Promotion applications

This document was developed during ozunconf19 and numbat hackathon 2020, to provide tools and ideas that will help gather the information required to apply for academic promotion. It was updated by Rob Hyndman in December 2025 to work with the spiderorchid package.

Typically, an application for academic promotion will require you to provide evidence of your performance in Research, Teaching, Engagement and (for senior appointments) Leadership. The rest of this document summarises what sort of things you could include in each of these sections.

Research

For research, you will need a list of publications, the number of citations, and the ranking of the journals in which you have published

You can obtain a list of your publication from various sources, such as PURE, Google Scholar or ORCID. Normally you would only need to use one of these.

library(spiderorchid)
library(dplyr)

mypubs_scholar <- fetch_scholar("miNl6rMAAAAJ")
mypubs_orcid <- fetch_orcid("0000-0001-6515-827X")

Each of these functions will return a tibble, with one row per publication and the columns providing information such as title, authors, year of publication, etc. The different sources provide some different information, and it is often useful to combine them. We will combine the publications from Google Scholar and ORCID in the following examples.

mypubs_orcid

## # A tibble: 13 × 9
##    orcid_id            authors       year title journal volume issue doi   page 
##    <chr>               <chr>        <int> <chr> <chr>   <chr>  <chr> <chr> <chr>
##  1 0000-0001-6515-827X "Michael Ly…  2016 Choi… Bullet… 78     2     10.1… 293-…
##  2 0000-0001-6515-827X "Thiripura …  2017 Indi… PeerJ   5      2017… 10.7… e3958
##  3 0000-0001-6515-827X "M. J. Lyde…  2018 Calc… Epidem… 146    9     10.1… 1194…
##  4 0000-0001-6515-827X "M.J. Lydea…  2019 A bi… Mathem… 309    2019… 10.1… 163-…
##  5 0000-0001-6515-827X "Will Cunin…  2019 High… Austra… 43     2     10.1… 149-…
##  6 0000-0001-6515-827X "MICHAEL J.…  2019 MECH… Bullet… 101    1     10.1… 174-…
##  7 0000-0001-6515-827X "James H Mc…  2020 Brin… Journa… 76     3     10.1… 547-…
##  8 0000-0001-6515-827X "Michael J.…  2020 Esti… PLOS C… 16     10    10.1… e100…
##  9 0000-0001-6515-827X ""            2021 Popu… The La… 17     2021… 10.1… 1002…
## 10 0000-0001-6515-827X "Cameron Za…  2021 Risk… Journa… 18     174   10.1… 2020…
## 11 0000-0001-6515-827X "James M. T…  2021 Unde… Nature… 12     1     10.1… <NA> 
## 12 0000-0001-6515-827X "M. J. Lyde…  2022 Burd… Antimi… 11     1     10.1… <NA> 
## 13 0000-0001-6515-827X "Cameron Za…  2022 COVI… Scienc… 8      14    10.1… <NA>

mypubs_scholar

## # A tibble: 39 × 7
##    scholar_id   authors                    title  year journal details citations
##    <chr>        <chr>                      <chr> <int> <chr>   <chr>       <dbl>
##  1 miNl6rMAAAAJ M Lydeamore                Mode…  2013 <NA>    <NA>            0
##  2 miNl6rMAAAAJ M Lydeamore                Appr…  2015 <NA>    <NA>            0
##  3 miNl6rMAAAAJ M Lydeamore, PT Campbell,… A bi…  2016 arXiv … :1612.…         0
##  4 miNl6rMAAAAJ M Lydeamore, N Bean, AJ B… Choi…  2016 Bullet… 78 (2)…         3
##  5 miNl6rMAAAAJ T Vino, GR Singh, B Davis… Indi…  2017 PeerJ   5, e39…        22
##  6 miNl6rMAAAAJ MJ Lydeamore, PT Campbell… Calc…  2018 Epidem… 146 (9…        15
##  7 miNl6rMAAAAJ MJ Lydeamore               Mech…  2018 The Un… <NA>            2
##  8 miNl6rMAAAAJ MJ Lydeamore, PT Campbell… A bi…  2019 Mathem… 309, 1…        29
##  9 miNl6rMAAAAJ W Cuningham, J McVernon, … High…  2019 Austra… 43 (2)…        16
## 10 miNl6rMAAAAJ JH McMahon, MJ Lydeamore,… Brin…  2020 Journa… <NA>           24
## # ℹ 29 more rows

In general, ORCID will provide higher quality data, along with DOIs, bit covers fewer publications than Google Scholar, and does not provide citations. Some papers may have two DOIs — for example, when they appear on both JSTOR and a journal website – so it may be necessary to remove duplicates. In this example, there are no duplicates.

