External review letters in academic promotion and tenure decisions are reflective of reviewer characteristics

Juan M. Madera, Christiane Spitzmueller, Heyao Yu, Ebenezer Edema-Sillo and Mark S.F. Clarke

Research Policy, 2024, vol. 53, issue 2

Abstract: We examine validity and bias in external review letters (ERLs) in academic settings. ERLs play a critical role in promotion and tenure (P&T) decisions across the globe, ending careers in some cases while allowing other scientists' careers to flourish. We coded and analyzed 995 ERLs submitted by letter writers at various institutions as part of the P&T portfolios of 195 candidates at an R1 university. We examined their relationship with P&T committees' percent of positive votes by department, college, and university committees. We investigated how ERL linguistic features, letter writer characteristics, and candidate characteristics (productivity and gender) relate to P&T decision-making. Results show writer characteristics are more strongly related than candidate characteristics to ERL linguistic features associated with P&T decisions at the department and university levels. We develop recommendations for policymakers, including changes in the use of ERLs for the P&T process.

Keywords: Science careers; Bias; Fairness; Promotion and tenure; Faculty careers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733323002238
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:53:y:2024:i:2:s0048733323002238

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2023.104939

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().