A global assessment of academic promotion criteria: What really counts?

Abstract The assessment of research performance is widely seen as a vital tool in upholding the highest standards of quality, with selection and competition believed to drive progress. Specifically, academic institutions need to take critical decisions on hiring and promotion, while facing external pressure by also being subject to research assessment [1–4]. Here, we present the first truly global outlook to research assessment for career progression, based on 159 institutional and 37 national policies from a total of 55 countries, 60% of them being outside of Western Europe and North America. We not only investigated how frequently various promotion criteria are mentioned, but also carried out a statistical analysis to infer structural commonalities and differences across policies. We find that quantitative assessment metrics remain popular, in agreement with other more geographically-restricted studies [5–9], but they are not omnipresent. We find notable differences between the Global North and the Global South as well as between institutional and national policies, but less so between research disciplines. In particular, the preference for bibliometric indicators is more marked in low- and middle-income countries. While we see some variation, many promotion policies assume that specific career paths that become normative rather than fully embracing diversity. In turn, this restricts opportunities for researchers. Our results challenge current practice and have strategic implications for researchers, research managers, and national governments.