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Attack of the Clones: A Pragmatic Guide to Maintaining aResearch Agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Julie Harrelson-Stephens and
Steven Galatas
Julie Harrelson-Stephens
Affiliation:
Stephen F. Austin University
Steven Galatas
Affiliation:
Stephen F. Austin University
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Extract

For many faculty members, particularly those at researchinstitutions, presenting a paper more than once at a conference haslong been taboo. Peers evaluating tenure requirements or meritrankings may credit a second presentation less, or not at all. Onthe other hand, norms in the discipline vary dramatically acrossinstitution types. We argue that at universities with considerableteaching loads and substantial service expectations, duplicateresearch presentations can be an effective way to maintain an activeresearch agenda, absent other institutional incentives to do so. Wecurrently teach international relations and comparative politicscourses at an institution where the incentives to research remainmodest, and the incentives to teach and spend a considerable amountof time in service related activities are substantial. Our commentsare particularly geared toward this environment. We begin bydefining what we mean by duplicate research presentations. Next, weoutline how the incentive structure at a teaching institutioncreates different priorities, allowing different norms to develop.We then examine how duplicate research presentations can be aneffective tool for overcoming traps common to untenured faculty. Weend with an unabashed defense of the increasingly common practice ofduplicate research presentations, particularly at teaching andservice oriented universities.

Information

Type
SYMPOSIUM
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 2008, pp. 297 - 299
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

For many faculty members, particularly those at research institutions, presenting a paper more than once at a conference has long been taboo. Peers evaluating tenure requirements or merit rankings may credit a second presentation less, or not at all. On the other hand, norms in the discipline vary dramatically across institution types. We argue that at universities with considerable teaching loads and substantial service expectations, duplicate research presentations can be an effective way to maintain an active research agenda, absent other institutional incentives to do so. We currently teach international relations and comparative politics courses at an institution where the incentives to research remain modest, and the incentives to teach and spend a considerable amount of time in service related activities are substantial. Our comments are particularly geared toward this environment. We begin by defining what we mean by duplicate research presentations. Next, we outline how the incentive structure at a teaching institution creates different priorities, allowing different norms to develop. We then examine how duplicate research presentations can be an effective tool for overcoming traps common to untenured faculty. We end with an unabashed defense of the increasingly common practice of duplicate research presentations, particularly at teaching and service oriented universities.

Duplicate Presentations

By duplicate research presentation, we refer to presenting the same research at multiple conferences, ideally with minor to moderate revisions in between. We should note that while we consider duplicate research to involve some revision based on comments from the initial presentation, we acknowledge that on rare occasions duplicate research involves no revision. The point here is that duplicate conference presentations always involve the intention to revise, but occasionally the demands of teaching and service prevent those revisions. Looking back at our own vitas, we each identified conference papers where moderate revisions simply did not occur, roughly 10% of the time.1

One of the authors has presented approximately 30 conference papers with three involving no substantive revisions, and the other author has presented approximately 22 conference papers with two involving no substantive revisions.

Research Incentives and Teaching Institutions

As a graduate student, and perhaps more importantly as an untenured faculty member, much of an individual's success is based upon his or her ability to prioritize and efficiently manage a variety of tasks. The best way to prioritize the workload is not constant across institutions. Thus, the norms of acceptable behavior are likely to vary across different institution types as well. A teaching university obviously places the highest priority on teaching. The incentive structure in merit, tenure, and promotion policies emphasizes the quality of teaching, course development, and innovating teaching. These institutions often weigh at least half of the merit and tenure credit to teaching or teaching related endeavors. Moreover, they often value service over scholarship because it exposes the individual to administrators and faculty in other departments who sit on tenure and promotion committees. Departments at teaching institutions highly value service since sponsoring student organizations or quality advising retains majors and minors—especially given the enrollment pressures in the contemporary university. Likewise, serving on department and university committees demonstrates the leadership, vision, and collegiality essential in the tenure and promotion process. All forms of service often result in a higher ranking within the department for annual merit evaluations, leaving scholarship in a tertiary position.

