirty experts in the assessment of the quality of Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs) as academic research outputs were asked to rate the importance of 19 criteria that might be used in making these judgements. Analysis of responses identified four criteria where there is substantial agreement among the community of experts: (a) demonstrated familiarity in the research statement with the current state of knowledge in the relevant academic disciplines (very important); (b) demonstrated familiarity in the research statement with the current state of knowledge in the relevant industry (important); (c) evidence that the work has been engaged with by other academic researchers (relevant); (d) whether the NTRO creator is a substantive university staff member or an adjunct/honorary (unimportant). Fifteen other criteria either reached a less than ‘fair’ level of agreement, or larger numbers of respondents nominated ‘It depends’. Qualitative analysis of comments also revealed noteworthy disagreements in the expert community about how the criteria should be applied.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Everett

Academic disciplines have a critical role to play in higher education's response to the planetary challenges of the 21st century. Many academics have embraced the call for a fundamental reorientation of higher education around the goal of education for sustainable development. Individual faculty members who prioritize such a pedagogical goal, however, may find themselves caught between claims of social responsibility on the one hand and traditional norms of their disciplines on the other. This predicament, I suggest, does not require resolution of theoretical debates over interdisciplinarity, but does require concrete practical action on the part of academics for institutional change in the disciplines. I highlight strategies currently being adopted by academic disciplinary associations to advance the mission of the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development.


2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Silverman ◽  
Pamela Hodges Kulinna ◽  
Sharon R. Phillips

This study examined perceived journal quality by physical education pedagogy faculty members. Participants (N = 273) were identified in three ways and recruited through e-mail. Based on research in other fields investigating journal quality and on publication patterns in physical education, a web-based survey was used to examine (a) whether participants knew a journal and viewed it as scholarly, (b) ratings of journal quality, (c) what factors influenced their ratings, and (d) demographic and scholarly productivity measures. There was a wide range of journals known by the participants and clear indicators of which journals had higher and lower perceived quality. There were differences in ratings between those employed at master’s and doctoral institutions and relationships between scholarly productivity and the number of journals known. The results provide strong indications of journal quality for those who have reasons to evaluate journals in physical education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirpa Kokko ◽  
Gunnar Almevik ◽  
Harald C. Bentz Høgseth ◽  
Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen

The craft sciences have emerged as a field of academic research in Finland, Sweden and Norway since the early 1990s. In Finland, craft research has examined various aspects of crafts using a multidisciplinary approach, adapting a range of methods from other academic disciplines according to the research topic. Another source has been the schools of domestic sciences in which craft research has been a recognized field. In Sweden and Norway, craft research has developed strongly in architectural conservation and cultural heritage with a focus on traditional craftsmanship and the performative elements of intangible cultural heritage. This article offers an overview of the developments and progress of the field of craft sciences in these countries, including its methodological approaches, with a focus on Ph.D. theses. Through mapping recurrent methodological approaches, the following categories were derived: craft reconstruction, craft interpretations, craft elicitation, craft amplification and craft socialization. The aim of the classification, and the model derived from it, is to help researchers and students understand better how different types of knowledge relate to different research methods and apply them within their own research. The purpose of the research is to create a common infrastructure for research and education in order to connect and strengthen the dispersed academic communities of craft research and to establish craft science as a formally recognized discipline within the academic system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-98
Author(s):  
Susan O. Cannon ◽  
Maureen A. Flint

In this paper, we explore the online academic research platforms we are entangled with as tenure-track faculty members in the neoliberal university. We are so embedded in these systems that the assumptions and constructions inherent in practices of counting are often lost, wrapped in the coils of counting practices—a becoming with algorithm. Though academic platforms are intricately enmeshed in our research and lives, they have been operating as “onto-epistemological blind spots” (Sweet et al., 2020, p. 2). And yet, the numbers they produce and rely on (H-scores, impact factors, citation counts, and journal rankings) matter and are “promiscuous and inventive in [their] agential wanderings” (Barad, 2015, p. 487), offering possibilities for intimacy and response-ability to what we are and might become. In other words, attending to the monstrous qualities of counting practices offers an entry point for re-thinking the relational, ethical, and affective aspects of academic subjectivity. So, we attend tothese qualities to become with the neoliberal counting and control mechanisms in innovative ways. Through this paper, we open ourselves to the wild possibilities of academic algorithms, working within and thinking with counting practices to intimately understand the ontologies of number at work in these platforms and how they work on our subjectivities. As we consider how our futures are being modelled and pre-empted, we think the algorithms in relation to feminist new materialist philosophers, Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad. We ask: ‘what if?’ we were to think ontologies of number with these theories and see what possibilities emerge. We entangle Braidotti and  Barad with Deleuzoguattarian philosophies to imagine different relational becomings; to construct new ways of attending to our monstrous potentials and possibilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Badrilal Gupta ◽  
Pratibha Bundela Gupta

A mentoring approach towards excellence is proposed in this paper. This approach should be followed to develop educational leaders and faculty members to prepare HEIs to build capacity and capability to implement the provisions of the national education policy (NEP) 2020. The approach includes designing the mentoring programme at the institute level, selection and orientation of mentors, selection and orientation of mentees, mentoring process, mentees and mentors’ outcomes, and ultimate outcomes of the mentoring programme-academic, research, and excellence. The authors have noted recommendations to make the mentoring programme successful.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 636-647
Author(s):  
Lucille Holmes

It is well known that academic research which includes human participants undergoes an ethical review which, in many countries today, includes all academic disciplines and not only medical science. But what about those disciplines with the least experience of ethical codes for research, such as the visual and performing arts? How are they defined and positioned in ethical codes and guidelines that are intended to apply to all disciplines? What are the challenges to ethical frameworks which aim to be inclusive of the visual and performing arts? This article examines the European Commission-funded SATORI project (Stakeholders Acting Together On the ethical impact assessment of Research and Innovation) in its aim to produce the first comprehensive, international standard for the ethical assessment of research in all fields including the arts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-84
Author(s):  
Muhamadi Kaweesi

Academic staff research orientations have become subject to growing interest in the context of research-led universities. Whereas a number of studies have explored research orientations in higher education, research literature on the subject deals typically with the topic in the context of European and American universities. As such, studies delving in the way academics conceptualize research orientations across disciplinary fields remain few, at least in the context of Sub-Saharan African research-led Universities. This paper uses the institutional theory as the guiding theory to explore the conceptualization of academic research orientations at Makerere University. With the help of semi-structured interviews with 12 participants from 4 academic disciplines, the interpretive paradigm was preferred for this paper because the study phenomena are interpretive. As such, I chose to use qualitative methods, in which things are studied in their natural settings and to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of meanings people bring to them. The study results revealed that although academics engage in basic, policy-relevant, community-oriented, and entrepreneurial research, they as well seem to strongly understand research in terms of donor rules that exert conformance pressures and expectations. Based on the study findings, the conclusion is that research at Makerere University is largely conceptualized in terms of the donor-driven orientation. Among others, I recommend that the University should selectively collaborate with donors to ensure that locally generated research agendas are not overridden by the interests of the donors.


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