New career advancement patterns in Italian universities: productivity, age and ranks of positions (original) (raw)

The new Habilitation, established in Italy in 2010 and launched in 2012, was introduced to filter eligible candidates in the competition for associate and full professorships. Its purpose is to limit agreements between colleagues to make academic appointments on the basis of patronage and instead set minimum conditions based on scholarly output. This study draws on a national dataset in four disciplinary fields – Physics; Engineering; Law; Economics: two being bibliometric and two non-bibliometric. The main hypothesis is that a candidate’s current position and seniority (years after last promotion) should play no part in determining the award of the Habilitation. Only indicators of output should be considered by committees. After controlling for such indicators as publications, affiliation with committee members, age, gender, current position and time since last promotion, data show better predictors of attaining the habilitation to be: 1) quality of scientific output (H index and a...