Yet even in the teaching institution environment an interesting recent trend is the tendency for faculty to maintain an active research agenda, even when the teaching and service expectations are high. Often new faculty members are fresh out of graduate school where research on the dissertation or collaborative activities with mentors was the primary focus. Thus, many new faculty are simply accustomed to continuing an active research agenda. In addition, junior faculty face pressure from mentors to “live up to” expectations that they should be at a more research oriented university. Some junior faculty at teaching institutions view their time at the institution as a stepping stone to a more research oriented job; to secure a “better” position, they need an active research agenda. Along similar lines faculty may find themselves pressured to do research because the department supports a professional masters degree with accreditation from a national accrediting body. Finally, the ability to develop strategies at a primarily teaching university allows faculty to maintain an active research agenda without sacrificing their home life.

At our present university, the teaching load, with some exceptions, is 4–4 and the service burden remains substantial, averaging over 20 hours a week. The university values scholarship in the sense that it includes a minimum refereed publication requirement in the tenure and promotion process, and scholarship is one of three areas of evaluation for annual merit raises. Recent hires have, sometimes frustratingly, sought to maintain at least a moderate research agenda. The challenges to research include the obvious issue of time allocation. However, resources are also limited in terms of graduate research assistants, as well as funds for research trips, grant writing, or access to databases such as the ICPSR. Moreover, access to high quality research assistance, or assistance with substantive knowledge in a faculty member's research area, is negligible. In this situation, presenting research more than once helps faculty members without significant institutional incentives to maintain a research agenda and ensure that valuable time submitting manuscripts for publication is not ill-spent.

In addition to the general differentiation between teaching emphasis and research emphasis in departments, we contend that duplicate presentations, as a strategy, can help new faculty avoid traps that are increasingly common to our discipline. We address these traps individually, again particularly addressing the constraints at institutions with heavy teaching responsibilities.

Trap 1: After taking a job at a heavy teaching load institution, stop researching

A junior faculty member may be tempted to stop researching at an institution that does not heavily reward research and that may have institutional costs to choosing research over other workload expectations. Indeed, upon joining the university the untenured faculty member may notice that research is the exception, not the norm. The junior faculty member may also be the only person in his or her field. Faculty may be required to prepare courses that they have never taught before and may have to teach three of four different courses each semester.

Service again comes into play. The untenured faculty member may be the faculty advisor for student organizations and may be expected to participate immediately in multiple committee assignments including core curriculum assessment, search committees, college council, and more. The department may reward these activities more than research. Building a name on campus brings the faculty member to the attention of administrators and others who ultimately can significantly influence the tenure process.

However, an active research agenda is also a critical element for those interested in pursuing excellent teaching. This is certainly true in international relations and comparative politics. An active research agenda keeps faculty members engaged in the current state of knowledge in their fields. They incorporate this information into the classroom when faculty research contributes to students' research, challenges students' perceptions of the subject, and enhances their critical thinking skills. In addition, students are often interested in the faculty member's research, even when tangential to the course. This interest may produce many positive outcomes including recruiting students as majors and mentoring students in preparation for graduate school.

Trap 2: Attending multiple conferences and never getting around to revising papers for submission

Perhaps a more common trap, and one not at all unique to universities with heavy teaching loads, is attending two or three conferences a year and spending valuable time preparing new conference papers rather than revising papers for submission to journals. In an environment with significant research constraints, presenting a conference paper twice allows contributors to present a paper, receive comments, and revise the paper for submission.

An added benefit is that different conferences often have different strengths. For instance, attending the APSA Annual Meeting in the fall often generates broad comments that are useful, particularly for submitting research to a more generalized journal. On the other hand, a scholar-teacher in international relations might submit the paper to the International Studies Association conference for more specific comments in that field. Researchers may find that submitting to more focused conferences will engender more pointed theoretical or methodological advice.

Our personal experience suggests that targeting a paper to two different conferences does produce useful advice. The audience at ISA or at an area studies focused conference, such as the Peace Science Society or the Association of Canadian Studies in the U.S., provides a substantially different type of feedback than a less-focused panel at APSA or the Midwest. At these more general conferences the feedback may be less focused on content and more on the overall research question, methodological techniques, and applicability to broad questions of political science. Specialized conferences, by contrast, can provide more in-depth knowledge from a researcher's substantive field or area of interest. To the extent that different conferences have different strengths, duplicate submissions can make a good deal of sense.

