They’ve had jobs open for pretty much the last 5-7 years I think and they’ve hired a few people. But WTF are they looking for? (I mean, this is a department founded by the likes of Tony Deutsch for chrissakes. George Mandler, Ed-freaking Fantino!) UCSD is R1 for sure. But then all the current mid-to-senior types are specialty-publishers. Impact is clearly not an issue as they are split off into various subfields like psycholinguistics and what have you. Biopsych has been pretty much nonexistent for years (did I mention Tony Deutsch? You can’t go through the history of just about any area of biological / neuroscience-y psych without tripping over him!) and now they are hiring again. So WTF? How to tell if one is in the running for what they want? Do a bit of research and you’ll see that Impact Factor and NIH grants are clearly not a big deal. The most important in their subfields? Well sure the mid-to-senior people have big names but all their recent hires are not particularly impressive. Not that they won’t become luminaries but this doesn’t help with interpreting who is in contention for a job…

Neuro-conservative: You mean me personally? Depends what you mean. I can reflect what I see as the standards in my field, namely the 2-4 impact factor journal as the bread and butter requiring at least one per year. More like 2-3 as one moves into mid-career and an expectation of the 8-10 range journal every now and then. Science/Nature definitely impressing people, maybe expected that you’ll have at least a couple during your career.

I’m not, however, in an situations in which I’d be inclined to use these types of analyses too much. I’m not on hiring or promotions committees, for example. In grant review, it doesn’t get down to this quite so much because for the most part, I’m looking at my own view of the impact of a given paper. I tend to be familiar with the journals. And my section doesn’t tend to get many applicants who follow the three years for one Science paper track. So assessment of productivity is usually just a matter of how many for the past 5 years of this project because the impacts are all about the same.

Point taken, DM. Strictly on a CV basis, however, I was wondering about your take on the quantity vs. impact factor issue.

Yah, I commented there.

Does WordPress allow you to have a “Recent Comments” section on your home page that would provide links to recent comments on all your posts? This really helps keep discussions going. As things stand, the only way for your readers to keep a discussion going is to keep clicking back on the comments sections of old posts.

at the very least the relationship of impact factor with quality of the science is bimodal. the “importance” or “significance” might be debatable but as far as scientific “quality” goes…

I think it comes down to your frame of reference and whether the reality lives up to the intent. It is better than an R21 in $$ and duration. It is better than R01 if it manages to break the bad study section behavior at which it is targeted.

For example, I deplore the overwhelming bias for revision status because I think that in the vast majority of cases this process doesn’t alter the eventual science one bit. Or perhaps that the near universal application of the revision bias isn’t justified by the relative proportion of apps in which the eventual science is genuinely improved versus not. So, if the rule for no resubmission is successful in getting reviewers to be serious about “real” concerns versus irrelevant carping about controls and methods that will be fixed by the normal process anyway…good.

I read this as allowing up to 4 years so that extra year versus R01 doesn’t seem a big deal.

AFAIK, you still haven’t opined on the EUREKA mechanism. I have taken the position that applying for one is a fool’s errand, given the temporal and financial constraints on the award and the application process (no resubmissions).

What do you think?

–PhysioProf

Also, it is broadly true that most journals are in the 2-4 range, and there is a clear inflection point in the quality and quantity of journals >4 or so. This realization has shaped my efforts and focus of late, consistent with the thesis of your post.

P.S. I think that listing “in prep” is bogus (everything you do is in preparation for something), but a manuscript that is actively under review is totally appropriate to list as “in submission” (although the journal should not be listed).