Research

Faculty Excellence Awards in Scholarship are designed to reward faculty productivity as marked by accomplishment and recognition, that is, primarily, publications, external grants, professional presentations, and honors relating to research.  To be considered for an award, the reported research must have been published (or performed, in the case of presentations) during the announced period.  Research in press at the cut-off date may not be counted.

The goal is to reward excellence in quality as well as quantity.  That faculty disseminate their scholarship through refereed channels and by means of recognized presses of national or international standing is the expected standard.  It is recognized that scholars publish by invitation as well, and that invitations are a mark of one’s reputation in the profession.  Invited publications shall be equated with refereed publications provided that the press or venue is one of established, refereed quality.

Products that are self-published are not eligible for consideration.  Products appearing in presses or other venues that accept submissions without close editorial and/or peer review, or which are obscure, ephemeral, or local in range shall not receive equal merit consideration beside products of similar type published by internationally or nationally regarded presses or venues.  Internet-based publishing shall be judged by the same standards of academic integrity.

No specific subjects or specializations shall be ranked, in themselves, above others, so long as each is legitimately within the purview and mission of the English Department, that is, for example, theory will not be placed above pedagogy; literary criticism will not be ranked above creative writing; work in Victorian culture will not be ranked above work in composition/rhetoric/linguistics; and so on.

The following five tiers shall function as guidelines for enumerating and ranking accomplishments in research.  In recognition of the fact that a tiering system may not always reflect the range and quality of individual products, the Ad hoc Faculty Excellence Awards Committee shall use the system as guidelines of norms, but may, at its discretion, rank items higher or lower than their putative tiers, according to the standards of excellence outlined above.

1^st TIER: single-author books; critical editions; novels; books of poetry or short stories; book-length translations; other publications 200+ pp.; awarded external grants; licensed software

2^nd TIER: multiple-author books; edited collections; monographs; bibliographies; concordances; anthologies; textbooks; technical reports; executive editorship of critical editions; other publications 100-199 pp.

3^rd TIER: awards or prizes for research excellence; journal or book series editorships; noncritical editions; book chapters; articles; proceedings articles; short stories; longer poetry or chapbooks; other publications 10-99 pp.; reprinted books; external grant proposals; plenary talks; videos

4^th TIER: notes; individual poems; encyclopedia entries; review articles; book reviews; columns; essays; indices; abstracts; other publications 1-9 pp.; reprinted book chapters; reprinted articles; refereed conference talks; invited talks; invited poetry or fiction readings; conference organization

5^th TIER: invited panel participations; public interviews; conference service; reviewer for journals or publishers; external/internal reviews for grants and scholarly prizes; editorial boards; offices held in national or regional professional organizations; professional consulting; reprinted poems; published external reviews or media publicity of scholarship

Point values for accomplishments in research listed above will be assigned following the table below.  Only documented accomplishments shall be considered.  Each publication or authored grant proposal listed on the bulleted sheet should be accompanied by the actual product.  Documentation of other accomplishments need be only one page for each (a conference program, citation of an honor, etc.).

Graduate Faculty Status Research Points

Coauthored publications and grants will be valued according to the following scale, except in those cases when the value or contribution to scholarship are argued to be higher: 2 authors at  100% of point value each; 3 authors at 75% each; 4 authors at 66% each; 5 or more at 50% each. Currently enrolled Kent State University graduate student participation in collaborative research will not be counted in the above breakdowns.