How faculty define quality, prestige, and impact in research

Despite the calls for change, there is significant consensus that when it comes to evaluating publications, review, promotion, and tenure processes should aim to reward research that is of high “quality,” has an “impact,” and is published in “prestigious” journals. Nevertheless, such terms are highly subjective and present challenges to ascertain precisely what such research looks like. Accordingly, this article responds to the question: how do faculty from universities in the United States and Canada define the terms quality, prestige, and impact? We address this question by surveying 338 faculty members from 55 different institutions. This study’s findings highlight that, despite their highly varied definitions, faculty often describe these terms in overlapping ways. Additionally, results shown that marked variance in definitions across faculty does not correspond to demographic characteristics. This study’s results highlight the need to more clearly implement evaluation regimes that do not rely on ill-defined concepts. Financial Disclosure Funding for this project was provided to JPA, MTN, ECM, and LAS from the OpenSociety Foundations (OR2017-39637). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Related Materials Other publications related to this project, including a series of infographics summarizing findings, can be found at: Survey responses can be found at the following publication: Niles, Meredith T.; Schimanski, Lesley A.; McKiernan, Erin C.; Alperin, Juan Pablo,2020, “Data for: Why we publish where we do”, , Harvard Dataverse, V1 Data regarding RPT documents can be found at the following data publication: Alperin, Juan Pablo; Muñoz Nieves, Carol; Schimanski, Lesley; McKiernan, Erin C.;Niles, Meredith T., 2018, “Terms and Concepts found in Tenure and Promotion Guidelines from the US and Canada”, , Harvard Dataverse , V3, UNF:6:PQC7QoilolhDrokzDPxxyQ== [fileUNF] ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.