Kurt Weyland articulates a sensible proposal for providing monetary incentives to improve response rates to requests for dossier review for promotion to tenure and rank in political science at research universities. The absence of systematic data makes it difficult to know whether and with precision to what extent the rate of decline responses has changed over time. However, through experience, I share Weyland’s perspective that it has become increasingly difficult to find willing, thorough, and frank dossier reviewers. At issue, then, are two challenges to the proposal based in feasibility and unintended consequences. Despite these challenges to Weyland’s argument, I endorse his proposal as a potential worthy solution—with the proviso to consider a pair of friendly amendments.
From the perspective of faculty and department leadership at highly ranked research universities, the proposal to induce compliance with a monetary incentive is reasonable. External evaluation of scholarly research is among the most valued information in a promotion case for these types of institutions. As a result, the provision of resources to collect evaluations by independent experts is likely to be prioritized. At the same time, political science departments at up-and-coming research universities outside of the top 15 or 20 may find the Weyland proposal less feasible given more modest resources, as well as a stronger demand for resource allocation for research support of faculty and graduate students. Similarly, political science departments in institutions that are more evenly balanced with respect to teaching and research productivity for evaluation in promotion may be under more pressure to prioritize department funds for student learning and teaching enhancement. Finally, well-endowed public and private institutions will have a systematically stronger advantage in providing monetary incentives compared to those with budget pressures.
The realities of the variation in feasibility as a function of type of institution create the conditions for the obvious unintended consequence of further advantaging already advantaged departments at wealthy research universities. Whereas we might reply that paying for the best reviews of the best scholars is a predictable redundancy in a free market, a persuasive counterpoint privileges equity and fairness in the scholarly marketplace of ideas. A second possible unintended consequence is that although paying evaluators may provide an incentive to do the review, it does so without ensuring higher quality of the evaluation. Reviewers in high demand may accept 10 requests with compensation and write the same letters they would have written regardless of payment. Whereas Weyland’s proposal might be most effective in altering the distribution of letters in the mix—including more detailed and frank evaluations from reviewers previously absent—payment alone simply incentivizes already permissive reviewers to agree to do more evaluations.
The realities of the variation in feasibility as a function of type of institution create the conditions for the obvious unintended consequence of further advantaging already advantaged departments at wealthy research universities.
Questions about feasibility, fairness, and unintended consequences can be mitigated with two modifications to Weyland’s proposal: one simple and one difficult. The simple amendment reinforces the principal–agent relationship with the provision of a monetary incentive by clarifying the task at hand for the reviewer and encouraging compliance. In my experience, requests for evaluation are widely varied; some come with explicit definitions of criteria for promotion and tenure, specific questions to answer about the work of the scholar in question, and a list of comparators. Others are widely defined and ask in broad terms about the quality of the research and other traits of the candidate. Colleagues I interact with sometimes chafe at the former; they feel constrained by the articulation of the request and therefore often disregard detailed instructions. Ignoring specific questions would be more difficult to both undertake and countenance if the letter-writer is being paid; indeed, absent responses hewing to the queries can be requested to receive payment. Thus, enumerating specific instructions, comparators, and evaluation criteria combined with payment for completing the assigned task will enhance the useable information provided by external evaluations. Although it is without question more effort for departments to articulate their evaluation criteria and identify comparators for reviewers, the payoff to the task of assessing the candidate once letters are returned outweighs the initial effort.
The more difficult-to-achieve amendment is to create a discipline-wide pool of resources for the provision of evaluation of candidates. Individual institutions might contribute annually to an APSA fund for dossier review and then draw on that fund when evaluations are needed. Well-endowed institutions also can be encouraged to contribute to the fund while providing resources of their own to evaluations required for their individual review requirements.
Weyland articulates a reasonable and well-intentioned proposal to improve how political scientists evaluate our scholarly research. It is a policy change most useful to the proper evaluation of candidates for promotion and tenure. Equally as important, however, is the example we set to create processes to encourage the deliberate, detailed, fair, and wise evaluation of our disciplinary colleagues for younger faculty to emulate.
