Yes indeed it is that time of year again where more senior faculty get loads of requests for promotion and tenure reference/review/assessment letters.

Some schools have rules like that a majority of the letters must come from “peer,” “higher,” “private” or “public” universities often with combinations of those terms arranged in different ways! Others require letters be written only from a select set of senior faculty from a certain set of universities that are in a discipline whether or not they know anything about the research area of the candidate.

Then comes the fun one: what is the magic combination of quantity and quality? How does a letter writer figure that one out? Hence, the title of this post!!! I have had some recent discussions on this question and as usual I have looked at some data?

More to share with you on this as the week goes on!