How much research at your institution, for tenure?

[Veggie3]

At my research intensive university teaching is not enough to get tenure if research is low, but it can sink a case even if research is good.  I believe it even says this (in other words) in our contract.

That's the situation at my R-1 university. At a recent P&T workshop an associate dean looked across the room and said that teaching & service are important, of course, but they will never get you tenured on their own. You have to be a good teacher (normally construed above 4 on a 1-5 scale on student evaluations' teaching effectiveness), and do a lot of service. But a published book on top of a few articles, plus evidence you've made some progress toward your second book, are considered sufficient. A 2-2 teaching load, including 1 class release on your first year are supposed to help you achieve that.

[darkstarrynight]

I think this is one of those "it depends" questions.  I am at a R1 and since we do 360 evaluations within my department annually, I can see that each TT faculty member has a different percentage for teaching-research-service and it can be negotiated with the chair each year. I have stuck with mine since being hired, which is 50% teaching, 30% research, 20% service.  Even though it is a R1, teaching has been highly valued during my annual reviews, but I am guessing research will likely be weighted more than 30% for my P&T review this coming semester.  We have a mentor program within my college for all TT faculty, and I have had three different mentors from departments outside of mine within the college who are unable to provide me a magic number of publications needed, including the mentor who is on the college P&T committee.  I just hope my number of refereed articles coupled with my first book coming out in a few weeks is sufficient.  At my mid-tenure review, the college committee told me to get a grant as my main research priority at that time, so I got the biggest one in my field last year (which is very little money but from a prestigious organization).  Because of that, I feel confident that I addressed their suggestions, and my teaching evaluations have been great thus far.

I'm surprised that a R1 allows their faculty to elect 50% teaching and only 30% research, but if your description of your output is any indication, it sounds like they want their cake and to eat it too. In particular, it feels like you're doing more research-wise than what one might reasonably expect from a 30% research election. Do you have a higher teaching load because of the 50% teaching election?

I did not choose this load - it was in my offer letter five years ago and I never re-negotiated.  We have a lot of people in my department about to retire so I have no idea how any more classes can be covered (meaning I could not negotiate the teaching load to be less than it is now).  I do not consider my load too high, it is a 3-2 (my first two years were 2-2 and then contractually I added a third class in one semester at the start of my third year).  Other departments in my college have a 3-3 load so I consider mine reasonable (I also teach 2 courses in the summer).  I do not think how it is in my department or college is the same across our campus, but I still believe more weight will be put upon my research output than the percentage suggests in my P&T review.  External reviewers were only sent my publications and CV, not anything about my teaching, for them to write a letter.

[emprof]

R1 Humanities. 45-45-10. But our tenure publication requirements are a bit lower than the average R1, thanks to a kindly and influential older professor who was well aware that academic presses are in jeopardy, and getting a book out in a limited timespan is sometimes impossible for reasons beyond the faculty member's control.

[Grinch]

Regional university. 4/4 load. Three publications minimum for tenure. Where those publications are isn't a major factor.

[Hibush]

Regional university. 4/4 load. Three publications minimum for tenure. Where those publications are isn't a major factor.

Are predatory publishers OK?  I'm just curious about the nature of the market for that service.

[Grinch]

Regional university. 4/4 load. Three publications minimum for tenure. Where those publications are isn't a major factor.

Are predatory publishers OK?  I'm just curious about the nature of the market for that service.

No. Predatory publishers are not acceptable. But a decent journal works; it doesn't have to be a top-tier journal.

I have yet to figure out the market for predatory publishers. I fear it is new PhDs desperate to get something published as they enter the job market. 

[polly_mer]

I have yet to figure out the market for predatory publishers. I fear it is new PhDs desperate to get something published as they enter the job market.

Much of the market in my fields is researchers in countries where the requirement is English-language publications.  The well-established, world-class institutions aim for the same outlets that the US/Canada/European researchers use.  The aspiring institutions where research is new and many of the professors earned their degrees through the same institution that now employs them just need English-language publications.

