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The consequences of competition: simulating the effects of research grant allocation strategies
Abstract
Researchers have to operate in an increasingly competitive environment in which funding is becoming a scarce resource. Funding agencies are unable to experiment with their allocation policies since even small changes can have dramatic effects on academia. We present a Proposal-Evaluation-Grant System (PEGS) which allows us to simulate different research funding allocation policies. We implemented four Resource Allocation Strategies (RAS) entitled Communism, Lottery, Realistic, and Ideal. The results show that there is a strong effect of the RAS on the careers of the researchers. In addition the PEGS investigated the influence of the paper writing skill and the grant review errors.
... The model could make life easier for some researchers who already have a permanent position, but it would hardly offer a solution for the growing group of researchers who have no established position or who work at smaller university colleges where the block funding cannot support very much research. The most serious objection to both of these decision-making models is that they would result in more money being wasted on researchers who are not particularly productive and, thus, cause more qualified researchers to become highly frustrated (Martin 2000; see also Höylä, Bartneck, and Tiihonen 2016). But what is it that makes certain qualifications more qualifying than others? ...
... The most common objection for using a lottery is that it does not take qualifications into account and that this entails the risk of favoring many more poor projects than one would have using peer review (Höylä, Bartneck, and Tiihonen 2016;Martin 2000). However, as I attempted to claim in the preceding section, it is often highly uncertain what it is that determines whether a proposal will end up at the top or bottom of the ranking. ...
At present, peer review is the most common method used by funding agencies to make decisions about resource allocation. But how reliable, efficient, and fair is it in practice? The ex ante evaluation of scientific novelty is a fundamentally uncertain endeavor; bias and chance are embedded in the final outcome. In the current study, I will examine some of the most central problems of peer review and highlight the possible benefits of using a lottery as an alternative decision-making mechanism. Lotteries are driven by chance, not reason. The argument made in the study is that the epistemic landscape could benefit in several respects by using a lottery, thus avoiding all types of bias, disagreement, and other limitations associated with the peer review process. Funding agencies could form a pool of funding applicants who have minimal qualification levels and then select randomly within that pool. The benefits of a lottery would not only be that it saves time and resources, but also that it contributes to a more dynamic selection process and increases the epistemic diversity, fairness, and impartiality within academia.
... Nevertheless, a recuring concern surrounding the very idea of increasing the levels of block funding at the expense of competitive grants is that it might lead to an increasing waste of resources on unproductive and mediocre researchers. This concern has also been expressed regarding the lottery idea, thus, that it would simply lead to growing frustration among the group of researchers who perceive themselves to be more qualified and deserving (Höylä et al. 2016). This is indeed an intriguing concern, but it is likewise closely tied to the competitive mindset that stems from the current funding system. ...
A critical debate has blossomed within the field of research policy, science and technology studies, and philosophy of science regarding the possible benefits and limitations of allocating extramural grants using a lottery system. The most common view among those supporting the lottery idea is that some form of modified lottery is acceptable, if properly combined with peer review. This means that partial randomization can be applied only after experts have screened the pursuit-worthiness of all submitted proposals and sorted out those of lowest quality. In the present paper, I will argue against the use of partial lotteries or partial randomization and instead promote use of a pure lottery in combination with a radical increase in block funding. The main reason for holding this position is that a partial lottery cannot solve the problems inherent in the current funding system, which is based on grant competitions and peer review. A partial lottery cannot decrease the enormous time-waste, reduce the uneven distribution of time between researchers, neutralize expert biases or mitigate academic power asymmetries. Instead, we need a stronger focus on improving general time management in academia by implementing a more holistic model for organizing research opportunities in the future.
... In the last decade, the number and diversity of research funding calls has increased, as has the total amount of time and resources spent by researchers on fundingrelated activities (Link, Swann and Bozeman 2008;Ioannidis 2011;Alberts et al. 2014;Gross and Bergstrom 2019). This development and the general increase in competition between researchers and institutions for funds has forced research groups to create teams and personnel who specialize in competitive funding calls (Etzkowitz 2003; Van den Besselaar, Hemlin and van der Weijden 2012; Hö ylä, Bartneck and Tiihonen 2016). ...
