Faculty members at Rutgers University in New Jersey are pushing back against an expensive data system purchased by the university to track faculty productivity in the form of journal articles, citations, books, research grants, and awards, as they have consistently found inaccuracies in the data collected. Ms. Martínez-San Miguel does "what many people would consider nontraditional scholarship," and she thinks that’s why the database missed so much of her work: It was published in smaller, nontraditional outlets. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the database, maintained by Academic Analytics, tracks the work of more than 270,000 faculty members nationwide, giving administrators a chance to see their faculty's productivity and compare them to national benchmarks. But some professors say that while the database is useful for tracking academic productivity, it has been used inappropriately.
Faculty members at Rutgers University in New Jersey are pushing back against an expensive data system purchased by the university to track faculty productivity in the form of journal articles, citations, books, research grants, and awards, as they have consistently found inaccuracies in the data collected. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the database, maintained by Academic Analytics, tracks the work of more than 270,000 faculty members nationwide, giving administrators a chance to see their faculty's productivity and compare them to national benchmarks. But some professors say that while the database is useful for tracking academic productivity, it has been used inappropriately.