The Forum | 2019
Using Journal Impact Factor to Assess Scholarly Records: Overcorrecting for the Potter Stewart Approach to Promotion and Tenure
Abstract
Abstract Promotion and tenure decisions frequently require an assessment of the quality of a candidate’s research record. Without carefully specifying what constitutes a tenurable and promotable record, departments frequently adopt the Potter Stewart approach – they know it when they see it. The benefit of such a system is that it allows for multiple paths to tenure and promotion and encourages holistic review, but the drawback is that it allows for the promotion and tenure process to be more easily manipulated by favoritism and bias. Incorporating transparent metrics such as journal impact factor (JIF) would seem like a good way to standardize the process. We argue, however, that when JIF becomes determinative, conceptual disadvantages and systematic biases are introduced into the process. JIF indicates the visibility or utility of a journal; it does not and cannot tell us about individual articles published in that journal. Moreover, it creates inequitable paths to tenure on the basis of gender and subfield, given gendered patterns of publications and the variation in journal economies by subfield.