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Table 3 Codes relevant to the faculty member promotion regulations

From: Challenges and solutions for the promotion of medical sciences faculty members in Iran: a systematic review

Main category

Subcategory

Codes

The general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members

Challenges to the general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members

• Low emphasis on innovation and creativity and dominance of the quantitative attitude

• Failure to pay attention to the differences between universities and disciplines

• Weakness in modeling global experiences

• The inefficiency of control structures of faculty’s scientific recession

• Administrative function instead of focusing on the comprehensive promotion of education, research, and scientific and cultural services

• Difficulty in measuring abstract concepts

• Failure to respond to the conditions of specific groups (women, general education groups)

Solutions for the general content of the regulations for the promotion of faculty members

• Changing the University Board of Assessors periodically

• Establishment of a consulting and facilitation unit for the preparation of the promotion’s documents

• Implementing symposiums to exchanging views between the supervisory boards of different universities

• Close monitoring of the assessment committees over the performance of the selected faculty committees

• Setting rules governing the executive process of reviewing promotion cases

• Supervising the composition of distinguished board members (diversity of fields of study, presence of women in these boards, different academic degrees)

• Developing appropriate laws to reduce conflicts of interest

The cultural, disciplinary, and social activities

Challenges to cultural, educational and social activities

• Lack of transparency in the indicators of cultural activity and ambiguity in scoring them

• Narrowing cultural activities to participation in specific educational courses

• Lack of reflection of priorities for changing organizational and social culture

• Neglect of some cultural activities related to the Comprehensive Plan and Islamization of Universities Document

• Neglect of the development and promotion of the humanities

Solutions for cultural, disciplinary, and social activities

• Creating the necessary facilities for cultural activities

• Setting criteria for awareness of faculty members’ abilities, capabilities and interests

• Providing facilities for scientific and professional servicing to the public

• Playing a role in programs related to promoting security or environmental protection and convergence of education and research with moral and spiritual education at universities

Educational activities

Challenges to educational activities

• Confrontation of educational and research activities instead of reinforcing each other

• Limiting educational activities to the number of required teaching units

• Homogeneity and use of identical tools and forms of assessment

• The inefficiency of teaching quality evaluation systems

Solutions for educational activities

• Attention to the breadth and variety of educational activities

• Emphasis on the use of new educational technologies

• Emphasis on education based on up-to-date and valid science

• Utilizing a combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods and using multiple resources

• Matching a particular share of promotion indicators with the mission, requirements, special conditions, scientific resources and facilities of each university of medical sciences

• Assessing the role of the individual in promoting the relevant department

• Allocation of points for activities related to social accountability and community education

Research-technology activities

Challenges to research-technology activities

• Significant emphasis on research activities compared to other activities

• High emphasis on science production in the form of ISI papers

• Encouraging faculty members to produce papers regardless of the needs of the society

• Paying attention to quantity instead of quality in papers

• The complex situation of commercialization and knowledge production

• Inequalities in the use of grants and research funds

Solutions for research-technology activities

• Orientation towards meeting the research needs of the society

• Looking at research activities from the perspective of a teacher and not just from the perspective of research as an entity separate from education

• Encouraging the absorption of research funding from outside the university

• Emphasis on following a specific research line

• Evaluating the quality of the articles by an impartial expert team

• Emphasis on convergence and interdisciplinary activity

• Assigning scores to new ways of disseminating knowledge

• Playing a role in advancing and creating change in the relevant scientific field

• Introducing scientific fields to the society in the relevant scientific ground

Scientific-executive activities

Challenges to scientific-executive activities

• Ease in providing executive privileges and reducing their effectiveness in encouraging faculty members to accept executive responsibility

• Ignoring the social status of faculty members

• Ignoring the tension and stress caused by executive responsibilities

• Ignoring the quality of one’s performance in executive responsibility

• Ignoring the lower chances of women in holding executive positions compared with men

Solutions for scientific-executive activities

• Emphasis on the quality of executive responsibility

• Playing a role in facilitating and promoting the functions and achieving the goals of the university