Background: Publication is the primary means of contributing to and establishing credibility within the scientific community. Some researchers have reported an increase in the average number of authors per manuscript for some scholarly journals in the past two decades. Whereas author proliferation may be warranted in some cases, other reasons for…

Several books published by university presses serve no purpose besides credentialing professors, but since the collapse of the US academic job market in the early 1970s, it is mandatory for professors to be published. However, it appears to be time, particularly for the younger academics, to abandon the genteel pose of being aloof from the sordid…

Asserts that tenure committees must redress the present imbalance in the assessed value of service, teaching, and publication or they will lose many effective teachers and hardworking factotums. Argues that by only considering research and publication, schools will soon lose the respect and the allegiance of the students, parents, and taxpayers…

Race matters in the classroom when you are a minority female faculty member. This chapter discusses the emergence of the adaptive female academic of color who, while teaching in several countries, balances a happy work and family life. (Contains 3 notes.)

The author argues that there is a discrepancy in higher education concerning how "scholarship" is defined and measured. He states that prolificacy is not necessarily a sign of scholarship and asks that the professoriate and higher education decision makers focus on quality instead of quantity. (CH)

This case study of undergraduate teachers at a research university found considerable overlap between, and variation within, two groups classified as active or less-active researchers. Found a strong allegiance to the historic teaching mission of public universities among both, and among less-active researchers, an oppositional cadre of…

Describes how faculty at one university are furious over a proposal to require them to be in their offices 4 days per week (an unheard-of requirement at research universities). Professors who do less research and writing than their colleagues would be required to do more teaching and service. This would ensure that professors remained productive,…

Outlines in a humorous manner a matrix designed to help scholarly writers inject ponderous words into their academic writing. (NKA)

This exploratory study shows that the following types of scholarly publication are most desirable for obtaining tenure in social work education: (1) work printed in peer-reviewed publications; (2) publications that focus on social work rather than non-social work scholarship; (3) single authorship or lead authorship of collaborative work; (4)…

Provides a case study of the use of departmental peer review at the University of Rhode Island, focusing on the differing attitudes toward the peer review process held by tenured and untenured faculty, the apprehension of women and minority faculty toward the process, and the "ratcheting up" of the research and publication requirements…

Presents the section of the full report which addresses the overemphasis on research over teaching by faculty at the university level. Noted are a decline in the number of hours devoted to teaching responsibilities and increased numbers of books and articles published. (DB)

Examines possible causes and consequences of the growth of English literary criticism. Asserts that the current mass of publication is inappropriate to literary criticism, and damages the status of the discipline as well as the development of the individual critic. Calls for a reappraisal of the role of critical publication. (MM)

Surveyed writings by senior professors of 16 elite law schools and published between September 1985 and August 1995. Explored their preferences for type of publication (book versus article) and constituency (academy, students/public, or profession). Found that half produced on average more for students/public than for other constituencies, and…

This article explores the question of opening educational resources in the context of an educational technology unit, the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. It describes the impact of a high level of policy intervention for the transformation of higher education and of a diverse, multilingual student…

Guidelines for college faculty considering book publication are offered. Guidelines address the book contract; book advances; selecting an agent; the role of the collaborator; the book proposal; the outline and sample chapter; maximizing book publicity; sending the proposal to several publishers; dealing with rejection; communication with the…