Academics Not Productive Enough? Sack 'em

ananyo writes "One hundred academics at the University of Sydney, Australia, have this week been told they will lose their jobs for not publishing frequently enough. The move is part of a wider cost-cutting plans designed to pay for new buildings and refurbishment to the university. Letters were posted to researchers on Monday 20 February, informing them their positions were being terminated because they hadn't published at least four 'research outputs' over the past three years. It is unclear which research fields the academics work in. Another 64 academics were told they had a choice between leaving and moving to a teaching-only position, he said."

Comments

That'll work well.

[sethstorm]

So if they were to publish more to make up for a quota, wouldn't that'd lower the quality a bit?

Re:That'll work well.

[Samantha Wright]

Yes. Any questions?

Re:That'll work well.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Of course not. How could quality be going down if the metric we are using because it is easy and convenient is going up? That would be difficult to model and therefore unthinkable. Why, it might even require me to have some subject-matter knowledge in the areas that my human resources do! I am way too focused on lining my bookshelf with copies of books about management fads for shit like that.

Re:That'll work well.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend a study on it. Seriously, right now unless you want to lose your job.

Re:That'll work well.

[Coryoth]

It's my opinion that if you work in academia and don't publish at least one paper a year you should probably be doing something else(either to another field which leads to results, not just food for thought or to another job).

Yeah, I hear that guy Andrew Wiles spent 7 years not publishing any papers. Oxford stupidly put up with that instead of canning has ass at year 2, and they've gotten nothing but disrepute ever since. I mean has anyone ever heard of Wiles? Has he published anything of note at all? Oxford definitely would have been better off without him.

Re:That'll work well.

[hvm2hvm]

In the short run you are better just continuing with the next approach. However if all the people keep publishing said "failures" and constantly look for other researchers' failures then in the long run, everyone does more research because they know what attempts are going to fail beforehand.

Ideally, researchers would also publish the attempt when they get started on it s.t. there aren't too many people working on the same approach but then you need to factor in the fact that an approach might be to tough for a researcher in which case he should let someone else do it. (Of course, this also assumes that all people are honest and their skills perfectly quantifiable which is obviously wrong)

Re:That'll work well.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about:

First year: "We have built up this experiment, and we are now collecting data."
Second year: "We are still in the process of collecting data; up to now we haven't seen anything interesting."
Third year: "We are still in the process of collecting data; up to now we haven't seen anything interesting."

No journal would publish any of that.

However, the following would make the headlines if the researcher hadn't been fired due to three years without publication:
Fourth year: "We have proof for superluminal supersymmetric magnetic monopoles!"

Yes, I'm exaggerating. But the point is, some things just need time.

The right thing to do if someone has few publications is not saying "sorry, you've got too few publications, you're fired" but to ask "you've got very few publications, what are you doing?" And only if he can't give a good answer to that, firing him is justified.

Re:That'll work well.

[crmarvin42]

This isn't necessarily an "either/or" senario. Writting up negative results is just as important as writing up positive ones. That way other researchers in the field know what not to try. My bias comes from the life sciences, where a lack of expected response to a product is just as important as its presence. You may not want to go out and write up a full journal article, and instead go the route of presenting an abstract at a relevent conference, but that still counts as a 'research output' most places, even if it is of lesser impact than a journal article.

We academics are hired to perform a job, and as much of a PITA as publication can be, it is one of the major job requirements. Not doing a part of your job well enough is definitely grounds for termination, assuming the academic didn't have some sort of tenure protections.

Re:That'll work well.

[crmarvin42]

...insisting on putting their names as co-authors on all their grad students' papers (even if they didn't write a word)

Not sure what the problem is here. Maybe it's because of the field you are in, but in my field (animal science) it is expected that your major advisor be on every manuscript. Usually becasue they played a major role in designing the experiment, procuring the funding, and paying the students stipend. My advisor's primariy contribution to the writing process of my manuscripts was as an editor, but he definitely made "meaningful intellectual contributions" to the research projects described, which has always been the bar for co-authorship in my opinion.

Re:That'll work well.

[ceoyoyo]

Most conferences will publish method and interm report abstracts. Many journals will also publish novel method papers.

Re:That'll work well.

[PlatyPaul]

Speaking as a computer scientist: negative results in my field are massively discounted, unless you are proving impossibility. Producing a less accurate image feature, or a less effective scheduling algorithm, is not generally considered publish-worthy.

Re:That'll work well.

[elrous0]

Did you ever do research that wasn't heavily directed by your professor?

