On Becoming a Scholar

Front matter

ON BECOMING A

SCHOLAR

WHAT EVERY NEW ACADEMIC NEEDS TO KNOW

SECTION I: INTRODUCTION 1 The New Scholar’s Journey Daniel Visser and Jonathan Jansen

SECTION IT: BECOMING AN ACADEMIC RESEARCHER

Lyn Holness

Publishing High-Impact Research Stella Nkomo

Writing Your First Scholarly Book Jaqueline du Toit and Neil Roos Leveraging the Research Office Gaélle Ramon

Navigating Research Ethics Lyn Horn

Soft Money and the Early-Career Scholar Valerie Mizrahi

SECTION III: BECOMING A UNIVERSITY TEACHER 8 What Does Scholarly Teaching Look Like? Jonathan Jansen

SECTION IV: BECOMING ACADEMICALLY CONNECTED 9 Research Networks Daya Reddy 10 Knowledge Networks Jess Auerbach

11 Academic Duty Jonathan Jansen vi

12 30 38 49 69 87

110 122 138

SECTION V: BECOMING AN EDITOR

12 Editing a Scholarly Journal Michael Cherry 150 13 Editing a Scholarly Book Jonathan Jansen 160 SECTION VI: BECOMING GOOD AT GAUGING YOUR PERFORMANCE

Lucia Schoombee 172 15 When and How to Submit Your First NRF Rating Application

Brenda Wingfield 184 16 Applying for Promotion Daniel Visser 202

SECTION VII: BECOMING AN ACADEMIC LEADER

Tebello Nyokong and Siphokazi Magadla 220 18 An Unexpected Duty: Academic Leadership as a Young Head of

Department Philippa Tumubweinee 229 19 Mentoring and Coaching Ahmed Wadee and Moyra Keane 236

20 Supervision and Mentorship as Building Blocks for an Academic Career Chika Sehoole 249

SECTION VIII: FINDING BALANCE

21 Academic Well-being Mothomang Diaho and Chantelle Wyley 260 22 Balancing Academic Work and Home Life Nthabaleng Rammile 275 23 The Mom Penalty Cyrill Walters 286

Acknowledgements

This book is in large part an outcome of our development work with new academics over the years and, more recently, with the Future Professors Programme (FPP) which prepares up-and-coming academics for the professioriate. Generously funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the FPP fellows have drawn our attention to areas of development and support that every new academic requires as they build their careers in higher education. Many of the contributors to this book are also involved in the preparation of future professors in the South African academy.

AEC APC AREA ARISE ASSAf CIR CSIR DHET DMP DOAJ DORA DSI EEC FFP FRD HoD HPCSA IBSS iGOLD

IOSD JIF KPI

List of Acronyms

Animal Ethics Committee

Article Processing Charge

Anticipate, Reflect, Engage and Act

African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence Academy of Science of South Africa

Considerable International Recognition

Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Department of Higher Education and Training Data Management Plan

Directory of Open Access Journals

Declaration on Research Assessment

Department of Science and Innovation

Executive Evaluation Committee

Fabrication, Falsification of Data, Plagiarism Foundation for Research Development

Head of Department

Health Professions Council of South Africa International Bibliography of the Social Sciences International Gestalt Organization and Leadership Development

International Organization and Systems Development Journal Impact Factor

Key Performance Indicators vi

LIST OF ACRONYMS

LMIC Low- and Middle-Income Countries

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

NHA National Health Act

NHREC National Health Research Ethics Council

NIH National Institutes of Health

NRF National Research Foundation

NSC National Senior Certificate

OA Open Access

ORCID Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier

POPIA Protection of Personal Information Act

QRP Questionable Research Practice

RC Research Compliance

RCR Responsible Conduct of Research

RE Research Ethics

REC Research Ethics Committee

RF Research Fairness

RFA Request for Application

RFP Request for Proposal

RI Research Integrity

RIMS Research Information Management System

RM Research Misconduct

RPL Recognition of Prior Learning

RR&I Responsible Research and Innovation

RRP Responsible Research Practice

SACNASP South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions

SAVC South African Veterinary Council

SAICA South African Institute of Chartered Accountants

SANS South African National Standards

SARIMA Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association

SARS South African Revenue Service

SFARS Soft-Funded Academic Research Staff

SIG Special Interest Group

SJR SciMago Journal Rank

SNIP Source-Normalised Impact per Paper

TT Technology Transfer

WHO World Health Organization vil

Section I Introduction

“Academic orientation at universities remains a mainly hit-and-miss affair.”

