Initially, 1405 articles were identified, of them, 513 articles were excluded in the screening stage because of duplication, and 543 articles were removed by matching the titles and abstracts with the inclusion criteria. In the eligibility stage, 336 articles were sided by reviewing the full texts. Eventually, 13 articles were included in the study. Of these, 8 were published in Persian, and 5 were in English. The characteristics of the included articles are presented in Table 2.
Table 2
Characteristics of the included articles related to the faculty member promotion regulations
# | First author | Year Published | Journal | Material reviewed |
1 | Maryam Eslampanah | 2008 | Management Journal | Scientific-executive activities |
2 | Hossein Mohammadi Doostdar | 2008 | Politics, Science and Technology Quarterly | Research-technology activities Educational activities General content of the regulations |
3 | Roghayeh Gandomkar | 2011 | Iranian Journal of Education in Medical Sciences | Research-technology activities |
4 | Hamid Asayesh | 2011 | Iranian Journal of Education in Medical Sciences | Educational activities |
5 | Mohammadqaem Tajgardoon | 2012 | Iranian of Higher Education | General content of the regulations |
6 | Hossein Karimi-Moonaghi | 2015 | Journal of Educational Development in Medical Sciences | General content of the regulations |
7 | Samaneh Ebrahimpour | 2017 | Social Welfare Quarterly | Scientific-executive activities Educational activities |
8 | Batool Jamali Zavareh | 2018 | Iranian Higher Education | Research-technology activities Educational activities Cultural-educational content activities |
9 | Sarah A Bunton | 2007 | Academic Medicine | Educational activities General content of the regulations |
10 | Bernard J Costello | 2013 | Journal of dental education | Research-technology activities Educational activities |
11 | Smith SB | 2016 | Journal of Professional Nursing | Research-technology activities Educational activities |
12 | David Moher | 2018 | PLoS biology | Educational activities |
13 | Susan M McHale | 2019 | Journal of Clinical and Translational Science | Research-technology activities Educational activities |
Content analysis of the articles related to the regulations for the promotion of faculty members was carried out based on five perspectives: 1) the general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members; 2) cultural, disciplinary, and social activities, 3) educational activities, 4) research-technology activities, and 5) scientific-executive activities. The relevant codes were compiled according to Table 3.
Table 3
Codes relevant to the faculty member promotion regulations
Main category | Subcategory | Codes |
The general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members | Challenges to the general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members | • Low emphasis on innovation and creativity and dominance of the quantitative attitude • Failure to pay attention to the differences between universities and disciplines • Weakness in modeling global experiences • The inefficiency of control structures of faculty's scientific recession • Administrative function instead of focusing on the comprehensive promotion of education, research, and scientific and cultural services • Difficulty in measuring abstract concepts • Failure to respond to the conditions of specific groups (women, general education groups) |
Solutions for the general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members | • Changing the University Board of Assessors periodically • Establishment of a consulting and facilitation unit for the preparation of the promotion's documents • Implementing symposiums to exchanging views between the supervisory boards of different universities • Close monitoring of the assessment committees over the performance of the selected faculty committees • Setting rules governing the executive process of reviewing promotion cases • Supervising the composition of distinguished board members (diversity of fields of study, presence of women in these boards, different academic degrees) • Developing appropriate laws to reduce conflicts of interest |
The cultural, disciplinary, and social activities | Challenges to cultural, educational and social activities | • Lack of transparency in the indicators of cultural activity and ambiguity in scoring them • Narrowing cultural activities to participation in specific educational courses • Lack of reflection of priorities for changing organizational and social culture • Neglect of some cultural activities related to the Comprehensive Plan and Islamization of Universities Document • Neglect of the development and promotion of the humanities |
Solutions for cultural, disciplinary, and social activities | • Creating the necessary facilities for cultural activities • Setting criteria for awareness of faculty members' abilities, capabilities and interests • Providing facilities for scientific and professional servicing to the public • Playing a role in programs related to promoting security or environmental protection and convergence of education and research with moral and spiritual education at universities |
Educational activities | Challenges to educational activities | • Confrontation of educational and research activities instead of reinforcing each other • Limiting educational activities to the number of required teaching units • Homogeneity and use of identical tools and forms of assessment • The inefficiency of teaching quality evaluation systems |
Solutions for educational activities | • Attention to the breadth and variety of educational activities • Emphasis on the use of new educational technologies • Emphasis on education based on up-to-date and valid science • Utilizing a combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods and using multiple resources • Matching a particular share of promotion indicators with the mission, requirements, special conditions, scientific resources and facilities of each university of medical sciences • Assessing the role of the individual in promoting the relevant department • Allocation of points for activities related to social accountability and community education |
Research-technology activities | Challenges to research-technology activities | • Significant emphasis on research activities compared to other activities • High emphasis on science production in the form of ISI papers • Encouraging faculty members to produce papers regardless of the needs of the society • Paying attention to quantity instead of quality in papers • The complex situation of commercialization and knowledge production • Inequalities in the use of grants and research funds |
Solutions for research-technology activities | • Orientation towards meeting the research needs of the society • Looking at research activities from the perspective of a teacher and not just from the perspective of research as an entity separate from education • Encouraging the absorption of research funding from outside the university • Emphasis on following a specific research line • Evaluating the quality of the articles by an impartial expert team • Emphasis on convergence and interdisciplinary activity • Assigning scores to new ways of disseminating knowledge • Playing a role in advancing and creating change in the relevant scientific field • Introducing scientific fields to the society in the relevant scientific ground |
Scientific-executive activities | Challenges to scientific-executive activities | • Ease in providing executive privileges and reducing their effectiveness in encouraging faculty members to accept executive responsibility • Ignoring the social status of faculty members • Ignoring the tension and stress caused by executive responsibilities • Ignoring the quality of one's performance in executive responsibility • Ignoring the lower chances of women in holding executive positions compared with men |
Solutions for scientific-executive activities | • Emphasis on the quality of executive responsibility • Playing a role in facilitating and promoting the functions and achieving the goals of the university |
General content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members
According to the most articles reviewed, regulations for promoting faculty members keep these members chained and restrict their creativity and interests. In other words, the regulations are more oriented towards an administrative function rather than focusing on the comprehensive promotion of faculty members (9, 10, 11). This lowers motivation to produce more knowledge.
