\n<\/p>\n
Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found.<\/p>\n
Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37\u00a0percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by Sage agreed.<\/p>\n
Only 28\u00a0percent of respondents said their efforts to make a difference outside academia would lead to additional research funding from their institution, while just 35\u00a0percent said their university offered awards or prizes to recognize impact.<\/p>\n
Thirty\u00a0percent of the survey\u2019s respondents, who came from 92 countries, say they receive no recognition at all for this work.<\/p>\n
Instead, the survey by the U.S.-based social sciences publisher suggested institutions tend to value and reward publication in highly cited journals more than academics. Asked whether the ultimate goal of research is to make a positive impact on society, 92\u00a0percent agreed this is the case for themselves, but only 68\u00a0percent believe it\u2019s true for institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care about impacting my colleagues and being cited\u2014I want to impact practice in the field,\u201d explained one U.S.-based respondent, who added there is \u201cno good way to know if this happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the other metrics (like rejection rates, Google scores) are internal to the discipline and don\u2019t really measure anything useful,\u201d the researcher continued, according to the Sage report, titled \u201cDo Social Scientists Care If They Make Societal Impact?\u201d and published Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Similarly, 91\u00a0percent of researchers agree the ultimate goal of research is to build on the literature and enable future research, but only 71\u00a0percent think the leaders at their institution agree with this.<\/p>\n
That perceived misalignment between the motivation of social scientists and institutions should prompt a rethink on whether prestige metrics used in academia are misaligned with values, argues the Sage report.<\/p>\n
It notes that researchers value peer regard more than citation metrics, yet they perceive that administrators prioritize impact factors, creating tension in tenure and promotion decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt times, this means we have to challenge the status quo of what matters in higher education\u2014for example, by moving beyond an overemphasis on scholarly impact measures [and] toward recognizing research that benefits people through policy, practice and public life,\u201d said Ziyad Marar, president of global publishing at Sage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that we listen closely to researchers themselves as we do this work\u2014understanding what motivates them, where they focus their efforts and what barriers stand in their way. This report does exactly that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found. Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37\u00a0percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[265,328,8779,489],"class_list":{"0":"post-37226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-impact","9":"tag-policy","10":"tag-undervalued","11":"tag-universities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}