Research groups spend time and resources in the process of applying for funding. This issue raises important questions regarding inefficiency and whether the currently used funding mechanisms are adequate. This article aims to identify ways of reducing the inefficiency and the waste of resources when making research funding calls. We look at four ways of reducing inefficiency. Inefficiency decreases when: (1) the most productive research groups are favoured over the less productive ones, (2) the call is restricted to a small number of research groups actively working on the subject of the call, (3) the funding process is less dependent on the amount of effort spent on fund-seeking activities by the research groups, and (4) the number of research groups competing in the same call is small. However, not all these mechanisms are equally powerful or easy to implement. Our results suggest that (1) reducing the dependence of the funding process on funding activities’ efforts, or (2) reducing the number of research groups by narrowing the subject of the call to groups that are very active in the call’s subject might be particularly effective in reducing inefficiency.
... lot could actually increase the scientific community's ability to generate impactful research (Avin 2015(Avin , 2018 or is more efficient when there are more worthy applications than financial resources available (Gross and Bergstrom 2019). By concentrating on scientists' motivation, Hö yla, Bartneck and Tiihonen (2016) also showed that random allocation increased the chance of financially supporting less-skilled scientists. However, it also seems to lower the morale of skilled scientists who produce well-reasoned proposals and to generate frustration among serious researchers who will exit the scientific field. ...
Using peer review to assess the validity of research proposals has always had its fair share of critics, including a more-than-fair-share of scholars. The debate about this method of assessing these proposals now seems trivial when compared with assessing the validity for granting funding by lottery. Some of the same scholars have suggested that the way grant lottery was being assessed has made random allocation seem even-handed, less biased and more supportive of innovative research. But we know little of what researchers actually think about grant lottery and even less about the thoughts of those scientists who rely on funding. This paper examines scientists’ perspectives on selecting grants by ‘lots’ and how they justify their support or opposition. How do they approach something scientifically that is, in itself, not scientific? These approaches were investigated with problem-centered interviews conducted with natural scientists in Germany. The qualitative interviews for this paper reveal that scientists in dominated and dominating field positions are, more or less, open to the idea of giving a selection process by lots a try. Nonetheless, they are against pure randomization because from their point of view it is incompatible with scientific principles. They rather favor a combination of grant lottery and peer review processes, assuming that only under these conditions could randomly allocated funding be an integral and legitimate part of science.
... A tension inherent in collaborative endeavors is that they take place within a policy and organizational environment characterized by intense competition and resource stress (Metcalfe, 2010). As public funding declines and research funding is disproportionally allocated to a few fields of study (Corzo, 2015;Hoyla, Bartneck, & Tiihonen, 2016), HEIs turn to strategies to minimize uncertainty in the resource environment and gain a standing in the competition for scarce resources (Pucciarelli & Kaplan, 2016;Toma, 2012). Research collaborations and partnerships emerge as an attractive and, to some observers, perhaps inevitable strategy in the competition for limited resources (Goel, Goktepe-Hulten, & Grimpe, 2017). ...
In this article we examine the ways in which institutional stratification and academic labor segmentation contribute to shaping faculty collaborative activities. We draw on interviews from science and engineering faculty at two institutions in the United States to highlight how collaboration, as an essential form of academic labor, is shaped by institutional factors like resource stress and isomorphic pressures to fit the ideal of the “world-class” research-intensive university. The findings suggest that a university’s relative position in the institutional status hierarchy has a significant impact on the types of resources faculty seeking to establish collaborations can access and mobilize, thus reinforcing existing patterns of institutional stratification where “striving” institutions can never catch up to their more prestigious peers. At the same time, the pressure to maximize institutional prestige can create paradoxical interinstitutional dynamics where seemingly successful “Mode 2” units that rely almost exclusively on external resources and partnerships with industry are expected to mold themselves more closely to the activity streams of traditional academic units.
