RESULTS

IR scholars generally believe that much of their work (and/or that of their colleagues) is undervalued at tenure time relative to an academic article in a top peer-reviewed journal. Figure 1 compares data for all respondents on beliefs about both current standards at their academic institution and what they think those standards should be. Directly addressing question 1, there is a clear and largely unsurprising ranking in respondents’ second-order beliefs on the seven types of publications. Regarding question 2, however, respondents believe that all publication types are valued less by their current institution than they should be by the IR discipline.

Figure 1

Value of Publications in Tenure Decisions

Nevertheless, there are important differences across publication types. Gaps between respondents’ second-order beliefs about and the value of policy-relevant publications—blog posts, op-eds and newspaper articles, and policy reports—are larger than for more traditional, scholarly research products such as books and book chapters. Reports, for example, are generally perceived to be worth slightly more than half of a top peer-reviewed article, whereas respondents believe these reports should be worth about 75% of an academic article. An op-ed or newspaper/magazine article is worth slightly more than 25% of a peer-reviewed article, but it should be worth more than 33%, according to respondents.

We turn now to questions 3 and 4 and consider whether and how much factors—including respondents’ tenure status, engagement in policy activities and policy-relevant research, and type of educational institution at which they teach—influence their second-order beliefs about the value of policy-relevant research. It is possible, for example, that untenured faculty have different perceptions of the relative value of various types of publications than their senior colleagues. If tenured scholars set tenure standards, then differences in beliefs about the content and utility of current standards are important. Similarly, tenured scholars’ normative preferences are important for informing any effort to change such standards. Figure 2 distinguishes tenured from untenured scholars based on rank by grouping together associate and full professors; we assume that assistant professors and instructors or lecturers do not have tenure.^{Footnote 4}

Figure 2

Value of Publications in Tenure Decisions—The Effect of Having Tenure

We found similar response patterns across tenured and untenured scholars, although we also identified important differences between the two groups.^{Footnote 5} Both groups believe that all forms of publications (except books) are undervalued. Both tenured and untenured faculty agree that blog posts, op-eds, book chapters, policy reports, and policy articles should carry more weight in the tenure process. Moreover, untenured IR scholars believe that policy-relevant publications are valued more highly and that they should be valued even more highly than their tenured colleagues believe. Finally, IR scholars tend to agree about how policy reports are currently valued and that these reports should be counted about half again as much as they are.

Although tenure status and age are likely to be highly correlated, we separately analyzed the results by age because these evaluations might reflect different prevailing disciplinary norms during the socialization of tenured and untenured scholars or different career incentives by age.^{Footnote 6} In general, there is no clear difference in the evaluations by age. Most of our observations occurred in the “under 45” and “45–65” age groups, and these results were consistent with the untenured-versus-tenured results. We have limited observations in the “over 65” group and therefore wide error bars; however, older faculty appear to believe that blog posts and op-eds should be more highly valued than their younger colleagues believe, and the gap between is and ought is greatest for those faculty over age 65.

Like tenure status, scholars’ engagement in policy-relevant work may bias their views on the importance of research output in tenure decisions. Consistent with the “bridge-builders’” laments cited previously, perhaps scholars who do applied work believe it is undervalued within the academy. Alternatively, because people want to believe that the work they do is valuable (and valued by their institution), they may believe policy-relevant work is (and should be) valued in tenure decisions (Bastardi, Uhlmann, and Ross Reference Bastardi, Uhlmann and Ross2011). We found that respondents who described their work as more applied consistently stated that blogs, op-eds, policy reports, and policy articles should count more heavily in the tenure decision than those whose research is less applied.

Figure 3 compares IR scholars who stated that their research is more applied with those who described their work as more basic. This evidence comes from the TRIP survey question, “Does your research tend to be basic or applied? By basic research, we mean research for the sake of knowledge, without any specific policy application in mind. Conversely, applied research is done with specific policy applications in mind.”^{Footnote 7} Figure 3 illustrates consistency among IR scholars—regardless of the policy relevance of their own research—in their assessment of the current value of different types of research in tenure decisions. Gaps open on the normative side, however. Respondents who described their work as more applied stated that blogs, op-eds, policy reports, and policy articles should count more in tenure decisions than their colleagues whose research is more basic. By a narrower margin, they also believe that book chapters and commercial books should have greater value.^{Footnote 8}

Figure 3

Value of Publications in Tenure Decisions—Basic or Applied Research

Perhaps a better measure of scholars’ engagement with the policy world is behavioral: whether they work as consultants for governmental or non-governmental organizations. As shown in figure 4, IR scholars who regularly consult believe that policy-relevant research is more valued and should be valued even more highly than it is in tenure decisions, relative to their colleagues who spend little or no time consulting. The results from the normative question were unsurprising because scholars who consult more have an interest in rewarding publications that emerge from such arrangements. The finding on how policy publications are currently rewarded may or may not be surprising, depending on one’s prior beliefs about whether faculty members seek excuses for negative tenure decisions or are motivated to misperceive the preferences and behaviors of their colleagues.

Figure 4

Value of Publications in Tenure Decisions—Consulting

If academic norms actively discourage policy-relevant work, then where one teaches should affect one’s estimate of the value of publication types in the tenure process. IR scholars at major research (R1) universities generally teach less and engage in more academic research than their counterparts at liberal arts colleges. In short, R1 scholars embody the culture that Nye (Reference Nye2009), Walt (Reference Walt2005), and others railed against. We therefore expected that faculty at R1s would report that their institutions value policy work less highly in tenure deliberations than faculty at non-R1 institutions. We also expected R1 faculty to state that the discipline should assess these research products less highly than their non-R1 counterparts.

The results in figure 5, which uses US News and World Report education rankings to categorize institution type, confirmed our expectations. First, faculty at non-R1s value all forms of research more highly than faculty at research universities. Second, the gaps between is and ought are small or non-existent at non-R1 institutions; that is, faculty at these schools generally believe that their institutions weight research output the way the discipline should. At R1s, however, respondents generally believe that every type of research output should be more highly prized than it is. For this reason—and contrary to conventional wisdom—research universities may be the most receptive to change (at least at the faculty level) and the creation of a culture that further incentivizes policy work.

Figure 5

Value of Publications in Tenure Decisions—R1 Versus Non-R1

Within the R1 subsample, we compared IR scholars at policy schools to those in traditional political science departments. On the normative question, we expected that faculty at policy schools believe that the discipline should give more weight to policy-focused output than scholars who work in traditional departments. The data confirmed our expectations: compared to non-APSIA faculty, APSIA faculty reported that their institutions give greater weight to nearly all types of publications—but especially policy-relevant work.^{Footnote 9}

We expected that APSIA deans and political science department chairs, whose preferences are shaped by the goals of their different units within the university, also hold different beliefs about the current and preferred value of policy publications. We compared the responses of the deans of APSIA schools located in the United States with the chairs of the top 50 political science departments in the country. We found that APSIA deans, like their faculty, believe that policy publications—blog posts, op-eds, policy reports, and policy articles—count more in the tenure process than political science department chairs believe.^{Footnote 10} Similarly, they think that these research products should count more than their counterparts who serve as department chairs. Deans of interdisciplinary policy schools do not feel the same way about more academic publications such as books, however. The gap between deans and chairs, predictably, was not as wide as that between APSIA faculty and all other faculty.^{Footnote 11}