Page 94 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

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selection criteria used in the selection of assistant professors, followed by the tacit criteria. It is the latter category that we found most conflated with specific gender practices.
Formal selection criteria
Most research participants across countries and disciplines argue that during recruitment and selection procedures for assistant professorships they should take the junior level of candidates into account. We find that candidates for assistant professor positions are primarily assessed on three formal criteria: research, teaching, and administration. Of these criteria, committee members across countries and disciplines equally argue that research is the most important selection criterion.
When it comes to the criteria for selection, the most primary and indispensable criterion is scientific excellence, which normally is reflected in the research conducted, the number of publications, type of publications, peer reviewed, what the person has actually done in previous research. (BE, SSH, M)
For this committee member “scientific excellence” is the most important selection criterion, which to him means research and publications. However, not just any publication counts. According to this respondent, as most respondents in our study, publications should be in (international) “peer reviewed” journals.
Our analysis shows that committee members try to make an assessment based on formal selection criteria, however, due to the early career stage of applicants they only have a limited track record to rely on.
Publication is an indication of what the researchers are capable of doing, but evidently a young researcher is not able to publish as much as experienced ones can do. So we have to project the profile of a person and see what the person is capable of in the future. (BE, STEM, M)
Very often they are at the end of their PhD, and I mean, sometimes they have already a publication, maybe two, depends also on the discipline. [...] Um, but very often they only have a pipeline, right? So, they have a couple of [pipeline] papers. [...] So, it’s – it’s on the committee to decide what they think, what this is actually worth, so to have a good understanding of the publication market, and the chances of publication – publishing something, and whether they think this pipeline – that the quality of the PhD, so to speak, of the chapters are publishable, and where, how