Next, we will try to combine the two tibbles using fuzzy joining on the title and year fields. The idea here is to add the details from ORCID to the more complete data set from Google Scholar.

mypubs <- mypubs_scholar |>
  # First remove any publications missing details.
  # These are usually talks and pre-prints
  filter(!is.na(year) & !is.na(journal)) |>
  # Now find matching entries
  fuzzyjoin::stringdist_left_join(
    mypubs_orcid,
    by = c(title = "title", year = "year"),
    max_dist = 2,
    ignore_case = TRUE
  ) |>
  # Keep any columns where ORCID missing
  mutate(
    authors.y = if_else(is.na(authors.y), authors.x, authors.y),
    title.y = if_else(is.na(title.y), title.x, title.y),
    journal.y = if_else(is.na(journal.y), journal.x, journal.y),
    year.y = if_else(is.na(year.y), year.x, year.y)
  ) |>
  # Keep the ORCID columns
  select(!ends_with(".x")) |>
  rename_all(~ stringr::str_remove_all(.x, ".y")) |>
  select(-scholar_id, -orcid_id) |>
  select(
    authors,
    year,
    title,
    journal,
    volume,
    issue,
    page,
    details,
    doi,
    citations
  )

The tibble contains Google scholar citations for all papers, so we can find the most cited papers.

mypubs |>
  arrange(desc(citations))

## # A tibble: 34 × 10
##    authors         year title journal volume issue page  details doi   citations
##    <chr>          <int> <chr> <chr>   <chr>  <chr> <chr> <chr>   <chr>     <dbl>
##  1 Cameron Zachr…  2021 Risk… Journa… 18     174   2020… 18 (17… 10.1…        55
##  2 M. J. Lydeamo…  2022 Burd… Antimi… 11     1     <NA>  11 (1)… 10.1…        48
##  3 James M. Trau…  2021 Unde… Nature… 12     1     <NA>  12 (1)… 10.1…        43
##  4 M.J. Lydeamor…  2019 A bi… Mathem… 309    2019… 163-… 309, 1… 10.1…        29
##  5 James H McMah…  2020 Brin… Journa… 76     3     547-… <NA>    10.1…        24
##  6 Cameron Zachr…  2022 COVI… Scienc… 8      14    <NA>  8 (14)… 10.1…        24
##  7 Thiripura Vin…  2017 Indi… PeerJ   5      2017… e3958 5, e39… 10.7…        22
##  8 E Conway, CR …  2023 COVI… Procee… <NA>   <NA>  <NA>  290 (2… <NA>         22
##  9 FM Shearer, J…  2024 Esti… Epidem… <NA>   <NA>  <NA>  47, 10… <NA>         17
## 10 Will Cuningha…  2019 High… Austra… 43     2     149-… 43 (2)… 10.1…        16
## # ℹ 24 more rows

Journal rankings can be obtained using the journal_ranking() function, or via the Journal Ranking Shiny App.

The scholar package provides tools for obtaining your profile information, such as total citations, h-index, and lists of co-authors.

scholar::get_profile("miNl6rMAAAAJ")

Teaching

The teaching section will usually involve collecting data on your teaching performance and teaching innovations.

Teaching performance

Student evaluations
Emails from grateful students
Peer review reports

Teaching innovations

Development of new subjects or degrees
New teaching methods or materials

Supervision

Honours students supervised
Masters students supervised
PhD students supervised

Note that a list of PhD students may go in the Research section rather than the Teaching section.

Engagement

This section includes suggestions for engagement activities that could be included in academic promotion applications. These examples are indicative only and do not provide a list of expectations. Engagement is interpreted in a broad sense to include discipline, industry, government and community engagement.

Engagement with Industry

Partnerships with organisations: for profit, not-for-profit, volunteering
Consulting projects -> could list value of projects, reports completed
Participation in project development programs e.g. CSIRO On Prime
Patents
Service on industry boards and/or committees at the local, state or national level

Engagement with Government

Policy development, such as changes resulting from your work
Advocacy programs e.g. Science Meets Parliament
Service with government bodies

Engagement with Public

Public presentations - list of locations
Blogging (own blog or collaborative), with stats available from blog backend e.g. views, visitors, followers.
Twitter. Such as number of followers from profile, Twitter analytics shows impressions, engagement rate, likes, retweets, replies (only allows viewing of the last 90 days of data).
Community programs e.g. National Science Week, etc.
Media appearances e.g. appearances on TV, radio, web.
Writing for general audience e.g. The Conversation, university news platforms (e.g. The Lighthouse).
Public works e.g. art installations, consulting on museum exhibit.
Service on community boards and/or committees at the local, state or national level.

Engagement with Professional Community

Contributions to community support websites e.g. Stack Overflow
Data science competitions e.g. Kaggle
Community engagement projects e.g. citizen science
Community development e.g. meetup groups, RLadies, rOpenSci, hackathons
Creation of software packages/tools for open use

Engagement with Schools

Curriculum development e.g. STEM at School.
Interactions with school students e.g. Skype a Scientist (discussing science with students).
University events e.g. Open Day.

Contributions to enhancing the employability of graduates

Establishing student links with industry/professional societies.
Participating in professional practice teaching e.g. teamwork, communication, problem solving, grant writing.

Engagement/leadership within one’s profession or discipline

Professional society membership & activity.
Membership of professional or foundation boards/councils
Peer review (It should go into the research section). This can include: journal article review, ARC college of experts, grant review panels.

Leadership

This section includes examples of leadership activities in academic promotion applications.

University committee (e.g. department, faculty, university-level). List how many events/meetings you have in a year.
Board membership, and list position, length of service.
Conference organisation. List your role (e.g. scientific committee, symposium chair), scale of conference (e.g number of attendees, funding, international/local).
Leading projects and initiatives (e.g. sustainability, diversity inclusion initiatives).
Event organisation (e.g. writing retreat).
Training events (e.g. university management course). List the course, completion date.
Leadership roles in external professional or industry associations
Mentoring. List how many mentees you have, length of relationship, where they are working now.