This presentation by Carol Muñoz Nieves was part of OpenCon 2017's Next-Generation Initiatives Advancing Open panel.
The project “Assessing Current Practices in Review, Promotion and Tenure (RPT) Across the United States and Canada” departs from the belief that the adoption of open access and other open science principles among academics would be more widespread if ‘being open’ was explicitly rewarded in career progression of university professors. In the case of Canadian and American institutions of higher education, career progression generally takes the form of reviews of faculty’s work, promotions, and the achievement of tenure—a permanent, lifetime, position at an institution that cannot be terminated, except under crucial circumstances. The importance placed on the RPT process by all faculty suggests that changes in the policy documents and guidelines that inform these practices may provide the impetus for behavioral change, leading to broader interest and adoption of open access values. In the context of a broad and ongoing project, this presentation will focus in some of the results of the content analysis of 864 RPT guidelines and forms of 129 institutions across the US and Canada. These finding will hopefully provide baseline knowledge for thinking in actualized ways of effecting change towards a greater opening of research in North American universities.