Daniel Visser and Jonathan Jansen University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University

Imagine that on your first academic appointment in a university, your head of department or dean gave you a book with the title What Every Academic Needs to Know, a guidebook of essential knowledge to launch you in your new career. The topics covered range from teaching in higher education to writing your first scholarly book to preparing for academic promotion. Such books are hard to find.

The origins of this book lie in a long incubation period over hundreds of hours of workshops, seminars, and one-on-one mentoring sessions concerned with the essential skills required for new academics entering university for the first time. They brought home to us that there is a need for a vademecum, a handy compendium of ideas, plans, and strategies for building a productive and fulfilling academic career to guide the host of academics that embark on an academic career each year.

On Becoming a Scholar is geared to help you, as a new or relatively new scholar, to construct personal futures and to find your way through the 21st-century university. It is intended to be a map, and like any map it does not contain all the contours and details of the landscape, but rather seeks to show you the important pathways and milestones of your journey. Drawing on highly experienced academics and accomplished professors in their different fields, as well as promising younger academics already on their way, this book offers a concentrated resource of practical wisdom.

Many universities have made important improvements in the orientation of new lecturers and you may have benefitted from any one of an array of programmes and initiatives that have become much more common nowadays than they were a decade or two ago. Induction programmes, teaching and learning support initiatives, and emerging researcher development strategies are now more prevalent at universitywide level and sometimes individual faculties develop systematic programmes to guide new staff in at least their teaching and research functions. Yet, in our experience, these learning opportunities are often truncated and dedicated to specific issues if they are available to staff generally; or if they are more comprehensive in nature, they tend to be resource-intensive and can thus serve only a limited number of people. And, sadly, in many universities such supportive mechanisms are wholly lacking. The result is that academic orientation for a great many new lecturers in South Africa remains mostly a hit-and-miss affair, dependent on a course offering here or there and, if you are lucky, a skilled mentor in the department or faculty. Most academics still stumble their way through the early years of their academic careers, losing valuable time and missing out on vital opportunities along the way.

The topics are broad and, cumulatively, they seek to answer the many questions that experienced mentors encounter every day in their work with new academics. The advice that they give to new academics is characterised by an emphasis on agency: ask yourself what you want to achieve and find out what is required to do so; consider what your university expects of you and work out how you can fulfil the expectations while being true to your own ambitions; and calculate the costs and benefits of your options.

The first theme is Becoming an Academic. Research is the essence of universities, the main justification for their existence. On the commandment “Now do research” hangs all else that universities undertake. This is the title of the first chapter under this rubric, in which Lyn Holness posits a three-fold injunction to start building a successful research career, as distilled from her encounters with newly appointed academics: know yourself, empower yourself, and believe in yourself. Her contribution is followed by that of Stella Nkomo, who offers advice, born of experience, about the ingredients for publishing high-impact research.

This is again followed by Jackie du Toit and Neil Roos’s insightful analysis of the varied aspects that you need to consider when publishing your first scholarly book. Next comes the contribution of Gaélle Ramon, who explains in a detailed insider-perspective how important it is to utilise the resources of a university’s research support services to advance your research career. This is followed by Lyn Horn’s comprehensive introduction, from a lived experience, to the details and importance of adhering to ethical imperatives when conducting research. In the final chapter in this section, Valerie Mizrahi shares her intimate knowledge of how that vital and oft-neglected component of modern university research, soft-funded researchers, can best navigate their way in universities that are simultaneously reliant on their efforts (and hugely so in research-intensive universities), but constrained by their budgetary policies to adequately recognise their contribution.

