Re: Tenure and journals (RE: Elsevier profit)

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

My university insists on precisely the reverse of this virtuous suggestion
- it insists that academics *must* publish in the leading journals of
their field (or as leading as they can manage to get into), not only for
promotion, but also to avoid the risk of disciplinary procedures that
could theoretically lead to the sack!  (We don't have tenure, only
"open-ended contracts".)

Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 6:58 AM
Subject: Tenure and journals (RE: Elsevier profit)

> > What can Academia do? Give authors a break and when it comes to tenure
> > decisions, promotions, funding proposals, et cetera, judge on intrinsic
> > merit of their papers rather than the badge attached to them.
>
> Man, wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple?  The problem is that
> tenure decisions are made by committees, and members of those committees
> are typically drawn from across the campus and curriculum.  A professor of
> French may not be able to judge an article by an astrophysicist on its
> intrinsic merits (and vice versa).  The "badge" conferred by publication
> in a highly-regarded and refereed journal is a good shorthand way of
> communicating the depth and quality of an article to those who are not
> equipped to judge for themselves.  It's not a perfect method, of course,
> but asking tenure committees to evaluate the publications of tenure
> applicants on their intrinsic merits is simply not reasonable.
>
> There's no reason why this same function can't be served by new journals
> that are organized outside the territory of the big STM publishing
> monoliths, of course -- BioMedCentral is one step in that direction, and
> more power to it.
>
> -------------
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu