Criteria of Evaluating a Candidate for Scientific Position
Gajendra P.S. Raghava
Saturday, 08 August 2009 11:38 UTC
In this form we are discussing problems in hiring new faculty in Indian institutes. Lets consider a imaginary institute where you are responsible (full power, without any interference) for hiring new faculty. You advt. the post and you got lots of application and you need to hire limited persons. What criteria you will use to select a candidates for scientific job (e.g., number of publications, impact factor of journals, h-index, g-index, interview, first author, corresponding author), , lets aim of your institute is to do world class science. Aim of this discussion is to generate consensus among members of this blog for hiring a scientist in ideal institute. This is very important for creating rules (criteria of selection) for hiring faculty which is acceptable to everyone. This will be a great job if this forum can generate criteria, at least institute/univ which are really serious/honest may implement these rules. Sometime senior faculty are honest in selection but persons not got selected make a big issue (see message of NameDoesNotMatterContentMatter) in previous thread. If we have transparent rules we may question the selection authority. Pl remember ratio of honest persons is same in senior faculty and students as all originated from same background. These are my personal views and I am really interested detailed consensus rules for hiring a scientist.
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Selection criteria should be based on
1. Academic qualification
2. Research experience
3. Research publications
4. Overall academic performance
5. Finally, suitability to a specific positions
The fifth criteria is the basis for most of the curruption. People got to be honest, thats the bottomline. -
When any new institute is set up it gets a mandated target. For example for NIPGRR (formerly known as NCPGR), it was chickpea development and then after the name is changed it became genome research. Now check the high profile publications from that institute. Do you get any chickpea or genomics work? I could not. We set up our institutes to achieve specific targets which officially determined keeping national importance in mind. But in reality all the institutes become “go as you like”, depending on faculties, on their previous research work. In the process if they get good publication they attain “beyond criticism” status. Moreover, if you are surrounded by mediocre and below mediocre people in your work place, at certain point of time you are bound to develop huge ego.
Other than very few institutes, no institute openly says that their target is to just publish; whatever junk it may be, whether it has any relevance to stated mandate of the instate or Indian scenario.
In an ideal condition, faculty recruitment should be according to requirement and faculties must fulfill their stated objective, not waste scarce resource for some fancy research (they might be doing abroad) which does not have much connection with stated objective of the institute or department. -
Anonymous
I would like to start with thanking Dr. Raghava to start this discussion. For few fellow scribblers, lets us try some constructive suggestions than criticizing all the time as we know that WE have problems – but that is not the end of the world. Now coming back to the point, IF I have the power and responsibility to choose scientific candidates for ANY institute – I would keep the selection process open ended (not to finalize on all positions in short period of time as at NO given point of time all the potential candidates would apply! Now the actual evaluation process would be following:-
50% for the RANK amongst candidates for first authorship multiplied by average citation in previous 5 years of all publications except reviews (personally, most important factor for scientific suitability)
35% for 3 year PROPOSED project by the candidate evaluated by in-house and if possible, from other relevant scientists
10% for International Scientific Fellowship/Award post-PhD degree
5% for candidates Referee’s comments (as they are always SOFT)
- I deliberately skipped the interview part, as some might notice, as I personally believe that a person with PhD degree and good scientific record has enough credibility under his belt and it is a kind of humiliation to call him for an INTERVIEW. Nevertheless, an official interaction with the institute members with a 30 min invited talk could be a potential alternative option. Additionally, the number of publications, impact factor of journals, h-index, g-index, corresponding authorship, etc taken alone can be very illusive at times.
Hope this helps Dr. Raghava.
regards, -
I will give 80% importance on personal, face to face interview with a broad board of scientists from that institute (and may be from some external expert whenever possible). Rest 20% is on personal academic/research achievements (like publications, award etc). All the concerned faculties (within the institute and outsiders) entrusted to select candidates must sign a written declaration of “no conflict of interest” while signing the confirmation or rejection of any given short listed candidate for any given position. All the proceedings should be recorded (written documents).
A person who got many first author papers without even writing any paper on his/her own, without any contribution to develop the project and only used as technical hands must not be given too much importance.
Initial short listing of candidates should be based on written “proposed work” and materials s/he has developed. A qualified board of scientists should judge the feasibility and suitability of that “proposed work”. Any person who aims high and does that with his/her own merit will surely take longer to develop, as a project. Such candidates should matter the most. Only such peole can generate new ideas. Now it’s upto a suitable, well qualified and above all honest selectors to decide if s/he has the right potential, right attitude to accomplish that or not. -
Dear Goel, I like your suggestion but here you are giving lot of power to individuals. Fairness of selection will be entirely on individual, where they may manipulate as they wish. This is exactly happening at present also, we do not trust on selection committees because they are not fair. We need to create some criteria which can be checked by anybody. It is important for transpance.
