8 February 2018Times Higher Education 7NEWS
students to every staff member.
“Highly research-intense institu-
tions have a vested interest in keep-
ing productive mothers in whom
they have invested resources both
at the hiring stage as well as during
their employment at the university,”
the authors state. “Better maternity
provisions are seen as a reward and
a means to keep mothers productive
and satisfied with a work environ-
ment that allows them to dedicate
time to their research.”
If more teaching-oriented institu-
tions – often younger universities
with a substantially smaller available
cash flow – improved their maternity
packages, they would have “an
incentive to screen new hires more
thoroughly by means of fixed-term
contracts, because hiring processescademics, survey shows
All seven of the UK’s research coun-
cils have signed up to a declaration
that calls for academia to stop using
journal impact factors as a proxy
for the quality of scholarship.
The councils, which fund about
£3 billion of research each year, are
among the latest to sign the
San Francisco Declaration on
Research Assessment, known as Dora.
Stephen Curry, chair of the Dora
steering committee, said that the
backing of the research councils gives
the initiative a “significant boost”.
Dora was initiated at the annual
meeting of the American Society for
Cell Biology in 2012 and launched
the next year. It calls on researchers,
universities, journal editors, pub-
lishers and funders to improve the
ways they evaluate research.
It says that the academic com-
munity should not use the impact
factor of journals that publish
research as a surrogate for quality
in hiring, promotion or funding
decisions. The impact factor ranks
journals according to the average
number of citations that their
articles receive over a set period of
time, usually two years.
Professor Curry, professor of
structural biology at Imperial Col-
lege London, announces the new
signatories to the declaration in a
column inNatureon 8 February.
Professor Curry told Times
Higher Education: “[The research
councils] signing up is a significant
boost for the initiative...This is a
major collection of funders fromacross the UK.” According to the
Naturearticle, Dora has received a
new injection of funding from nine
signatories including the American
Society for Cell Biology, Cancer
Research UK and the Wellcome
Trust, but not the research councils,
to revamp the Dora steering com-
mittee and hire a community man-
ager to help expand the initiative.
Professor Curry writes that the
idea of scrapping using the impact
factor in assessments has yet to “gain
credibility” even at institutions that
have signed the declaration.
“Job and grant applicants feel
that they can’t compete unless they
publish in prominent journals.
Institutions and individual scientists
are fearful of shrugging off the
familiar harness of entrenched
reward systems,” he says, adding
that Dora now has to accelerate the
change that it called for.
Ian Viney, director of strategic
evaluation and impact at the Med-
ical Research Council and the
research council representative on
the Responsible Metrics Forum,
said that the decision to sign the
declaration emphasises current
practice at the councils.
“But with the rapid increase
in accessibility of data about
research, we wanted to make clear
our position that quantitative
research indicators should be used
responsibly,” he added.
Almost 13,000 individuals and
450 groups have now signed Dora.
[email protected]Will shot in arm for San Francisco Declaration on
responsible metrics spur action? Holly Else writesFunding councils
sign up to Dora
Yellow pagesmany are ‘fearful of shrugging off entrenched reward systems’PICTURES: GETTYare somewhat less focused on
research productivity”, they argue.
Professor Troeger said that
female academics at research-
focused universities “were helped
to climb the career ladder”, making
them more likely to stay for longer.
While she acknowledged that
research intensity is “not the only
factor” affecting generosity of mater-
nity leave pay, “the current variation
in occupational pay can be deemed
unfair”, she concluded.
The study also found that insti-
tutions with a relatively high pro-
portion of female professors offered
three times the number of weeks of
full salary replacement, on average,
compared with universities where
only a small number of women were
promoted that far.
Nicole Janz, assistant professor
in international relations at the Uni-
versity of Nottingham and one of
the academic mothers who partici-
pated in the study, said that she felt
“under pressure” to go back to
work before she felt ready.
“When you are in the job mar-
ket, of course you look at the
department, the team, the place...
but then if you are a women you
are almost forced to look at the
maternity benefits alongside this,”
she toldTimes Higher Education.
“It really makes you think twice
about which job you want if you
also want to have a family.”
The data on occupational mater-
nity provisions for 214 different
packages across 160 different UK
higher education institutions were
collected in 2015. Professor Troeger
said that it was unlikely that there
had been any major changes since.
[email protected]the most senior staff are most likely
to fully endorse their career choice.
More than one-fifth of professors
(23 per cent) and department heads
(22 per cent) said that they would
“wholeheartedly” recommend their
job, compared with just 8 per cent
of postdoctoral researchers.
Despite these findings, senior
scholars typically work longer
hours than their junior colleagues.
Department heads and professors
are most likely to work 10 hours
per weekday on average, while
lecturers and postdocs are most
likely to work nine hours.
Roger Seifert, professor of
human resource management and
industrial relations at the University
of Wolverhampton Business School,said that the findings reflect research
on staff in other workplaces such
as hospitals and schools, which
“share the same context of harsher
pension arrangements, falling
relative pay, less job security, weaker
career paths, and restricted job
autonomy”.
“In particular, junior academics
suffer from frustration over poor
management of their universities
coupled with excessive senior
management pay; overworking,
especially with the increased
bureaucracy associated with student
cadres paying their own fees; and
a much tougher research environ-
ment,” he said.
[email protected]
Feature, page 3417 18 19 20 26Note: for the full list of institutions, visit
http://www.timeshighereducation.com.
Source: Analysis of 214 maternity
packages at 160 higher education
institutions in “An assessment of
maternity leaves across UK
universities”, by V. Troeger and
M. Epifanio, forthcoming.MATERNITY LEAVE AT UK CAMPUSES