RPT

Review, Promotion, and Tenure

Review, Promotion, and Tenure Project

How can research institutions incentivize openness and accessibility? 


visual overview of review, promotion, and tenure project

One of the key components of workplace advancement at the university level are the review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) packets that are typically submitted every other year by early career faculty. The importance of RPT guidelines and forms makes them a natural place to effect change towards an opening of access to research (something both Canada and the US have been pushing for through federal policies and laws). This project examined the RPT process in the US and Canada in ways that can directly inform actions likely to translate into behavioural change and to a greater opening of research.

To do so, we collected and analyzed more than 850 RPT guidelines from research institutions across Canada and the US and assessed the degree to which they included guidelines specific to open access, open data, and open education. We also explored the use of the Journal Impact Factor in these documents, analyzing how often the controversial was mentioned and how it was defined. Finally, we investigated faculty members' perceptions about the RPT process, including what publishing strategies they believe will be rewarded and how this influences their dissemination choices.

To find out more about the RPT project, visit the ScholCommLab's media page, read about it on our blog, or check out one of the publications below.

Click here for a visual overview of the review, promotion, and tenure project.

Related Publications

Dawson, D. (DeDe), Morales, E., McKiernan, E. C., Schimanski, L. A., Niles, M. T., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). The role of collegiality in academic review, promotion, and tenure. PLOS ONE, 17(4), e0265506. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265506
Morales, E., McKiernan, E. C., Niles, M. T., Schimanski, L., & Alperin, J. P. (2021). How faculty define quality, prestige, and impact of academic journals. PLOS ONE, 16(10), e0257340. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257340 Download
Niles, M. T., Schimanski, L. A., McKiernan, E. C., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations. PLOS ONE, 15(3), e0228914. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228914 Download
Alperin, J. P., La, M., McKiernan, E. C., Niles, M. T., & Schimanski, L. A. (2020). The value of data and other non-traditional scholarly outputs in academic review, promotion, and tenure in Canada and the United States. Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:32909/ Download
McKiernan, E. C., Schimanski, L. A., Muñoz Nieves, C., Matthias, L., Niles, M. T., & Alperin, J. P. (2019). Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations. ELife, 8, e47338. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47338 Download
Alperin, J. P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L. A., Fischman, G. E., Niles, M. T., & McKiernan, E. C. (2019). How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion and tenure documents? ELife, 8, e42254. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42254 Download Download
Schimanski, L. A., & Alperin, J. P. (2018). The evaluation of scholarship in academic promotion and tenure processes: Past, present, and future. F1000Research, 7, 1605. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.16493.1
Alperin, J. P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L., McKiernan, E. C., & Niles, M. T. (2018). Terms and concepts found in tenure and promotion guidelines from the US and Canada. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VY4TJE