The second theme is Becoming a University Teacher. Teaching is the second core function of universities. It is a central duty of every academic and, in its best form, it is a deeply scholarly activity and a fulfilling experience. Here Jonathan Jansen draws on his experience in all the facets of university teaching and learning to unpack what scholarly teaching looks like, concluding that it is “rich, deep, engaging, transparent, interactive and committed”; that it is characterised both by intensive intellectual engagement in its planning, and personal engagement in its delivery to the students; that it is publicly visible; and that it is self-reflective.

The third theme is Becoming Academically Connected. To fulfil its full potential, a scholarly life must be a connected life. Daya Reddy opens this section with an explanation, based on his extensive experience, of the central role of collaboration in research, the different forms that it may take and, most importantly, how research networks can best be initiated, structured, and managed to maximum effect. He cites the evocative description of the various scholarly communities that develop between researchers as “mutual-aid societies of lifelong learners”.

The next chapter by Jess Auerbach links up with his chapter and explores how networking, that is, establishing networks of mutual support across the whole range of academic endeavour, “knowledge networks”, can benefit your career and enable you to help others. It brims with knowledgeable advice about how to go about establishing these networks in the various settings in which academics work.

In the last chapter in this section Jonathan Jansen explains the connectivity and advantages that flow from doing one’s “academic duty”, the label that he attaches to the activities expected of academics outside of their contracted deliverables (both within their universities and in the wider scholarly community), such as acting as an external examiner, providing a referee’s report for appointments or a National Research Foundation (NRF) rating application, reviewing an article for publication, serving on university committees, and similar important duties that rely for their fulfilment on an unwritten code of collegiality.

The fourth theme is Becoming an Editor. Ensuring the quality of research and communicating it effectively are vital cogs in the machine of knowledge production. Editors play a central role in ensuring both: by choosing and working with peer reviewers they ensure the quality of what is published and they give strategic direction to what finds its way into print. It is a heavy responsibility. Michael Cherry, a seasoned editor, provides the lead-in to this section with a detailed guide to editing a journal. In this contribution he considers what the advantages and disadvantages are of taking on an editorial role in a journal; what time in one’s career is most suited to taking on such a role; what it entails to be, respectively, an associate editor and an editor-in-chief, with pointed advice on how to approach the tasks that come with the job and how to handle the issues that typically arise in this context. Editing a scholarly book is a very different undertaking to being a journal editor and Jonathan Jansen draws on his own experience, starting when he was a newly minted PhD, to reveal the secrets of producing a meaningful edited volume, including a step-by-step guide to the process of bringing such a book into being.

The fifth theme is Becoming Good at Gauging Your Performance. Managerialism, driven by government policy and acquiesced in by universities, is responsible for a creeping shallowness in academic life: the production of work that does not add anything new or of much value. For instance, in South Africa the Department of Higher Education and Training’s funding formula is only minimally concerned with quality and emphasises quantity. This is fortunately countered by the NRF’s approach, which weighs rather than counts. The obsession with measuring and counting can stifle creativity and produce perverse judgements on the value of work. When Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2013, he famously told The Guardian that he “believes no university would employ him in today’s academic system because he would not be considered ‘productive’ enough”.

But there is another side to the story: the ubiquitous performance metrics do signify something if they are correctly interpreted and used - and there can be no doubt that they are used by universities and other organisations and they will have consequences for your career. From the point of view of her deep immersion in performance metrics, Lucia Schoombee provides an erudite tour through the many different metrics that feature in the academic world; and she explains how metrics, despite their controversial nature, matter in both a passive and an active way: others will use them to judge, “from afar”, your eligibility for awards and funding and your suitability for employment or promotion; but you can also use them actively to describe your scholarly impact, to frame your research identity, and to plan for the future. The most reliable exercise for the measurement of research performance in South Africa is the NRF’s rating of individual research performance. It is not free of controversy, but itis generally recognised as the best available independent assessment of the impact of research and it has been widely incorporated into universities’ procedures wherever research performance needs to be evaluated. From the vantage point of participating in the rating exercise throughout her career (both by undergoing rating and serving on the rating structures of the NRF), Brenda Wingfield provides a clear and thoughtful guide to participating in the system, explaining what all the ratings categories mean in practice, when you should apply for rating and what you should take into account when completing the rating application, interspersed with advice on what is important in your ongoing scholarly life to secure a good rating.

