The age-old question: How many peer reviewed articles do I need to publish in order to make tenure?
The answer is five. You need to publish five articles in order to make tenure.
Just kidding! If only things were that simple. Just as PhD students often ask, “How long do you think my dissertation should be?” or “Do you think I have enough articles in my lit review?”, those in the tenure track often seek confirmation of that elusive number -- the quantity of journal articles needed to successfully achieve tenure. Academia does not operate within specifics -- each dissertation, literature review, and promotion and tenure case are different and require varying levels of production.
In their 2012 presentation, “The Promotion & Tenure Process: …show more content…
When I was within the tenure process, I thought of it as a horse race. (This was likely influenced by my college years working in a racetrack running bets to the window for gamblers.) The tenure process is like a horse race in that you need to work as hard as you can directly out of the gate. There’s no time to sit back, survey the landscape, and enjoy a leisurely thought process on where you fit in. You need to work on immediately starting your research agenda in a grounded and appropriate manner so that you can be ready for your second year review. While the second year review does not specifically seek evidence of publication, and rather looks closely at your potential for publication (including works in progress in the pipeline), there is a short window of opportunity between your second and fourth year review. By the fourth year review, you need to have evidence of published scholarly work. Do yourself a favor and start working on this as soon as you can, either through solo-authored or collaborative publications or …show more content…
In the humanities and social sciences, there is often the expectation that a tenure track faculty member will publish a monograph (full length book) while in the process. While this expectation is not typically held within librarianship, this is just one example of the varied expectations of different academic fields. In librarianship, there are a wide range of venues, journals, and types of scholarly work that are resonant and significant within specific sub-fields of librarianship. Your job as a promotion and tenure candidate is to (with feedback and advice from your direct supervisor and / or mentor) decide which outlets, types of scholarly work, and venues are central to your areas of focus. Once you have begun producing scholarly work and establishing your name, other opportunities within your network and professional circles will appear, and the scope (and dissemination goals) central to your research agenda will come into clear view. This is why there was such variance between the publication output of the candidates studied by Jack and Lisa in 2012; the specifics of your area of study determine your work goals and your needed
The answer is five. You need to publish five articles in order to make tenure.
Just kidding! If only things were that simple. Just as PhD students often ask, “How long do you think my dissertation should be?” or “Do you think I have enough articles in my lit review?”, those in the tenure track often seek confirmation of that elusive number -- the quantity of journal articles needed to successfully achieve tenure. Academia does not operate within specifics -- each dissertation, literature review, and promotion and tenure case are different and require varying levels of production.
In their 2012 presentation, “The Promotion & Tenure Process: …show more content…
When I was within the tenure process, I thought of it as a horse race. (This was likely influenced by my college years working in a racetrack running bets to the window for gamblers.) The tenure process is like a horse race in that you need to work as hard as you can directly out of the gate. There’s no time to sit back, survey the landscape, and enjoy a leisurely thought process on where you fit in. You need to work on immediately starting your research agenda in a grounded and appropriate manner so that you can be ready for your second year review. While the second year review does not specifically seek evidence of publication, and rather looks closely at your potential for publication (including works in progress in the pipeline), there is a short window of opportunity between your second and fourth year review. By the fourth year review, you need to have evidence of published scholarly work. Do yourself a favor and start working on this as soon as you can, either through solo-authored or collaborative publications or …show more content…
In the humanities and social sciences, there is often the expectation that a tenure track faculty member will publish a monograph (full length book) while in the process. While this expectation is not typically held within librarianship, this is just one example of the varied expectations of different academic fields. In librarianship, there are a wide range of venues, journals, and types of scholarly work that are resonant and significant within specific sub-fields of librarianship. Your job as a promotion and tenure candidate is to (with feedback and advice from your direct supervisor and / or mentor) decide which outlets, types of scholarly work, and venues are central to your areas of focus. Once you have begun producing scholarly work and establishing your name, other opportunities within your network and professional circles will appear, and the scope (and dissemination goals) central to your research agenda will come into clear view. This is why there was such variance between the publication output of the candidates studied by Jack and Lisa in 2012; the specifics of your area of study determine your work goals and your needed