My research was always assisted in various ways by my mentor professor and many other people as well. But it was still MY research, MY writing, and MY article at the end of the day. If I had listed everyone who critiqued it, offered me advice on it, or provided information for it as co-author, the list of authors would have went on for two pages.

I was fortunate that none of my mentors ever had the gall to ask for such a thing (I was blessed to work with some very good people). But I knew plenty of other grad students who weren't so lucky. There was one prof who was NOTORIOUS for this. He would demand a co-author credit on papers and articles he hadn't even READ. If you were one of his grad students and you wrote a paper for another professor in a research class, and then you later decided to present it, he expected a co-author credit even on that. And he would openly threaten grad students who didn't want to do it (and since having a member of your dissertation committee turn on you was essentially the end of your academic career, his threats carried a lot of weight). And this prick was the DEPARTMENT CHAIR. He got that because he brought in a lot of grant money (the prick looked GREAT on paper, and wasn't above using all sorts of..."questionable" means of getting those grants).

Re:That'll work well.

[luis_a_espinal]

Speaking as a computer scientist: negative results in my field are massively discounted, unless you are proving impossibility. Producing a less accurate image feature, or a less effective scheduling algorithm, is not generally considered publish-worthy.

^^^ This. I'll dare to say that negative results are massively discounted not just in CS, but in other fields as well. It is a lot easier to publish a rosy (and completely irrelevant) scenario than a realistic, but modest negative one. That on itself is what makes academic publishing so hard. It's not the research process that makes it hard/impossible for many academics to publish so frequently, it is the publishing process itself that is anything short of corrupt IMO.

Re:That'll work well.

[gnapster]

The sum of the powers of *Whoosh* is not equal to the power of the hypotenuse of *Whoosh* for any integral power greater than two.

I have an elegant proof for this conjecture, but I can't type it here on slashdot because it requires Unicode.

Re:That'll work well.

[FrangoAssado]

That's a really interesting question. I don't know about Mathematics, but in Physics, its pretty damn important to publish negative results. Feynman used to tell a story to show that (available here). Basically, the story goes something like this:

Robert Millikan, which was already a famous experimental physicist, published a (now famous) experiment that determined the charge of a single electron. This was the first time such a thing had been done, so it was a really big deal. A lot of other physicists replicated the experiment, with lots of papers published all around. The thing about experiments is that the value measured always has an uncertainty, and experimenters make mistakes, so it's very common for later experiments to correct previously-measured values. The strange thing about this case is that, if you plot the "known" value for the electron charge over time, you get a curve that gradually grows from the value measured in the first experiment to the value we now know is correct (because today we have many different ways to measure the value, so we're pretty sure of it).

So, why is the plot a gradual curve and not a straight jump to the correct answer? Why didn't the second experiment get the correct value right away? The answer is embarrassing. Since Millikan was so famous, subsequent experimenters didn't publish their results if the value they got was too far from the "currently accepted" value -- they thought of their results as "negative results", even though they probably had less error than the "currently accepted" value. The ones that got published were the ones with similar errors to the previous ones, or the ones that kept tweaking their setup (introducing all kinds of random errors) until they got a value that was closer to the original.

Nowadays, physicists are very careful not to make mistakes like this. Part of that care means that you don't pay too much attention to the "expected" result, so you really should publish negative results. Of course, that's just the theory -- no one likes to publish negative results, because most of the time, they're just a waste of time.

In academia, we don't say. . .

[MagusSlurpy]

. . ."publish or perish" just because we appreciate alliteration.

Game show?

[owenferguson]

Surely they could make this into some sort of a reality TV gameshow. "So you think you can publish!" People from the general public could read the various works, and vote by phone for who gets kicked out...

Re:Good riddance

[mwvdlee]

There are far too many in "accedemia" [...] How about schools focus on TEACHING

Based on the evidence presented before me, I feel inclined to agree.

Don't you have that backwards?

[pavon]

The professors who follow your advice and focus on teaching rather than publishing make up the bulk of the people being fired here (plus a few slackers who neither teach well nor publish). The ones being kept are the ones who can get grants and crank out papers like printing press, and most likely treat students as a low priority.

Re:Don't you have that backwards?

[mx b]

Indeed. I recently interviewed for professor positions. I often seem to get blank/unimpressed expressions when I describe that my interest is teaching, making a good connection with students, and researching teaching methods to make my work more effective and beneficial to students. Personally, I love it. Fun job, and while my students don't believe me, I often learn as much as they do. It's wonderful to view subjects with fresh eyes, vicariously through my students. It also forces me to re-evaluate my own understanding when answering questions. I find it much more satisfying profession that research or industry work.

