Lights and Shadows in the Accreditation Process for the Professoriate in Spain: The Specific Case of Education-Related Academic Areas (2018-2022)

Abstract

In recent decades, the competitive selection and promotion processes for university teaching staff have placed the evaluation premium on the accumulation of research papers in high-impact journals in WoS and Scopus. This paper explores whether this evaluation policy in Spain has incentivized and shaped new publication patterns and behaviors by academics. A descriptive analysis of data from the ACADEMIA 3.0 program in the period 2018-2022 is presented, focused on the category of University Professor and the Education-related areas. Results reveal the evolution of success rates over time, discrepancies in those rates according to the knowledge area and to the specific higher education institution, among other analyses. One of the main findings is a strong tendency to publish articles in journals clearly away from any specific field of educational research. These belong to new publishing companies such as MDPI, which allow for swift review and publication in open access while also being positioned in the top quartiles of WoS and Scopus. Finally, the paper points to the methodological limitations of the study due to data availability and encourages to carry out new studies that can help improve the current evaluation system of academic staff in Spanish Higher Education.