In the last chapter under this heading, Daniel Visser gives advice on the often emotive issue of applying for promotion to a higher rank in your university. He explains what universities expect at the different academic levels; how what you do in the time leading up to your application is crucially important to a successful application; and that you can and must take active steps to enhance your chances of promotion. Acknowledging that promotion is an arduous process, he explains that high standards are the norm internationally, and cautions that your main focus must not be on promotion, but on aiming high in the execution of all the facets of the academic job - an approach which is bound, apart from being a reward in itself, to bring the appropriate recognition.

The sixth theme is Becoming an Academic Leader. The young scholar of today will be tomorrow’s academic leader. What is the pathway to academic leadership? The four contributions in this section provide insight into what this entails. The first offering in this section is akin to a fireside conversation in the African tradition, in which an elder gives advice to younger people by sharing their life story. Siphokazi Magadla poses questions to the distinguished scientist Tebello Nyokong on how she got started in academic life, what her values are, what strategies she employed to reach the heights of success that she did, learning that it is important to “get going” with a good idea and not wait around for a big grant, to seize opportunities, to take risks and to be prepared to fail, and, importantly, to cultivate your connections with fellow scholars. As we listen in on the conversation, it becomes clear that, although the road to the pinnacle of research is often paved with serendipity, it can only be travelled if you have good ideas and are prepared to put in the hours.

In the next contribution, Philippa Tumubweinee relates her own, sudden and unexpected, elevation to the headship of adepartment and the growth of her understanding of the importance of this aspect of leadership and how it ties in with the scholarly project. Linking seamlessly to Jonathan Jansen’s contribution on academic duty, she explains that before taking on the headship she had thought that the various administrative tasks in a department and the university were quite separate from one’s intellectual project, but that she, in the course of doing the job, came to the conclusion that “the two are not separate, they are not even two sides of the same coin. They are the same thing”; and that you need an understanding of the former to construct a viable intellectual project.

But the road to self-realisation need not be travelled alone. Ahmed Wadee and Moyra Keane (sometimes speaking together and sometimes separating out their individual voices) tell of the advantages of mentoring and coaching. They explain the difference between the two forms of assistance, what each entails, how you should decide on the one or the other at different stages of your career, and how fulfilling being a mentor to others can be - noting that this activity is completely consonant with the embeddedness of mutual assistance in university culture. The final contribution in this set of narratives on becoming and being a leader is provided by Chika Sehoole, who tells of his journey from an aspiring young academic working on his PhD to being the dean of a faculty. He relates, through the lens of his own experience, how the difficulties that young scholars encounter can be overcome and how the building blocks of a complete and accomplished academic career can be put together.

He stresses, with powerful examples from his own experience, tying in with the previous chapter, the central importance of being mentored and of mentoring in an academic career.

The final theme is Finding Balance. In the first contribution Mothomang Diaho and Chantelle Wyley sketch vividly the prevalence and intensity of stress in the academic environment and they provide insight into the steps that universities, and individuals within universities, can take to counter the effects of stress and to ensure well-being. They advocate for the availability of access to preventive-care tools to manage stress, anxiety and depression, in particular the availability of coaching, which they typify as one of the most effective ways for individuals to build resilience. They share their experience as coaches of the fellows of the Future Professors Programme. They give a detailed account of their methodology, the messages that they have conveyed to the fellows and the effect of their coaching in reducing stress. They report that the coaching resulted in the fellows feeling less alone, that they appreciated being part of a community in which they felt a sense of belonging and the freedom to share experiences and to ask for advice in regard to challenging situations, which led to less self-judgement and to supportive sharing.