The come back to this statement is usually "Well what research did you do for your doctorate, what research are you in now? What papers do you have published? Do you have industry experience?". I usually tell them the relevant info, followed by "...but that's not my primary interest, I enjoy working with students better than working in a lab".

That never seems to go over well so far, but I feel like I need to stick to my guns on this subject. Universities and colleges should be focused on the students. This doesn't mean you can't do research part of the time, but students are what pay the bills, and ultimately I want enough students to come after me to continue any work I start long after I'm gone. What's the point of all of our hard work in research if we do not have a next generation to pass it to? If the next generation cannot understand it or further the research? In any case, I definitely feel like its harder to get in the door if you aren't obsessively focused on research.

Quick Anecdote: I remember during graduate school, most of the professors that were "well-known" effectively ignored me and did their best not to give me time and answer questions or help in any manner. They just gave commandments about what to do in lab for them so they could publish more papers and get their name thrown around more; if you're lucky, they might include you as a co-author. My favorite professors, the ones I actually sat and had conversation with and learned what I know now from, were the ones that spent a lot of time on teaching, but in conversation I found out they constantly had to justify their existence to the bean-counters in the administration office; being a teacher or even doing teaching research wasn't enough. They had to come up with all sorts of things -- faculty sponsor of club/organization, etc. -- to prevent themselves from ending up on the chopping block. And now i find myself in the same situation. It's a sad state of affairs, really. Why can't we be allowed to do our job without side project interference?

While student enrollments are increasing...

[bigsexyjoe]

The professors' union has a good point. Enrollment is increasing and management miscalculated the student fees they would need to take in. So now the professors have to:
a) publish more
b) teach more
leaving little time for:
c) publish papers that are risky and innovative (the kind that actually move human knowledge forward)

You have wonder how we can encourage the best and the brightest to be academics. We work them to death making them earn a degree, we work them to death making them actually get hired, then they have to still build their reputation. And know they are saying that they'll get fired for not publishing more when they are already teaching more.

Re:Doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't. Clearly. But you are missing the point.

The whole publish or perish paradigm is set up because publishing professors typically have a stronger ability to get grants, which then help fund the university (which typically takes a portion of the grant money into a more general fund). Grant givers almost always look at the publication record of the applicants, and those who are publishing more are MUCH more likely to get the grant. And yes, this is even in cases where supposedly the grants are given 'blind'. Well-known authors in any field develop a distinct style and those who are familiar with the field are likely to recognize that style. Thus grants are given to people who are already productive.

In the end, science research as funded via universities is a bit of a circular situation and it's all a bit self-congratulatory for the people at the top of their field. Which is of course why anyone wanting to do research in a field needs to attach themselves to one of the top researchers during under-grad/graduate years, so that they get the chance to be 2nd (or 3rd or 5th) author on a number of papers published by the BIGNAME. Then after they do that for a while, they get to be first author and BIGNAME moves to last author, but their names become strongly associated, and eventually the rising star gets to move into their own celebrity status, while the BIGNAME just keeps getting more recognition.

If I sound bitter, it may be because this is system is hardly designed to foster innovation, and is hardly conducive to outsiders being brought in. The real rule is conformity to the status quo. If you start out trying to make your own name, or trying to publish things that go against the grain, then you will get quietly ignored by the publishers. Personally, I'm no longer in research, and I'm just as well off gone from that particular insanity.

I have a good friend who has a PhD in astrophysics, but because all he really wants to do is teach, no one will ever know much about him. Will he ever make some great discovery about astrophysics? LIkely not, even though he's as intelligent as any person you'll likely meet. But because he has a passion for passing on the knowledge he has to new students of physics rather than spend years fiddling around with galactic simulations, he'll likely always have lower pay than most professors, and he'll likely never get mentioned as an important figure in astrophysics. And let's be honest, saying, "I inspired thousands of students to continue learning about physics" sounds trite and boring, but saying "I figured out why some stars go supernova and others don't" sounds much more 'important'. Honestly though, the professors that teach the rising students the basic grounding in a subject so that *the new students* of a subject can go on and make important discoveries are the ones that deserve a lot of credit. The professors that ignore students that aren't actively doing research *with them* are often (not always) doing little more than polishing an already sparkly name. Yes, they bring in money for the universities. Yes, the research they do is *often* important, and yes, we need people who are willing to do real research. Yet, at the end of the day, if we don't have people who are competent at actually *teaching*, then we are going to eventually get ourselves into trouble when all the students decide to go get an MBA so they can actually make a decent living.