Most publication and citation indicators are based on datasets with multi-authored publications and thus a change in counting method will often change the value of an indicator. Therefore it is important to know why a specific counting method has been applied. I have identified arguments for counting methods in a sample of 32 bibliometric studies published in 2016 and compared the result with discussions of arguments for counting methods in three older studies. Based on the underlying logics of the arguments I have arranged the arguments in four groups. Group 1 focuses on arguments related to what an indicator measures, Group 2 on the additivity of a counting method, Group 3 on pragmatic reasons for the choice of counting method, and Group 4 on an indicator's influence on the research community or how it is perceived by researchers. This categorization can be used to describe and discuss how bibliometric studies with publication and citation indicators argue for counting methods.
Some governments provided financial assistance to their respective populations during the shutdowns and social distancing period of the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 pandemic of late 2019 – mid 2023. In that time, institutions of higher education were able to access funds to maintain programs from the federal, state, and county governments. By 2024, with the end of the pandemic and people partially returned to work, community colleges were again having to reach broadly to find grant funds for supplementary funding to bolster higher education, as the schools are fast approaching the “enrollment cliff” (a large drop in student enrollments) based on population demographics expected in 2025. This work describes some observations about grant writing in higher education from this particular slice-in-time, based on work-based observations and abductive logic.
Discussions about funding research grants by lottery have centered on weighing the pros and cons of peer review, but this focus does not fully account for how an idea comes across in the field of science to those researchers directly dependent on research funding. Not only do researchers have personal perspectives, but they are also shaped by their experiences and the positions they occupy in the field of science. Applying Bourdieu’s field theory, the authors explore the question of which field-specific problems and conflicts scientists identify and for which they could imagine using a grant lottery in the allocation of research funding. Under what conditions does such a solution, which is external to the field of science, seem justified to them? The results show that different areas of application are conceivable for a lottery mechanism in the field of science but that its use seems justifiable only for legitimate field-specific quandaries.
Purpose
The paper aims to explore “content” factors influencing consumptive and contributive use of enterprise social networking within UK higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology uses genre analysis and grounded theory to analyse empirical data from posts obtained through Microsoft Yammer and a focus group.
Findings
The findings reveal the motivators-outcomes-strategies and the barriers-outcomes-strategies of users. Motivators (M) include feature value, Information value, organizational requirement and adequate organizational and technical support. Barriers (B) include six factors, including resisting engagement on the online platform, emotional anxiety, loss of knowledge, the lack of organizational pressure, lack of content quality and lack of time. An Outcomes (O) framework reveals benefits and dis-benefits and strategies (S) relating to improving user engagement.
Practical implications
The research method and resultant model may serve as guidelines to higher educational establishments interested in motivating their staff and scholars around the use of enterprise social network (ESN) systems, especially during face-to-face restrictions.
Originality/value
This research study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic which provides a unique setting to examine consumptive and contributive user behaviour of ESN’s. Furthermore, the study develops a greater understanding of “content” factors leading to the benefits or dis-benefits of ESN use, drawing on user motivators, barriers and strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic in UK education.
The bold idea of random grant allocation is heatedly discussed as an alternative to peer review. The debate centers on advantages and disadvantages of the established measures to control scientific quality, compared to funding by chance. Recently, studies also investigated acceptance of lotteries in the scientific field. However, they provide only inconclusive findings due to their restricted scope. This paper examines scientists’ views on current funding conditions and the idea of random grant distribution. An online survey of PhD holders reveals that most participants are against pure randomness, although they would try random elements if such procedures were combined with peer review. Moreover, while fewer established and recognized scientists differ in their assessments of peer review and expectancies on lotteries’ impact, they hardly vary in their positions on random elements. Funding organizations therefore should be encouraged to further experiment with, and closely examine, practiced lotteries.
Background: Peer review decisions award an estimated >95% of academic medical research funding, so it is crucial to understand how well they work and if they could be improved.
Methods: This paper summarises evidence from 105 papers identified through a literature search on the effectiveness and burden of peer review for grant funding.
Results: There is a remarkable paucity of evidence about the efficiency of peer review for funding allocation, given its centrality to the modern system of science. From the available evidence, we can identify some conclusions around the effectiveness and burden of peer review.
