What else I learned during the promotion process... Beyond the letters of recommendation you get, certain "bibliometric" measures can turn out to be fairly important in making a case for promotion (or even for hiring you, if you are looking for an academic job after getting a PhD).
There are quite a number of measures that try to quantify the impact of a researcher, and like many things in the world, Google has had a big impact, particularly though Google Scholar. In the past researchers would often simply count up the number of publications they had, but this doesn't actually tell us too much about impact (it's possible to write a lot of papers that nobody ever reads. :) If you've ever looked at Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/) you'll see that this tracks the number of citations an article have gotten. Generally speaking, number of citations is a pretty good indicator of the impact of a publication - it's very hard to find too many high impact publications that haven't been cited frequently, while it is possible to find quite a few articles in prestigious conferences and journals that seem to have never been cited by anyone (except perhaps the authors themselves). So, in recent years there has been increasing attention paid to evaluating impact via citation counts, and one of the more interesting measures that does this is called the H-index. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_number Your H-index is the number of papers you've had that have been cited more than H times. My H-index is approximately 20, which means I've had 20 papers that have been cited more than 20 times. If you have had a few publications, check out your H-index and see where you stand...this can be an effective tool in promotion cases, and also if you are looking for a job as an academic... There are a few online tools for doing this - here's a web site that gives you that information... http://quadsearch.csd.auth.gr/index.php?lan=1&s=2 And here's a tool you can download that does that for you (on Windows at least)... http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm Now, there are a few caveats...these tools are only as good as the info Google Scholar has, and there is also that old problem of name ambiguity. :) I am apparently the only person in Computer Science publishing as Ted Pedersen, but if you expand the search to include other disciplines then you can find others with the same name. The nice thing about the H-index though is that it's relatively simple to compute manually, so if you are using these numbers for some important decision, you should certainly manually verify them. Also, be aware that some people publish under multiple different names (due to marriage, middle initials, etc. etc.) so be careful before drawing too sweeping a conclusion. In general I find the H-index to correlate pretty closely with my perceptions of who has impact in areas I know about, so I think it's pretty useful. Enjoy, Ted On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Ted Pedersen <[email protected]> wrote: > For those of you that address me by my formal academic title, mine > will be changing effective Fall 2009 - I've been promoted to full > Professor. :) > > This whole process started back in September when I asked to be > considered. Then I had to put together a **bunch** of material > documenting my record, and then all that goes through various levels > of evaluation - first the department makes a recommendation, then the > Dean makes a recommendation, then the Vice-Chancellor makes a > recommendation, then the Chancellor makes a recommendation, and then > the Board of Regents finalizes things....if you allow about a month > for each step (which is about what it takes) then you see why this has > to start back in September to get a decision by April... > > In my case and I think in most other cases, the single most important > factor in arriving at a promotion decision is what your external > letters of recommendation say - as a part this process your department > will ask leading people in your field to comment on your work, and if > they say good things then you usually get promoted, and if they don't > or worse yet they say "Who???" ... well .... then it gets > problematic. :) > > So in addition to the department, Dean, Vice-Chancellor, Chancellor > and Board of Regents, you also need the support of the external > reviewers. When you manage all that, it's a nice feeling. :) > > Ted > > -- > Ted Pedersen > http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse > -- Ted Pedersen http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse
