UA pursues tool to track faculty’s scholarly output

Publications, citations tallied, studied

FAYETTEVILLE -- The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville anticipates spending about $150,000 yearly if a deal is reached to use data analytics tools for "benchmarking" the scholarly activity of departments, programs and faculty members, a spokesman said.

The use of such technology to track faculty productivity has been questioned by some academics elsewhere, but John Pijanowski, UA's faculty senate chairman, said faculty members have worked with administrators on the use of such a tool for the Fayetteville campus.

"What it is not intended to be used for is individual faculty performance reviews. It is not supposed to be an evaluative personnel tool," Pijanowski said.

UA spokesman Mark Rushing said in an email that UA's administration has been considering for more than two years partnering with a data analytics vendor to more accurately measure itself as an institution.

"To be clear, the tools the university is interested in are designed to highlight our areas of strength while pointing out areas where we need improvement, so that we can best make use of available resources," Rushing wrote in an email, adding that the tools "are not designed to evaluate individual faculty productivity."

However, in July, UA asked companies to provide details about their data tools, citing uses that would include the benchmarking of "individual faculty on scholarly activity and productivity," according to the university's request for qualifications.

"I think the language is awkward and can send the wrong message," Pijanowski said, referring to the request for qualifications. He said the data tools would help to more easily share aggregate information with accreditation agencies and program review boards.

Three companies responded by a Monday deadline set by UA, with a campus committee now reviewing their responses. If the project moves forward, the state's Legislative Council must approve any general services contracts with a total projected cost of $100,000 or more.

It's unclear how many universities utilize such data tools, but it appears to be a growing trend, said Emory University's Mark Bauerlein, an English professor who has written critically about an emphasis on productivity in the humanities.

"People start writing too fast and publishing too fast, and the quality of the work goes down," Bauerlein said.

Data tools not only track publications, but also how often scholarly work gets cited by other researchers, noted Bauerlein. For the humanities, there's "a whole lot of input but not a lot of impact," he said, adding that a focus on productivity can take away from time that could be spent with students.

There is interest from a variety of groups in the topic of faculty productivity, said Karen Webber, an associate professor at the University of Georgia's Institute of Higher Education.

"College and university administrators, as well as legislators and parents, are all interested in knowing how faculty spend their work time, so many institutions do collect information on the issue of faculty productivity," Webber wrote in an email.

Tom Jensen, the 2015-16 chairman of the UA faculty senate's Committee on Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure, said individual faculty members each year must file an annual report on activity and projects, with reviews done by unit committees and department chairmen.

"We have a system in place for reviewing scholarly activity," said Jensen, a marketing professor.

In March, the American Association of University Professors issued a statement expressing concern about the use of data analytics, calling for schools to "exercise extreme caution in deciding whether to subscribe to external sources of data like Academic Analytics," one provider of data tools.

One reason cited by the group is that contracts can be written that make it difficult for faculty members to have access to their own records from a data analytics firm, thus keeping faculty members from being able to correct any errors.

Pijanowski, an educational leadership professor, said there's nuance in various fields of academia that must be considered when thinking about faculty productivity.

"We have to use data carefully and judiciously, and to understand the diversity of the work that we do," Pijanowski said.

Metro on 08/18/2016

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