The strongest evidence around effectiveness indicates a bias against innovative research. There is also fairly clear evidence that peer review is, at best, a weak predictor of future research performance, and that ratings vary considerably between reviewers. There is some evidence of age bias and cronyism.
Good evidence shows that the burden of peer review is high and that around 75% of it falls on applicants. By contrast, many of the efforts to reduce burden are focused on funders and reviewers/panel members.
Conclusions: We suggest funders should acknowledge, assess and analyse the uncertainty around peer review, even using reviewers’ uncertainty as an input to funding decisions. Funders could consider a lottery element in some parts of their funding allocation process, to reduce both burden and bias, and allow better evaluation of decision processes. Alternatively, the distribution of scores from different reviewers could be better utilised as a possible way to identify novel, innovative research. Above all, there is a need for open, transparent experimentation and evaluation of different ways to fund research. This also requires more openness across the wider scientific community to support such investigations, acknowledging the lack of evidence about the primacy of the current system and the impossibility of achieving perfection.
Most publication and citation indicators are based on datasets with multi-authored publications and thus a change in counting method will often change the value of an indicator. Therefore it is important to know why a specific counting method has been applied. I have identified arguments for counting methods in a sample of 32 bibliometric studies published in 2016 and compared the result with discussions of arguments for counting methods in three older studies. Based on the underlying logics of the arguments I have arranged the arguments in four groups. Group 1 focuses on arguments related to what an indicator measures, Group 2 on the additivity of a counting method, Group 3 on pragmatic reasons for the choice of counting method, and Group 4 on an indicator’s influence on the research community or how it is perceived by researchers. This categorization can be used to describe and discuss how bibliometric studies with publication and citation indicators argue for counting methods.
Academic systems rely on the existence of a supply of “outsiders” ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of uncertain security, prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail. Drawing on data from the US, Germany and the UK, this paper looks at how the academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders.
Background: The ability of a scientist to maintain a continuous stream of publication may be important, because research requires continuity of effort. However, there is no data on what proportion of scientists manages to publish each and every year over long periods of time.
Methodology/Principal Findings: Using the entire Scopus database, we estimated that there are 15,153,100 publishing scientists (distinct author identifiers) in the period 1996–2011. However, only 150,608 (<1%) of them have published something in each and every year in this 16-year period (uninterrupted, continuous presence [UCP] in the literature). This small core of scientists with UCP are far more cited than others, and they account for 41.7% of all papers in the same period and 87.1% of all papers with >1000 citations in the same period. Skipping even a single year substantially affected the average citation impact. We also studied the birth and death dynamics of membership in this influential UCP core, by imputing and estimating UCP-births and UCP-deaths. We estimated that 16,877 scientists would qualify for UCP-birth in 1997 (no publication in 1996, UCP in 1997–2012) and 9,673 scientists had their UCP-death in 2010. The relative representation of authors with UCP was enriched in Medical Research, in the academic sector and in Europe/North America, while the relative representation of authors without UCP was enriched in the Social Sciences and Humanities, in industry, and in other continents.
Conclusions: The proportion of the scientific workforce that maintains a continuous uninterrupted stream of publications each and every year over many years is very limited, but it accounts for the lion’s share of researchers with high citation impact. This finding may have implications for the structure, stability and vulnerability of the scientific workforce.
To examine the impact of applying for funding on personal workloads, stress and family relationships.
Qualitative study of researchers preparing grant proposals.
Web-based survey on applying for the annual National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Project Grant scheme.
Australian researchers (n=215).
Almost all agreed that preparing their proposals always took top priority over other work (97%) and personal (87%) commitments. Almost all researchers agreed that they became stressed by the workload (93%) and restricted their holidays during the grant writing season (88%). Most researchers agreed that they submitted proposals because chance is involved in being successful (75%), due to performance requirements at their institution (60%) and pressure from their colleagues to submit proposals (53%). Almost all researchers supported changes to the current processes to submit proposals (95%) and peer review (90%). Most researchers (59%) provided extensive comments on the impact of writing proposals on their work life and home life. Six major work life themes were: (1) top priority; (2) career development; (3) stress at work; (4) benefits at work; (5) time spent at work and (6) pressure from colleagues. Six major home life themes were: (1) restricting family holidays; (2) time spent on work at home; (3) impact on children; (4) stress at home; (5) impact on family and friends and (6) impact on partner. Additional impacts on the mental health and well-being of researchers were identified.
