Scholarly Metrics Reports for Tenure and Promotion Candidates

Abstract

Seton Hall University Libraries created a scholarly metrics outreach initiative in Summer 2021. Repository metrics are collected from our Institutional Repository (IR) to build reports for faculty applying for Rank and Tenure. This data includes IR statistics: downloads by country, institution, sector, and referrers. The IR also shows metadata hits over time. The addition of PlumX metrics to our IR allows us to view additional usage data including WorldCat statistics, social media across platforms and news mentions. It is possible that faculty may not know about social media or news coverage about their scholarship. Additionally, Google Scholar, Scopus and other data will be pulled into the report based on the faculty member’s discipline. This presentation will discuss a new workflow we created to support this service including: faculty outreach, training for library staff, interpretation of data for the University Rank and Tenure, and working with campus stakeholders such as the Office of Grants & Research to promote scholarly output. Opportunities and lessons learned will be collected this fall to report at the conference. Opportunities include faculty outreach ahead of tenure application deadlines, promotion and education about the importance of pre-prints in an IR to gather scholarship metrics, understanding metadata, and expansion of IR content to include syllabi collections, research projects and e-journals. This service may grow with other types of report requests. Repository metrics can are useful for book proposals or departmental accreditation reports. Lessons learned will highlight feedback from faculty, across many disciplines, library staff and faculty, and rank and tenure committee members.