Another challenge to the regulations is that they render all universities, disciplines and individuals' capabilities to be similar. Despite differences in the requirements and needs of different disciplines and the variety in potential and actual capabilities in different areas of the country, the regulations assess all these disciplines, universities, and individuals based on the same structure (14, 15). Moreover, the mission, requirements, special circumstances, resources, and scientific facilities of each university have not been considered.
In addition, the difficulty in measuring abstract concepts, the narrow-angled attitude towards the promotion process, and the requirement for faculty members to score in all categories stand as some other shortcomings in this regard (12, 13, 16).
Failure to implement the promotion processes in a transparent and fair manner, lack of specialized staff in promotion committees in some universities, lengthy process and unnecessary administrative requirements of the promotion process, lack of knowledge on the faculty member's part about the promotion process and how their activities are evaluated, and the impact of conflict of interest or discrepancies of opinions on the outcome of promotion process are also some of the administrative challenges to promotion procedure (16). Recommendations to address these challenges include changing the University Board of Evaluators periodically, establishing an advisory and facilitation unit for the promotion of university academic staff, implementing symposiums and briefings, and executing exchanging programs between the boards of examiners from different universities, close supervision and mentoring of these boards on the performance of selected committees in the faculties, setting rules governing the executive process of reviewing promotion cases, endorsing appropriate rules to alleviate conflict of interest regarding the regulations and the establishment of a reporting system to monitor the promotion process and to track it by faculty members (18–16).
Cultural, disciplinary, and social activities
Cultural, disciplinary, and social activities of faculty members are crucial as these members act as role models for their students and society as a whole, especially religious values that affect our country's universities, particularly medical sciences. Few studies have examined these activities, and their results indicate challenges such as lack of transparency in guidelines and rules in evaluating cultural, disciplinary, and social activities, lack of knowledge in faculty members about these activities, negligence of some cultural measures related to the Comprehensive Plan and the Islamization of Universities Document, and overestimation of the development of humanities. Proposed solutions might include providing the necessary facilities for cultural activities, paying attention to the abilities and interests of faculty members, and the convergence of education and research with moral and spiritual education at universities, and fostering competencies and responsibilities related to social accountability of faculty members (13).
Educational activities
Due to the vital role of faculty members in universities, the educational activities in the promotion regulations are intrinsic. Despite the importance of education at universities, there are significant challenges to the education section of promotion regulations. In this regard, we can point out to the prominent role of the number of mandatory teaching credits. The quantity of teaching in the promotion process reflects only the faculty member's presence in the classroom, and the quality of education is seldom considered. Some solutions that can be proposed in this regard embrace; emphasis on employing new methods of training and assessment, using more appropriate instructional materials, and allocating more weight to educational activities compared to research activities, participation in educational faculty development programs, cooperation in the development or curriculum revision, emphasis on the production of educational materials, and activity in the field of educational management and leadership are greatly beneficial (13).
Also, two more challenges emerged in the results that were the easy attainment of good scores in educational activities when compared to research activities, and contrasting relationship of educational and research activities instead of their synergism (13). As a result of the present regulations, the publication of scientific papers has become a daily concern for faculty members. This has led to a decrease in the amount of time spent on educational activities and executive responsibilities (14).
Other challenges in educational activities include lack of objective evaluation of such activities, inefficiency of methods for evaluating the quality of those activities, and the role of students as the main criterion for evaluating educational activities (15, 18, 19). In order to mitigate these challenges, more attention ought to be paid to the quality of teaching evaluation by involving different sources and assigning more scores to the role of academic staff in promoting their educational department (13).
Research-technology activities
Despite the importance of research in improving the performance of universities, some challenges to research-technology activities which prevent the useful application of the potential results of faculty members' research efforts. These regulations in this category lead them to simply produce papers without considering the actual needs of society (13). Furthermore, focusing on the number of papers instead of quality has adversely reduced the number of faculty members pursuing other research activities such as writing and translating books (13). Increasing the sustainability and destination of research activities, emphasizing their role in creating change in the relevant scientific field, and developing indicators of research activity from the number of papers to more diverse indicators such originality and innovation, and fundraising for research proposals are some suggestions to reform regulations of research activities (14).
Scientific-executive activities
Challenges to scientific-executive activities were the easiness of acquiring privileges accordingly and this in turn negatively influences persuading faculty members to accept challenging executive responsibilities in the university, ignoring the social status of faculty members and also the stress caused by the abovementioned responsibilities, overlooking the quality of individual performance, and the limited chance available to females to occupy managerial positions (10, 14). Applying strategies such as raising the quality of administrative work, facilitating the functions of the university to achieve its goals can contribute to solve the above challenges (15).