Trap 3: Valuing conference papers versus published works

Another issue is the value the merit and tenure process places upon conference papers and actual publications. For example, annual merit evaluations may place rewards for conference papers such that two or three conference papers accrue more merit than a single journal article. The general norm is to simply count the number of conference presentations. Conference papers with title changes and even slight modifications are generally still counted as two separate presentations. Only if a faculty member clearly abuses this system, such as never turning conference papers into publications or presenting duplicate research three or four times, would the duplicate presentations be devalued. In addition, if the university provides regular review during the tenure (or post tenure) process, it often defines progress as presentations at conferences, not just manuscripts submitted for publication. Thus, one strategy is to engage in several projects a year to create a sense of research progress, moving onto new projects the next year while never really completing anything for publication. In the end, the faculty member falls short of tenure by not actually submitting anything for publication, or by failing to complete a revise and resubmit.

Multiple presentations allow faculty members to avoid this trap. The faculty member reaps the rewards of attending multiple conferences for annual merit review and pre-tenure review. At the same time, the comments and other feedback from presenting the paper at several conferences strengthen the manuscript and allow the author to focus on preparation for publication. Conference feedback is particularly important absent a pool of colleagues who research in your area, which is more typical of larger research departments. An important caveat to this multiple presentation strategy is the issue of making at least some substantive changes between conference presentations. Ideally, feedback from the first presentation is used to revise the paper before the second presentation at another conference.

Reconciling Norms of the Discipline and Duplicate Presentations

Recognizing that the norm in political science may be to discourage duplicate presentations, we wondered about the potential costs of engaging in this practice. Thus, we conducted a brief email survey of section heads from the Western Political Science Association's March 2007 meeting, section heads from the Southern Political Science Association's January 2007 meeting, and the division heads from APSA's August/September 2007 meeting.2

We attempted to include the section heads from the Midwest Political Science Association as well. However, difficulty in obtaining email addresses for section heads and the limited time frame for data collection for this project resulted in no respondents from the MPSA.

After eliminating duplications, we were left with a convenience sample of 102 possible respondents. Each section or division head in the sample received an email containing three questions regarding multiple presentations and an opportunity to provide additional feedback. We sent a follow up email containing the survey to respondents to help boost the response rate. A total of 36 respondents answered for a response rate of 35.3%. Of those respondents, 14 (38.9%) were division heads from APSA. The same number of respondents served as section heads from WPSA, and the remaining 8 respondents (22.2%) were section heads at SPSA. Twenty-four respondents (66.7%) were on a 2–2 or lower teaching load. Thus, the majority of the respondents were from institutions that are quite different from our own teaching load.

Although half of the respondents (18) opposed the practice of multiple presentations, an overwhelming majority (88.9%) indicated that the issue of multiple presentations played no role in the decision to accept paper proposals. Their optional comments offered insights into the issue of multiple presentations. Ten respondents (27.8%) indicated that they did not know if papers had been submitted elsewhere. Of those 10, three respondents indicated that they would not have accepted a proposal if they had known the paper had been presented at another conference, and another respondent indicated that they would oppose the practice if it were widespread. Others in the survey suggested that they supported duplicate presentations. Two respondents indicated outright support for multiple presentations, while nine respondents (25.0%) suggested that multiple submissions are appropriate if the paper is revised between presentations or if the audience of the conferences is significantly different.

Our informal survey suggests that the norm continues to oppose the practice of multiple presentations. On the other hand, respondents overwhelmingly suggested that the issue of duplicate presentations played no role in acceptance decisions, indicating that this is still a pragmatic option for researchers at teaching institutions. Moreover, the support that does exist is consistent with our expectations that ideally the paper is revised between presentations at different conferences or that the conferences the paper is presented at target different audiences. The latter case leads to quite different but useful feedback.

Conclusion

As the introductory paper in this symposium suggests, there increasingly is a norm of duplicate research presentations, which warrants evaluation by political scientists. We contend that while duplicate research presentations may in fact be discounted at research institutions, at universities where the teaching load and service requirement make research less likely, duplicate presentations can amount to a pragmatic strategy to maintain an active research agenda absent other incentives to do so. Furthermore, this strategy can help untenured faculty members avoid certain traps that may in fact be more pronounced at teaching universities.

As new faculty become senior faculty, it will be interesting to see the extent to which the norms of higher levels of research persist. If these research norms persist at teaching institutions, the norm of duplicate presentations may become even more entrenched in those institutions. It may be, though, that research wanes as new faculty move through the tenure and promotion process. Future work should pay attention to the evolution of these norms at teaching institutions and their implications for political science.