Do Universities Value Public Engagement? Not Much, Their Policies Suggest

Scholarly work that serves the public is the kind of thing that, theoretically, universities want faculty members to pursue. But a new study of the language used by more than 100 colleges in their tenure-and-promotion criteria shows little evidence that such scholarship is valued in a way that advances faculty careers.

And because of that, faculty members are given incentives mostly to pursue research that fits in an established framework.

“There’s a very entrenched culture that exists around how we review successful academics,” said Juan P. Alperin, the lead author of a report on the study and an assistant professor in the publishing program at Simon Fraser University, in Canada, who studies scholarly communications. “We want this kind of work to be valued on par with the other quantifiable research outputs that are dominant.”

An analysis of 864 review and tenure-and-promotion documents conducted by Alperin and his colleagues provided empirical evidence of what such policies actually emphasize. The documents, from disciplines that include life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, came from 129 universities in the United States and Canada.

The researchers looked for the words “public,” “community,” and “impact” in the documents and examined their context. They also looked for mentions of traditional research outputs such as books, grants, and journal articles, and for mentions of impact, metrics, and open access.

Among their findings:

• The term “community” is mentioned by 87 percent of institutions at either the university or academic-unit level, while 75 percent mention the term “public.” But a closer look at the context reveals the true status of those terms. Although the words “service” and “research” are near those two terms most frequently, “service” is mentioned more than twice as often as “research” in that context. Such placement suggests that the terms refer to what the authors describe as “the least highly regarded” tenure-and-promotion criteria — the service component — with the others being research and teaching. The way the words are used in the policies also suggests that the terms pertain to service to the discipline or the institution, not necessarily to the broader public.
• The types of research outputs that are considered for tenure and promotion are the same regardless of institution type or discipline. At least one traditional research output was mentioned by 90 to 95 percent of universities in the study. “If there is one thing that is certain to count towards faculty career progression,” the report says, “it is producing traditional academic outputs.” Other things that result from faculty work, such as software, blogs, articles for the public, and policy briefs are most likely considered service activities.
• Nearly 60 percent of the documents mention “impact” explicitly, with the word appearing in nearly all of those from top research universities. But public impact wasn’t what was being sought. The word “public” ranked 88th on the list of terms that appeared within 15 words of the word “impact.”
• Only 5 percent of institutions mention the term “open access” in their tenure-and-promotion guidelines, with the most mentions appearing in documents from research institutions. None of the descriptions of open access “actively encourage or explicitly value” research shared in that way, the study found, and faculty members are overwhelmingly told to proceed with caution on such platforms. “The lack of incentives to make research public in this way seems like a missed opportunity,” the report says.

“When people think about the notion of public good — somehow the research we are doing should be in front of the public,” Alperin said.

Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.