Appointment and promotion processes at the Technion are based on the academic regulations, article 33 and its paragraphs.
The basic condition for appointment or promotion at the Technion is adhering to the values and ground rules of scientific research and education – striving for truth, responsibility, integrity and guarding the freedom of thought and experession of those who are subject to us. The processes are meant to ensure academic appropriateness of appointment requests or promotions of staff members at the Technion, while recognizing the wide variety of ways to realize excellence, the differences among various staff members, sometimes in the same research area and all the more so in different disciplines. Nonetheless, there are some guidelines in light of which we wish to conduct ourselves when coming to evaluate academic quality fitting the requested rank:
The nature of the scientific questions the candidate is coping with. How bold are these questions? Are these challenges worth even failing in?
The quality of the research products and, to some degree, their number. Are these products published in prestigious venues – magazines, convention proceedings or top of the line publishers – whether it be the core of the field or general venues? (see, in that context, the Library Guide). Are the research products recognized via citations in professional literature, invitations to lecture in important conferences abroad? Do said products buy a leading status expressed in awards, editing roles in leading magazines or in organizing leading conferences?
Also important is the success in recruiting research funds from competitive research grants. Even if “there’s no shortage of money for research” from non-competitive sources, recruiting funds from a competitive grant is important in itself.
Independence, i.e. – scientific achievements and research contributions which are recognized as the candidate’s. However, this does not detract from the importance of research with colleagues (even if they are many and senior) when evaluating academic quality, as long as the candidate’s contribution is well recognized.
Mentoring research students. Are research students main authors in articles? Do they continue to do a post-doctrate? Become researchers in universities or leaders of industry?
Teaching quality and contribution to the development of education in the faculty and at the Technion in general.
When evaluating candidates, we also seek recommendation letters from experts around the world, not necessarily from scientific associates.
The Technion signed the Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA), along with many world-wide leading institutions (not all them). There, the Technion committed to examine the essence of research achievements and not to base the evaluation of scientific quality on the distribution indexes of magazines. Indeed, narrowing down the multi-dimensionality of scientific quality to one number – be it the distribution index of a magazine or the number of echoes on social media – is infinitely poorer than the quality of evaluation based on reading and analyzing a paper or two, which correctly reflect the work and its contribution. Do all the participants in the evaluation process do so? That, we cannot guarantee but we can guarantee that conducting ourselves thusly is what guides our way through the intricate process of appointing and promoting Technion Staff.
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