The process of preparing grant proposals for a single annual deadline is stressful, time consuming and conflicts with family responsibilities. The timing of the funding cycle could be shifted to minimise applicant burden, give Australian researchers more time to work on actual research and to be with their families.
Citation Grabbers
Is there quantifiable regularity and predictability in citation patterns? It is clear that papers that have been cited frequently tend to accumulate more citations. It is also clear that, with time, even the most novel paper loses its currency. Some papers, however, seem to have an inherent “fitness” that can be interpreted as a community's response to the research. Wang et al. (p. 127 ; see the Perspective by Evans ) developed a mechanistic model to predict citation history. The model links a paper's ultimate impact, represented by the total number of citations the paper will ever receive, to a single measurable parameter inferred from its early citation history. The model was used to identify factors that influence a journal's impact factor.
To estimate the time spent by the researchers for preparing grant proposals, and to examine whether spending more time increase the chances of success.
Observational study.
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia.
Researchers who submitted one or more NHMRC Project Grant proposals in March 2012.
Total researcher time spent preparing proposals; funding success as predicted by the time spent.
The NHMRC received 3727 proposals of which 3570 were reviewed and 731 (21%) were funded. Among our 285 participants who submitted 632 proposals, 21% were successful. Preparing a new proposal took an average of 38 working days of researcher time and a resubmitted proposal took 28 working days, an overall average of 34 days per proposal. An estimated 550 working years of researchers' time (95% CI 513 to 589) was spent preparing the 3727 proposals, which translates into annual salary costs of AU$66 million. More time spent preparing a proposal did not increase the chances of success for the lead researcher (prevalence ratio (PR) of success for 10 day increase=0.91, 95% credible interval 0.78 to 1.04) or other researchers (PR=0.89, 95% CI 0.67 to 1.17).
Considerable time is spent preparing NHMRC Project Grant proposals. As success rates are historically 20-25%, much of this time has no immediate benefit to either the researcher or society, and there are large opportunity costs in lost research output. The application process could be shortened so that only information relevant for peer review, not administration, is collected. This would have little impact on the quality of peer review and the time saved could be reinvested into research.
There is substantial literature on research performance differences between male and female researchers, and its explanation. Using publication records of 852 social scientists, we show that performance differences indeed exist. However, our case study suggests that in the younger generation of researchers these have disappeared. If performance differences exist at all in our case, young female researchers outperform young male researchers. The trend in developed societies, that women increasingly outperform men in all levels of education, is also becoming effective in the science system.
The paper contributes to the debate on cumulative advantage effects in academic research by examining top performance in research and its persistence over time, using a panel dataset comprising the publications of biomedical and exact scientists at the KU Leuven in the period 1992-2001. We study the selection of researchers into productivity categories and analyze how they switch between these categories over time. About 25% achieves top performance at least once, while 5% is persistently top. Analyzing the hazard to first and subsequent top performance shows strong support for an accumulative process. Rank, gender, hierarchical position and past performance are highly significant explanatory factors.
In order to ensure the future of high qualityresearch in some disciplines it may benecessary to provide special consideration inprestigious research funding schemes for earlycareer researchers who will otherwise becomedisenchanted with academic research and leaveit behind in their search for a stable andfruitful future. Milestones in progressionthrough research studies and academic life toestablishment as an academic researcher areoutlined. Within this context, a range ofpotential criteria for determining promisingearly career status are reviewed. Thediscussion leads to derivation of thedefinition of early career which has beenadopted by the Australian Research Council forits prestigious Discovery – Projects grantsscheme.
The productivity of scientists and the quality of their papers differ enormously. Still, all papers written get published eventually and the impact factor of the publication channel is not correlated to the citations that individual papers receive. Hence it does not matter where to publish papers. Based on these two conjectures, I conclude that all papers should be published. The review process should focus on feedback that helps authors to improve their manuscripts. But we should no longer waste effort to a selection procedure. This All-In policy would decrease the number of published papers and would refocus the attention of the authors on the quality of their papers and not their quantity.
