Thread rant about #hiring #promotion, #tenure in the academia #AcademicTwitter. Until recently I worked in a LMIC (Romania) university where I welcomed ANY quantitative criteria, number of publications, impact factor, citations, h index etc

For many non-established people (like me) this was the only chance to compete against the established researchers who published locally, had resources and connections, were in networks of influence, supported each other by allocating resources, blocked others out etc

Case in point grants. When quantitative criteria (publications weighted by impact factor, h index) replaced the old "comprehensive" evaluation (where a book published by your own university press or an abstract could count as much as a paper in a good journal), rankings changed

So concerns about "gaming" the system with impact factors, citations, h index etc were much less consequential in that context than concerns of the system running based on inscrutable networks of collaboration & support based on what in Romanian we call "buddyness" ("cumetrie").

I am now in a high-income country (Italy), noticing a more subtle and pernicious phenomenon. Researchers with CVs inflated by lots of publications in (1) journals where they are editors/section editors/editorial board members and (2) Frontiers (editors, special issues etc)

There should be more research and discussion about gaming the system by using editorial board positions to publish systematically. I am sure arguments can be made both eyes, but we can all agree that regardless of the jrl impact factor, this feeds into a "rich get richer" circle

CC: @NaudetFlorian @Clara_Locher @deevybee @dmoher