In addition, it's not rare for me to encounter someone who is interested in scientific research, but will not invest the time and energy into working through the formal education system.  Those folks often take a few undergraduate classes and then start writing papers that are rejected for valid, scientific reasons.  Instead of addressing the valid comments, those folks sometimes turn to any publisher who will give their brilliant ideas an outlet because clearly discrimination is at play and the proper path is to publish, be recognized for greatness, and then be allowed to skip all the boring parts to be awarded a big research job or at least a PhD.

Because a handful of people have become very famous scientists this way (or at least that's the short story that gets into legend), those aspiring scientists make bad choices in hopes of doing the hard work that's satisfying instead of the hard work that's necessary to be paid to be a research scientist.

[Hibush]

Regional university. 4/4 load. Three publications minimum for tenure. Where those publications are isn't a major factor.

Are predatory publishers OK?  I'm just curious about the nature of the market for that service.

No. Predatory publishers are not acceptable. But a decent journal works; it doesn't have to be a top-tier journal.

I have yet to figure out the market for predatory publishers. I fear it is new PhDs desperate to get something published as they enter the job market.

The ones in my field seem to be authors from small institutions in China and southern Asia. They may have publication requirements, but include these publishers' journals.

[Kron3007]

Regional university. 4/4 load. Three publications minimum for tenure. Where those publications are isn't a major factor.

Are predatory publishers OK?  I'm just curious about the nature of the market for that service.

No. Predatory publishers are not acceptable. But a decent journal works; it doesn't have to be a top-tier journal.

I have yet to figure out the market for predatory publishers. I fear it is new PhDs desperate to get something published as they enter the job market.

The ones in my field seem to be authors from small institutions in China and southern Asia. They may have publication requirements, but include these publishers' journals.

I think there is also an portion of people not recognizing that they are predatory journals, as well as some people publishing there hoping to pass them off as real publications.  Where I am we do not have a list of approved publishers or anything, so one could reasonably pass these off on a CV.   

I was reading an article a while ago and things were not adding up.  The article was published in a well known journal, so I questioned why they would publish such garbage.  After a little searching, I came to the journal's website and it turned out that there was a predatory journal with the exact same name as a well established journal.  I dont know how they were getting away with this, but on a CV it would appear to be in a respected journal even though it was most definitely not.  How would anyone catch this when assessing a CV? 

More commonly, many of the predatory journals have names that look very similar to well known journals so if you are evaluating a CV and not looking too closely you would likely not notice that it is in the International journal of basket weavers instead of the International journal of basket weaving.  I suspect that there are people out there mistakenly submitting to such journals as well as desperate people knowingly doing so to put it on their CV.  There are so many journals out there that it is not always apparent when looking at someone's CV.

     

[Kron3007]

Regional university. 4/4 load. Three publications minimum for tenure. Where those publications are isn't a major factor.

Are predatory publishers OK?  I'm just curious about the nature of the market for that service.

No. Predatory publishers are not acceptable. But a decent journal works; it doesn't have to be a top-tier journal.

I have yet to figure out the market for predatory publishers. I fear it is new PhDs desperate to get something published as they enter the job market.

The ones in my field seem to be authors from small institutions in China and southern Asia. They may have publication requirements, but include these publishers' journals.

I think there is also an portion of people not recognizing that they are predatory journals, as well as some people publishing there hoping to pass them off as real publications.  Where I am we do not have a list of approved publishers or anything, so one could reasonably pass these off on a CV.   

I was reading an article a while ago and things were not adding up.  The article was published in a well known journal, so I questioned why they would publish such garbage.  After a little searching, I came to the journal's website and it turned out that there was a predatory journal with the exact same name as a well established journal.  I dont know how they were getting away with this, but on a CV it would appear to be in a respected journal even though it was most definitely not.  How would anyone catch this when assessing a CV? 

