Researchers repeatedly cite career advancement as a key incentive for their practices and behaviours. This is critical to understanding the pace of change in scholarly communications, as those researchers inclined to innovate or experiment with new forms of research outputs, methodologies, or communication styles risk being penalised by the evaluation system used by many research institutions that are slow to adapt to the modern research environment. Sarah Slowe, Gareth Cole, Jon Tennant and Charlie Rapple are gathering data on current promotion and hiring guidelines used throughout Europe and will analyse how these compare to researchers’ attitudes of “publish or perish” and the impact factor as the key determining factor for career advancement. A number of recommendations will follow from this analysis, with the ultimate aim of fostering a more informed evaluation, promotion, and recruitment system for researchers