Academic research funding is allocated through a competitive bidding process that may lead to inefficiency as excessive time is spent on proposal writing. We develop a simple agent-based model of the process and find that current systems are indeed likely to be inefficient. Alternative allocation schemes involving either a cap on individual effort or appraisal from the centre are indicated as improvements.
The importance of intellectual talent to achievement in all professional domains is well established, but less is known about other individual differences that predict success. The authors tested the importance of 1 noncognitive trait: grit. Defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, grit accounted for an average of 4% of the variance in success outcomes, including educational attainment among 2 samples of adults (N = 1,545 and N = 690), grade point average among Ivy League undergraduates (N = 138), retention in 2 classes of United States Military Academy, West Point, cadets (N = 1,218 and N = 1,308), and ranking in the National Spelling Bee (N = 175). Grit did not relate positively to IQ but was highly correlated with Big Five Conscientiousness. Grit nonetheless demonstrated incremental predictive validity of success measures over and beyond IQ and conscientiousness. Collectively, these findings suggest that the achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.
Golan et al. (1) report that restricted maximum likelihood (REML) seriously underestimates SNP heritability when using a case–control design. Their conclusions are based on results from simplified linkage equilibrium SNP simulation (SLES), which the authors acknowledge may be unrealistic.
Significance
Women remain underrepresented in academia as they continue to face a leadership gap, salary gap, and funding gap. Closing the funding gap is of particular importance, because this may directly retain women in academia and foster the closing of other gaps. In this study, we examined the grant funding rates of a national full population of early career scientists. Our results reveal gender bias favoring male applicants over female applicants in the prioritization of their “quality of researcher” (but not “quality of proposal”) evaluations and success rates, as well as in the language use in instructional and evaluation materials. This work illuminates how and when the funding gap and the subsequent underrepresentation of women in academia are perpetuated.
Given high rejection rates at most journals, many academics receive rejections. For some scholars, rejections may be emotionally difficult and lead to decrements in creativity, productivity, and professional satisfaction. Academic institutions often fail to address these emotional responses to, and consequences of, rejections. Using social identity and rejection sensitivity theories, I explain why negative emotional responses to rejection are normal and predictable, and suggest ways both the individual and the broader academic system can address the issue. Academe should assist scholars to understand and respond effectively to rejection and reconsider its own culture and priorities.
Considering the factors influencing the recent rapid increase in the number of postdoctoral positions in computer science.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between job-related stress and faculty intent to leave academia. The stress variables studied were reward satisfaction, institutional/departmental reputation, time commitment, departmental/institutional influence, and student interaction. We hypothesized that the relationship between these variables and faculty intent to leave academia would be moderated by interest in one's discipline and sense of community — an institutional fit variable. We also investigated the effects of academic discipline, tenure status, and gender on these relationships. Based on data from a national faculty survey of 3,070 full-time tenure-track faculty, results indicated that of the variables studied, the two major correlates of intent to leave academia were time commitment and sense of community; however, time commitment did not moderate the stressor-intent relationship. Though showing significant zero-order correlations with intent, when gender and tenure status were added to the hierarchical regression analyses containing the stressors and moderators, neither variable contributed meaningfully to the prediction of intent. Academic discipline classification (Biglan, 1973) contributed only 2% to explained variance. A prediction model that contained all stressors, both moderators, and the background variables of gender and academic discipline accounted for 25% of the variance in intent to leave academia.
The purpose of this study is (1) to advance our understanding of the quality of faculty worklife, morale, and intentions to leave at both the individual and institutional level, (2) to examine relationships among these three constructs, and (3) to determine the extent to which these relationships operate within or between faculty groups.