More commonly, many of the predatory journals have names that look very similar to well known journals so if you are evaluating a CV and not looking too closely you would likely not notice that it is in the International journal of basket weavers instead of the International journal of basket weaving.  I suspect that there are people out there mistakenly submitting to such journals as well as desperate people knowingly doing so to put it on their CV.  There are so many journals out there that it is not always apparent when looking at someone's CV.

     

Out of curiosity I thought I would check to see if the fake journal was still up and running, and somehow it is, although the last few years look pretty light on numbers.  I dont know if posting this is appropriate, but here is a link to the real, and the "other" version of the journal:

https://pubs.acs.org/journal/jnprdf

http://journalofnaturalproducts.com/

[ciao_yall]

Out of curiosity I thought I would check to see if the fake journal was still up and running, and somehow it is, although the last few years look pretty light on numbers.  I dont know if posting this is appropriate, but here is a link to the real, and the "other" version of the journal:

https://pubs.acs.org/journal/jnprdf

http://journalofnaturalproducts.com/

I looked to see if I could tell which was the fake one. Hint - probably the one that says this:

{NOTE: ONE THING MUST BE NOTED THAT THIS JOURNAL (JOURNAL OF NATURAL PRODUCTS)-ISSN 0974 – 5211; is a new, free assess,only ON-LINE publishing, ANNUAL science journal published from INDIA and THIS IS NOT RELATED OR RESEMBLED IN ANY WAY WITH ALREADY PUBLISHING monthly JOURNAL 'JOURNAL OF NATURAL PRODUCTS' ISSN 0163-3864 BY 'AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCITY' OR WITH ANY OTHER science journals.}

[Kron3007]

Out of curiosity I thought I would check to see if the fake journal was still up and running, and somehow it is, although the last few years look pretty light on numbers.  I dont know if posting this is appropriate, but here is a link to the real, and the "other" version of the journal:

https://pubs.acs.org/journal/jnprdf

http://journalofnaturalproducts.com/

I looked to see if I could tell which was the fake one. Hint - probably the one that says this:

{NOTE: ONE THING MUST BE NOTED THAT THIS JOURNAL (JOURNAL OF NATURAL PRODUCTS)-ISSN 0974 – 5211; is a new, free assess,only ON-LINE publishing, ANNUAL science journal published from INDIA and THIS IS NOT RELATED OR RESEMBLED IN ANY WAY WITH ALREADY PUBLISHING monthly JOURNAL 'JOURNAL OF NATURAL PRODUCTS' ISSN 0163-3864 BY 'AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCITY' OR WITH ANY OTHER science journals.}

That's awesome.  I guess stating that it doesn't resemble in any way makes it so...

[xerprofrn]

I looked to see if I could tell which was the fake one. Hint - probably the one that says this.

When the grammar is bad on the "Instruction for Authors" tab, how could anyone trying to publish get confused about whether its predatory or not?

[Kron3007]

I looked to see if I could tell which was the fake one. Hint - probably the one that says this.

When the grammar is bad on the "Instruction for Authors" tab, how could anyone trying to publish get confused about whether its predatory or not?

Perhaps if their first language is not English?

The crazy part is that they look the exact same on a CV. 

[polly_mer]

I looked to see if I could tell which was the fake one. Hint - probably the one that says this.

When the grammar is bad on the "Instruction for Authors" tab, how could anyone trying to publish get confused about whether its predatory or not?

I have seen some terrible webpages from official sources, including my employer soliciting news tidbits for the internal newsletter.  While we'd hope that a solid publisher has good English grammar everywhere, if one reads enough English-as-an-Nth-language documents and/or hastily written emails because no one has time to revise, then one starts being more generous in what is bad enough that meaning can't be gleaned versus arbitrary rules of correctness.

A quick skim through the "Instruction for Authors" tab indicates some interesting choices that stand out more because of "American English spelling and punctuation is preferred", but nothing on the page indicates more than probably only one person (a non-native English speaker because of the term "covering letter") wrote the page and didn't have anyone else review it.