I have just submitted a report and wrote a recommendation letter for the promotion to the rank of associate professor position at some university in some country. It was a great pleasure to perform this review for one of the outstanding scientist’s works and achievements. On the other hand, I have learnt so much and got a chance to contemplate my career and the strategy I will take from now on. I believe how hard to become an associate professor in the university depends on where you are and what academic field you are in. However, maybe some of you could find something here so I leave my notes here.
Firstly, before the evaluation, the candidate asked me if I can be a referee for the committee of his promotion and I can write a recommendation letter. I said, yes. I was surprised to learn that the candidate needs to collect 18 recommendation letters. Non-co-authored scientists with the candidate have to write these recommendation letters. That is a great number.
Then, the university emailed me and asked me to be the referee of the promotion. The promotion committee in the university chose 12 referees to help them to evaluate the candidate’s work to make their decision. So I was one of them. The committee asked me to submit a report. By doing so, I was offered 170 USD for this work.
The committee asked me to write a report in terms of the points below,
- The description of my relationship with the candidates.
- The comment on the extent to which the research achievements of the candidate. Does he/she meet the international academic standard and benchmarks in the field, especially in terms of the quantity and quality of publications?
- The comment on the candidate’s impacts and potential impacts on the field.
- How would you rate the research performance of Prof. ****** in comparison with the candidate’s peers who are in the similar career stage?
- Considering the research performance of the candidate, how likely would he be promoted at your institute?
These five documents are provided to evaluate his work,
- Curriculum Vitae of the candidate
- Self-assessment Statement
- Research Profile
- Five representive scientic papers
- Teaching portofolio
1 and 2 are basically the same, 1 is provided by the university however it looks like the candidate filled in the form. 2 is much easier to read so I basically read this document to evaluate his work. I should’ve done it in the first place.
These documents provided information about his educational background, the history of fundings he has been granted, the students he has educated (from undergraduates to PhD), publications and patents, the courses he has taught in the university, the summary of his scientific achievements, the awards, and so on.
3 is more objective data. The document provides the number of his publications as the first author, the corresponding author, the total number of papers including coauthored papers, and its citations. Also, the document provided the link of the candidate’s profiles on GoogleScholar and Web of Science and so on so I could check all these publications, citations, and numbers.
4 is just 5 papers selected by the candidate. 5 is his teaching portfolio.
By reading all the documents, I could understand his contribution to science and the university. I was asked to prepare the report in one and a half months. I have written the report in English with about 10k words or so. The recommendation letter has the letterhead from our institute and I gave my signature before I send it to the university by email. I could finish two weeks before the deadline. So I can do more of my own scientific work now.
It is getting longer now so I will write more in detail in the next post. I won’t share any insider or academic information of the candidate however I will provide what I have learnt. I have learnt so much by reviewing his achievements. And, I could get some ideas how I spend time for the next 5 years. I learnt it is not easy to become an associate professor at a recognized university. I learnt how hard competition is in the academic world, especially the international academic world. Next time, I will look more into the numbers such as the number of publications, the number of PhD students, the number of granted fundings. So I can analyse my own position and find some tactics. So I can discuss here what do I do to get the level in the next 5 years or so.