This report presents national survey data on approximately 2.8 million staff employed at 8,598 postsecondary institutions in fall 1995 from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The information is presented in tables, with some narrative. Survey findings are summarized in three chapters: an overview of postsecondary education staff, including data on all institutions and on the subset of 3,716 institutions classified as higher education institutions (IHEs); faculty growth, racial/ethnic and gender distribution, tenure, rank, and salaries in IHEs; and newly hired staff in IHEs. Where possible, comparisons are made with earlier data. Appended materials include detailed statistical tabulations for all institutions and for IHEs, technical notes on study methodology, a glossary of major terms and classification categories used in the survey and report, additional related tables, and a copy of the survey questionnaire. (MSE)
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects institution-level data from postsecondary institutions in the United States (50 states and the District of Columbia) and other jurisdictions, such as Puerto Rico. This report presents information from the Winter 2006-07 IPEDS web-based data collection. Tabulations represent data requested from all postsecondary institutions participating in Title IV federal student financial aid programs. The tables in this publication include data on the number of staff employed in Title IV postsecondary institutions in fall 2006 by primary occupational activity, length of contract/teaching period, employment status, salary class interval, faculty and tenure status, academic rank, race/ethnicity, and gender. Also included are tables on the number of full-time instructional faculty employed in Title IV postsecondary institutions in 2006-07 by length of contract/teaching period, academic rank, gender, and average salaries. (Contains 9 tables.)
Research studies conducted in the USA, Britain, Australia and New Zealand which examine academic staff's attitude to the promotion procedures in their institutions have all found dissatisfaction with existing promotion practices. In particular academics are reported to be dissatisfied with the undervaluing of teaching excellence in promotion decisions.
This paper discusses studies of job satisfaction and staff motivation as background to an interview study at an Australian university. Data concerning promotion issues from interviews with 104 academic staff members are presented and discussed.
Interviewed staff at that university see their institution as actively encouraging research through rewards and incentives. But they perceive the university as paying only lip-service to teaching by requiring documentation of teaching performance without rewarding good performance adequately. Many also perceive the university as interested more in publications than in scholarship and some adjust their activities accordingly.
Many previous time allocation studies treat work as a single activity and examine trade-offs between work and other activities. This paper investigates the at-work allocation of time among teaching, research, grant writing and service by science and engineering faculty at top US research universities. We focus on the relationship between tenure (and promotion) and time allocation, and we find that tenure and promotion do affect the allocation of time. The specific trade-offs are related to particular career paths. For example, full professors spend increasing time on service at the expense of teaching and research while longer-term associate professors who have not been promoted to full professor spend significantly more time teaching at the expense of research time. Finally, our results suggest that women, on average, allocate more hours to university service and less time to research than do men.
The paper analyses scientific research production at the laboratory level. The evidence on which the study is based describes precisely the research activity over the period 1993–2000 of more than eighty labs belonging to Louis Pasteur University, a large and well-ranked European research university. The research organization of the labs is analysed by focusing on the characteristics of the research personnel in relation with the scores in two outcomes that are publications and patents. The paper proposes a five-classes typology of laboratories that highlights different styles of research organization and productivity at the laboratory level. It also studies the determinants of the publication performances of labs. We show how appropriate combinations of inputs in academic labs may be strongly associated to high publication performances. We find that combining full-time researchers and university professors in labs tend to preserve incentives. Highly publishing labs also patent. The size of the labs, the individual promotions, and the role of non-permanent researchers and of non-researchers are also underlined.
We investigate different approaches based on correlation analysis to reduce the complex- ity of a space of quantitative indicators for the assessment of research performance. The proposed methods group bibliometric indicators into clusters of highly inter-correlated indicators. Each cluster is then associated with a representative indicator. The set of all representatives corresponds to a base of orthogonal metrics capturing independent aspects of research performance and can be exploited to design a composite performance indicator. We apply the devised methodology to isolate orthog- onal performance metrics for scholars and journals in the field of computer science and to design a global performance indicator. The methodology is general and can be exploited to design composite indicators that are based on a set of possibly overlapping criteria1.
A review of various models of the relationship between research and teaching in universities is presented, and the evidence necessary to assess each model is outlined. A meta-analysis of 58 studies demonstrates that the relationship is zero. Suggestions for future directions are provided, and it is argued that a major goal could be to adopt strategies that enhance the relationship between research and teaching.
The end of written grant applications: let's use a formula. http://theconversation.com/the-end-of-written-grant-applications-lets-use-a-formula
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