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New promotion patterns in Italian universities: Less seniority and more productivity? Data from ASN

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An Erratum to this article was published on 09 June 2016

Abstract

The new habilitation (ASN), established in Italy in 2010 and launched in 2012, was introduced to filter eligible candidates in the competition of associate and full professorships. Its purpose is to cut off poor candidates on the basis of individual scientific productivity before they might be hired in competitions where patronage may favor them. This study considers four disciplinary fields—physics; engineering; law; economics. The main hypothesis is that candidates’ current positions and seniority (years after last promotion) should play no part in determining the award of eligibility since only indicators of output should be considered by evaluating committees. Considering only the applications to full professorships and after controlling for such indicators as publications (three different indicators of), data regarding affiliation with committee members, age, gender, current position and time since last promotion show better predictors of attaining the eligibility to be: (1) quality of scientific output (H index and articles in top-ranked journals); (2) current ladder rank; (3) younger age, especially within people of the same ranks. As a result, the traditional seniority pattern appears to be yielding place before quicker and steeper career paths for the more productive.

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Notes

  1. Data downloaded at http://statistica.miur.it/scripts/personalediruolo/vdocenti0.asp. Ranks by age don’t include fixed-term assistant professors.

  2. Full details of the law and further modifications can be read here: http://abilitazione.miur.it/public/normativa.php?sersel=1&.

  3. Since 2015, ASN has been “on-demand” (a sportello). This change hasn’t influenced this study.

  4. http://cercauniversita.cineca.it/php5/docenti/cerca.php.

  5. Normalizations are basically referred to as a measure of personal contribution to an output when the latter are signed by more persons.

  6. Full texts have been uploaded to a national repository by the candidates; the main Italian publishers signed an agreement with the Minister to make available free and certified portable document format (pdf) copies to authors requesting them.

  7. For not-bibliometric disciplines, the full list of top-ranked journals was released basically in the same time that candidates were applying. So scholars have never selected a journal on the basis of its ranking or status, unless the status and the prestige were totally informal and not recognized by any official document. To this regard, any evidence discussed by McDonald and Kam (2007) cannot still be observed.

  8. Two areas consider engineering: one includes civil engineering and architecture, the other information engineering and industrial engineering. Here, and hereafter “engineering” refers to the second subjects.

  9. Some Committees displayed information about personal years spent in active research, taking into account starting age (first publication) minus official periods of maternal/paternal leave.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CIPES, Matosinhos, Portugal

    Giulio Marini

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  1. Giulio Marini
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Correspondence to Giulio Marini.

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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0018-8.

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Marini, G. New promotion patterns in Italian universities: Less seniority and more productivity? Data from ASN. High Educ 73, 189–205 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0008-x

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