This section, and the book, is capped by two moving personal stories of finding balance. These stories resonate with what we learn from the chapter by Mothomang Diaho and Chantelle Wyley and provide a first-hand account of actual struggles to balance home life and work life. In the first, Nthabaleng Rammile shares her early experiences in a university position to convey to other young academics that “regardless of the challenges that they might be facing, it is possible to make it in an academic career”. She shares the hardships that she faced, the mistakes that she made, and the solutions that she found, stressing the central importance of good planning and of being connected with your colleagues and mentors to craft that crucial balance necessary to take care of yourself to ensure a fulfilling career.

Cyrill Walters titles her contribution “The Mom Penalty”. Like Nthabaleng Rammile she started her career as a young mother and her story emphasises the hard fact that whatever advances have been made towards ensuring equal opportunities for women, they continue, especially when they have children, to face a particularly steep uphill in their academic journey. Her description of her serene existence during a residency at Emory University, with excellent healthcare for her and her unborn child, while working on her doctorate stands in sharp contrast to the picture that she paints of her postdoc years, alone with her son at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. That period completely changed the meaning of “home” for her: it was, she says, more “a living-at-work situation than working-from-home situation”. Her vivid description of the stresses that this situation engendered will resonate with all young mothers in the process of establishing themselves as academics while contending with impossibly onerous and conflicting demands. She pays special tribute to her mentor, who played a central role in her making the right choices at the right time and in finding balance. This adds to the constant theme, throughout all the contributions, that mentorship is of the utmost importance in a successful scholarly life; and brings us to the many recurring themes in the book.

A variety of important, shared insights emerge from the different contributions. A particularly strong insight is that an academic life is a shared life. Without gainsaying the competitive element in academia, it is abundantly clear that the support rendered by peers to each other, the mentoring by more experienced scholars to younger colleagues; and the undertaking of mutual tasks, that is, the scholarly duty of doing the multitude of chores that academics undertake at each other’s request, make the academic world go round. Sharing experience does not take away from the person doing the sharing, while it enriches and empowers the recipient. That this is such a prominent feature of academic life can only give comfort to you as a young scholar - and it should be the trigger for you to seek out the mentors and empathetic colleagues who can always be found if one only cares to look; and also to make use of the formal support that universities offer, whether it be to assist you in developing a research career; or in becoming a good teacher; or in maintaining your physical and psychological health. As you receive these benefits, let the generosity with which they are given be an inspiration to you to continue this tradition of collegiality.

A further insight, that ties in with the first one, is that the scholarly community is a worldwide one and thatitis as important to embed oneself as a citizen of the global academic community as it is to be a good citizen of your own university. This correlates with the strong headlining, in so many of the chapters, of the importance of curating your visibility, especially by using the variety of tools that modern technology makes available; and with the importance of creating networks that bring many, often unexpected, benefits.

Yet another insight that pushes to the surface on reading the contributions in the book is that in the different chapters one sees a strong convergence of the attributes that are considered important for a young academic to cultivate: know yourself, be true to your values, be realistic, cherish your reputation, and aim high. The message is that the lifeblood of universities consists of authentic contributions by the best aiming to do their best, serving the greater good of society. The contributions in the book do not shy away from the weaknesses in the university system as it exists today, but the focus is on how best young academics can conduct themselves in an admittedly imperfect academic world.

Our book is aimed primarily at a South African audience because such general guidance as there is in the international literature mostly does not take account of important aspects of this country’s academic landscape, which is not to say that audiences beyond our shores will not also benefit from the insights collected here. And, although the book’s primary audience is younger academics in their early careers, those with years of experience in higher education may also benefit from some of the ideas contained in this book, as would mid-career professionals who enter university teaching later in life, professional support staff who want to change course to an academic career, and colleagues have been stuck with overloaded teaching commitments and now want to break into serious research for the first time.

We dedicate this book to all future professors - wherever they may be.

Section II Becoming an Academic Researcher “When in doubt, write.”