Their is number of questions even if you are counting citations. For example person is one of the middle authors in 50 authored paper, another person is middle author in three authors paper. How much we should give weightage to first, middle author and corrospending authors. What about IF of journal where candidates publish papers.
If I go long time back selection was based on interviews even in eng. including IITs. Their was lot of criticism, this is the reason nowadays we have combined test (JEE,CAT, CSIR/UGC) etc at national level. Whether we like or not like but these systems are acceptable to most of us. Most of corruption’s arise when you give full power to individuals and criteria of selection is subjective. These individuals take full advantage of their power (money/wealth comes with power). This is the reason RTI have been introduce to restrict the power of govt. officers. Please give more and more suggestions to design transparent system, criteria to measure performance in term of number.
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It will also be good to get a confirmation from the supervisor if the candidate’s claims is true or not (in form of development of the project and availability/sharing of research material). Any student joining any ongoing project will not have much chance to show his/her own potential and also not get to experience to develop his own project but will get quick publications. Considering an average postdoc tenure is about 4-6 years. At the end of that tenure s/he will start getting result/publications if s/he develops his/her own project.
That time can only be utilized productively (e.g publication wise) if a candidate stays in one lab. Many times a candidate cannot stay in one lab considering practical condition of 3-year projects (in majority of US) and incompatibility with bosses. All such aspects need to be considered before deciding about recruitment. And that’s why I recommended:1. 80% importance on personal, face to face interview.
2. 20% is on personal academic/research achievements. -
Anonymous
I am amazed by Sir BB Goel’s comments – when WE all know that so called scientific BOARDS/COMMITTEES/INTERVIEW PANELS are the one where personal contacts nurture and influence the decision making, as he himself specifically cites an example in previous comment in this thread? Where in India then I can ever dream of a change? Responding to his other comment, first authorship in postdoctoral level does not just come merely by toiling in labs. You have to write the whole backbone of the paper, which gets polished by more experienced staff of the Lab. Moreover, you DO NOT need so-called ‘honest selectors’ who would sign ‘no conflict of interest’ before serving as a member of jury, to judge if is suitable to WRITE A PAPER OR NOT. An official interaction during the candidates presentation is good enough to judge his credibility by the whole faculty (why only seniors?). Finally, a small chuck of self-realization – treat the potential candidate as your would be colleague and not subordinate.
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Anonymous
btw, thinking again on the bulleted Sir BB Goel’s ‘20% is on personal academic/research achievements’ – I am astonished that he proposes a GOOD interview is 4 times important than a candidates 7-9 years (5 PhD + 2-3 postdoc) of scientific output as research article to get a Job in India! Amazing!
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Yes, I understand your view and appreciate that. Yes, there is a chance to get biased selection if UNCHECKED personal decision is given so much importance. That’s why I also told to (mandatory) sign written documents of “no conflict of interest” by ALL the members involved in the selection process. That will be accessible by RTI type of acts and any candidate can access that if s/he has any doubt about the selection process. Each members of the selection board have to take personal responsibility for their decision, if challenged. From my personal experience I can say that basically majority of Indians are coward (mainly people in Science). They will think many times before taking biased decision when they must sign a written declaration and face consequences of their actions. To make it a systemic success the main requirement is to appoint a person with unquestionable honesty and personal integrity at the highest decision making and administrative process. S/he may not be a great scientist but must now compromise with corruption.
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Do you want me to name many highly influential faculties who published in Nature, Celll, Science when they were abroad (as PhD or Postdoc). They got faculty positions in Indian institutes with very good facilities and then produced almost nothing; no publication went beyond a journal with impact factor of 5 (but mostly Indian journal). You also can read the biography of Dave Baltimore who got at least 2 Nature papers during his short few months training in a lab in US and then nothing during his PhD work that he himself developed. He took the risk, set a very high standard for himself and failed in our present parameter of “success”. There are many such examples in the world, even from India. What does that teach us?
Why some “system” succeed and some does not? It all boils down to personal wisdom and quality standard to select talented students/colleagues. That depends on what I (as an existing faculty) want, what is my standard of research. For me, personal freedom is THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR to do any creative science/art, so long I take full responsibility and ready to face all the consequences of my decisions. Now it’s upto the system to build a process that can make the person accountable for his/her decisions.
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