You just started your independent journey, but a clock is ticking from your first day. I am referring to the tenure clock associated with an evaluation that you will most certainly panic about three years after starting your lab. Tenure often goes hand in hand with a promotion to Associate Professor, but the specifics are different at each institution.

For the institution, tenure is an insurance policy - a practical way to get rid of you if they determine your performance is not up to snuff. Your chair usually handles the process of communicating a deficiency if there is one, and they will use a recommendation from a higher University office based on a pre-promotion inquiry they submitted for evaluation at some point during your Assistant professorship. The halftime evaluation, mentioned above after about three years, is important because it should provide the necessary feedback on whether you are on track and, if not, what action needs to happen to get you on track.

The crux is that the promotion requirements are often not spelled out sufficiently. Practically, this means you cannot simply check off boxes, sleep well, and be certain that your academic life continues after 6-7 years when the tenure clock runs out. Communication around tenure requirements - based on talking to colleagues, listening to anecdotes, and additional discussion with your chair - often does not provide clarity. It is sucking confusing!

You hear that evaluation will be based on scholarship and publications, your teaching efforts, and gaining a (good) reputation among your peers. Questions like “How much teaching is sufficient?” Or “How many papers and does the impact factor count?” are often answered with “It depends.”. So, what is the process, and how can you ensure that you are not back on the job market after busting your ass for half a decade.

Let’s look at the three categories mentioned above in more detail. First, my impression is that, by far, the most relevant criterion is your productivity with publications. Without reaching a threshold of sustained productivity, preferentially along a credible trajectory of significant and independent contributions to your field, there will be no tenure or promotion. This is a fact; there is no chance to compensate for deficiencies in your publication record with an excellent teaching record or some other recognition that you are the chosen one. Don’t even think that you will be the exception to the rule - it ain’t gonna happen.

Not caring about teaching or not presenting your work at meetings is also not an option. Whereas an excellent publication record is essential for tenure, not conducting any teaching and not promoting your work will cause a major problem in making your case for promotion. Many universities use official student feedback scores to evaluate faculty performance in courses. Pick courses listed in the official catalog and keep track. If evaluations are published, collect these evaluations. If there is no official evaluation, work with an administrator to collect anonymous evaluations from your students. If you get a mediocre evaluation, try to improve in the next year. If you struggle, consider taking a faculty development course and make an effort. A good teaching record will not get you tenure, but a mediocre teaching record (or making no effort) ensures your quest for tenure will likely fail.

Be nice to your peers! Present your work at national and international meetings. If you get invited to present at a different institution, go there - be interactive, open, and engaged. Your promotion package will include letters from your peers. Letters from your thesis and postdoctoral advisors are less relevant for promotion - these letters got you your current job, but they do not count twice. Your colleagues from other institutions are the ones who can attest to the merit of your current scientific endeavors. These are important letters, and fostering interactions with your colleagues is important. Important: do not be an asshole, never! And to nobody! This is sometimes harder for some, but it is important. As for teaching, having excellent letters supporting this category for promotion will not automatically give you tenure, but having one or two bad letters can easily derail your career. Yes, well-published people - successful from the outside - have been denied tenure because they were assholes!

Ok, let’s return to the most important criterion for promotion: publications. Years ago, when faced with guiding junior faculty about a) the number of papers and b) the impact of papers needed to make the threshold, I answered: publish! And don’t publish rubbish!

This answer is completely unsatisfactory. I now know better, but for some reason, it took me years to take a semi-scientific approach to answering this most critical question. Why did it take so long? I don’t know - it should have been obvious, but it was not. So what did I do? I collected data to establish a more meaningful data-based recommendation. I evaluated the first 10 years of independence of basic science faculty in a clinical department. I categorized publications into three groups: A) papers with previous advisors as co-authors, B) papers with a more senior local collaborator, and C) papers that arose from independence, products of the junior faculty member’s laboratory without having other big head names as co-authors.

I also recorded the years until tenure and promotion or until notification of no promotion. Here are the results:

Successful faculty were promoted 6.2 ±1.3 years after their initial appointment.

Unsuccessful faculty were given notice 9.0 ±1.4 years after their initial appointment.

For this blog post, I chose the adjectives “successful” and “unsuccessful.” Please understand that this solely applies to whether they were promoted or not. There are plenty of examples of highly successful scientists who were denied tenure earlier in life. Please do not take this personally.

This means that struggling faculty usually were given more time to improve their CVs and track records, but they ultimately ran out of time. On the other hand, the successful faculty were meeting the requirements relatively early. They fulfilled the requirements for promotion at least one year before the average duration of 6.2 years because paperwork takes time.

With respect to productivity and papers at promotion:

Category A papers (with previous advisor):

     Successful faculty: 1.2 ±1.3

     Unsuccessful faculty: 3.0 ±1.4

Category B papers (with new senior collaborator):

     Successful faculty: 4.6 ±2.6

     Unsuccessful faculty: 5.5 ±3.5

Category C papers (complete independence):

     Successful faculty: 9.2 ±4.1

     Unsuccessful faculty: 2.0 ±4.1

This is a clear result, and it reveals that independent productivity (papers) is the sole and most important criterion for promotion. I did not find a correlation with the impact of papers, although all faculty with successful promotions had at least 2 mid-high impact level papers. Compared to successful colleagues, unsuccessful faculty tend to publish more papers with their previous advisors and with new local collaborators, but they greatly ignored publishing papers solely from their own labs, writing independent reviews, and building a track record of independent scientific achievements.

This is surprising because there is a general emphasis on working collaboratively. It is important to be aware of the fact that collaborative papers, particularly with previous advisors or local bigheads, count less toward tenure than genuine independent contributions. The most unequivocal way to demonstrate independence to a promotion committee is to publish independently. Collaborations are ok, but you cannot build your career on these.

In summary, here are a few tips. First, when starting your appointment, do not accept to start ahead of time! Having a cool title might impress your parents, but your tenure clock will also start, taking critical time off your tenure clock. Get your new lab ready, advertise, move, and ensure your tenure clock starts as late as possible. Second, get used to writing papers right away. Accept writing a short review, and do not publish the review with your previous advisor or a new local collaborator. Be the sole author! Or write it with your first postdoc. They will learn a lot about the research topic doing this. Strive for a short descriptive paper or a methods paper from your lab, right in year one. Consider an important old paper in your field - one that is highly cited but done with decades-old technology. Perhaps a paper that has strong relevance for your planned work and the main results of this paper are routinely reproduced and used in your lab. Now, consider whether you could reproduce this older study with more modern tools and publish an old classic with a modern twist. In year two, you will already have accumulated two independent papers from your own lab, and you will be building a credible research trajectory. The more significant papers will arrive in years 3 and 4, and your halfway evaluation for tenure with your chair might be a pleasant and encouraging chat. I cannot guarantee that this recipe will work but think about the core message and apply it to your specific situation. Science is fun, but knowing the rules that allow us to continue our amazing journeys is important so that the fun can be endless.

Finally, it is ok to be critical about these requirements. Books, papers, summaries, and recommendations have been written for a beautiful, brave new world (or the old world) of academia. I do not justify the lack of morals of what I wrote above. I simply stated facts based on my observations over a quarter of a century. You are allowed to lament, but if you choose to fight the system, you might have to face the consequences.  It is your decision - make it on your own and do not get sucked into complainypants worn by others who are better off but preach a moral that ultimately can hurt your career if you follow it.