Chapter 7: Making your case for tenure or promotion
Many academics using Publish or Perish do so because they have to make a case for tenure, promotion or other types of research evaluation. In this section, I will provide some pointers on how to report your case for citation impact more effectively.
These suggestions are based on my experience with some two dozen applications for tenure and promotion over the past decade. I do not guarantee that my suggestions will lead you to be successful in your application, but you will certainly increase your chances of success by paying attention to them.
Please note that these suggestions refer only to citation impact, whilst touching indirectly on journal quality. They do not relate to the content of your research, nor to your teaching or service activities. For those, you are on your own, although I am happy to send buyers of this book a copy of my own application for full professor at the University of Melbourne. Just email me at anne@harzing.com with the subject line “Promotion application”.
- 7.1 Create your own reference group
- 7.2 Pick your metrics wisely
- 7.3 Single out individual papers
- 7.4 Compare your best papers to the journal average
- 7.5 Present comprehensive citations for edited volumes
- 7.6 What to do if you have very few citations overall?
- 7.6.1 Argue for the use of Google Scholar
- 7.6.2 Compare your articles with articles published in the same year
- 7.6.3 Present ISI baseline data for your field
- 7.6.4 Argue citations are slow to pick up
- 7.6.5 Argue for quality by association
- 7.7 Norm scores for different disciplines