3: Mindsets & Incentives

Challenge mindsets that sustain the dysfunctional incentives

Other Information:

Earlier we stated: "With an intensely competitive job market, the demands for publication might seem to suggest a specific objective for the early-career scientist: publish as many articles as possible in the most prestigious journals that will accept them." Although this is a common perception, particularly among early-career scientists, we also believe that there are good reasons—though not yet sufficient evidence—to challenge it. For example, the first author regularly presents to graduate students summary data of the short list from a past search for an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Virginia. For this particular search, more than 100 applications were received. Table 1 presents the 11 applicants that made it to the short list. All short-list candidates had at least four publications and at least one first-authored publication. On the basis of publication numbers, there are clear standouts from this group, such as the postdoc with 35 publications, an assistant professor with 21 publications, and a graduate student with 10 publications. Further, these candidates published in prestigious outlets. However, none of these three were selected as a finalist. In fact, two of the three interviewed candidates were among the least productive on the short list.

Stakeholder(s):

• Hiring Committees: This anecdote suggests that some degree of publishing productivity is essential to get into the pool of competitive candidates, but after that, other factors are more important for getting the job. Without sufficient evidence, we speculate that publication numbers and journal prestige heuristics do play a role in initial selection from a large hiring pool and then play a much smaller role when the pool is narrowed and the hiring committees can look deeply at each candidate. At that point, the committees can invest time to examine quality, potential impact, and direction of the research agenda. In tenure and promotion cases, the depth of processing ought to be even more acute as it is a detailed review of a single candidate's record.


• Early-Career Scientists: This conclusion is based on anecdotal data. Early-career scientists would get useful information from a systematic review of the degree to which publication numbers and journal prestige predict hiring and promotion. Multiple departments could pool and share evidence. The aggregate data might confirm the prevailing perception that publication numbers and journal prestige are the key drivers for professional success, or as we believe, they would illustrate notably weaker predictive validity when the evaluation committee has resources to examine each record in detail.

Objective(s):

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