“Now Do Research’: Getting Started as a Novice Researcher

Lyn Holness University of Cape Town

Many people, especially those with little or no experience of academia, would identify with this dictionary definition of a lecturer: “a person who gives lectures, especially in higher education”. Those who are immersed in academia, however, know that this is only a partial description of the contemporary academic role. We soon discover that the term “lecturer” embraces (at its most basic) a three-fold portfolio, broadly described (and with institutional nuances) as teaching and learning, research, including Master’s and PhD supervision and community interaction/ social responsiveness.

My experience in working in a mentoring capacity with new, and mostly young, academics is that many are initially mortified by the expectation that they “do research”. The reality is that for most people new to academia, actual research experience will probably be limited to having completed their own degrees - the ones that qualified them for academic appointment. Many new appointees, whilst aware of research expectations, do not know what the research starting blocks look like, let alone trying to get out of them! Yet the pressure is there from day one, and the prospect sometimes daunting.

In 2003 I was briefed with starting a programme at my institution specifically designed to support new academics in embarking on a research trajectory. The aim was clear: to set colleagues on the road to establishing robust research profiles by developing personal research skills, producing quality research outputs, and for them to access the resources necessary for this. My own background is in the humanities/ social sciences, and very soon we had someone with a science background on board as well, to establish a parallel stream of support for those in the science disciplines. There is obviously common ground in the two streams, but also significant differences. This chapter will have specific relevance for those in the broad humanities/social sciences disciplines. It is observations and lessons from personal experience of getting alongside individuals on their research journeys, over a 14-year period, that I would like to distil and share with you in this chapter.

To get our conversation underway, let me pose the simple question I asked myself early on, and whose answer has morphed a bit (or rather, been honed) over the years. I asked it in order to clarify for myself the role of research in academia, notably from the vantage point of the novice academic. Here is the question: What is the function of the research dimension of academia? In answer to it, this is more or less what I came up with. I think that, broadly speaking, a significant part of the academy’s role is to advance knowledge, but also to have a transformative impact on individuals and especially on society. Requiring both basic and applied research, this role is paralleled by, and integral to the personal formation and growing the disciplinary competence of those doing research in the various disciplines.

That last phrase, with newly appointed academics in mind, is arguably the most significant: growing the disciplinary compliance of those doing research in the various disciplines. Its significance lies partly in the fact that many novice academics are “bewitched” from the start by the idea of interdisciplinary research. We will return to this topic later, for it is an important one with many facets and nuances. Others yield to the temptation to flit from one area of interest within their discipline to another, without putting down roots anywhere. This is bound to happen early on to some extent, for not many people take up their first academic post clear about the area in which they want to invest their time, energy and intellect. But this period should not be enduring. So, for now, my mantra is this: get yourself grounded in your own discipline, trying to identify a niche area within it for which you can aspire to become, in time, the go-to person, with recognised competence in the field. Only then will you be equipped to venture, where this is appropriate, into dialogue and cooperation with other disciplines, and with different fields within your own discipline.

For the purposes of this conversation, I have tried to distil the essence of first and subsequent meetings I have had with newly appointed academic staff members, anxious for guidance about doing research. In retrospect, the areas we covered in those initial meetings about getting going with research were premised on a simple three-fold injunction: know yourself, empower yourself, believe in yourself. Each of these presumes a realistic self-assessment.

To know yourself includes acknowledgement of both personal strengths and weaknesses. It means to identify skills gaps, inadequacies in relation to research, and possibly fear of and resistance to research - and then being pragmatic in finding ways to get over these hurdles. One person may have a tendency to avoid things that threaten her or him; another might have a mental block or resentment towards the obligation to do research. Someone else may be lacking in self-confidence, or own up to being a procrastinator. Yet another person might be ignorant as to how to access funding for a project. A common reason for delay in “getting going” is having no idea of the area in which you would like to do research. And this causes stress and even panic. To identify and acknowledge things about yourself, addressing areas that need attention and building on known personal strengths, is an important early milestone in the research journey.