Objective: Critics of the promotion and tenure system contend that promotion and tenure may lead to a decline in research productivity (“dead wood phenomena”) by those faculty. To assess this perception, we compiled the publications and grants at the time of application for promotion, and again through 2017 for the same faculty following promotion and/or tenure.
 Methods: Promotion documents at a school of pharmacy at a public Midwestern university were assessed. Mean publication rates and grant dollars per year per faculty member were compared to the same group of faculty (n=13) pre and post-promotion.
 Results: At the time of promotion to associate professor, mean numbers of total publications per year per faculty in the pharmacy practice department were 1.1, compared to 1.4 post-promotion. For pharmaceutical sciences department faculty, corresponding means were 5.0 and 4.1, respectively. At the time of promotion to full professor, mean numbers of total publications per year for pharmacy practice faculty were 7.0, compared to 7.2 post-promotion. For pharmaceutical sciences faculty, corresponding means were 3.5 and 4.7, respectively. For grant activity, both associate professors and full professors increased the mean total dollars per year from pre-promotion to post-promotion for both departments.
 Conclusion: Research productivity at this school of pharmacy continues to be either maintained or increased since promotion for the collective group of faculty. This evidence runs counter to the perception that promotion and tenure may lead to decreased scholarly productivity. The study provides a roadmap for other schools/colleges to quantify research productivity and make comparisons to national mean levels reported in the literature. 
  
 Article Type: Original Research 3545 innovpharm Innovations in Pharmacy Innov Pharm University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing PMC8051897 8051897 8051897 34007589 10.24926/iip.v10i4.2153 Impact of Achieved Tenure and Promotion on Faculty Research Productivity at a School of Pharmacy Scott David M BPharm, MPH, PhD 1 ✉ Kelsch Michael P PharmD 1 Friesner Daniel L PhD 1 1 School of Pharmacy, College of Health Profession,North Dakota State University ✉ Corresponding author: David M. For grant activity, both associate professors and full professors increased the mean total dollars per year from pre-promotion to post-promotion for both 4 – 7 One perception is that, once a faculty member achieves tenure and/or promotion, he/she experiences a perverse incentive to decrease his/her efforts in one or more areas of academic work. 4 – 6 However, such perceptions largely anecdotal, and little systematic evidence exists to substantiate whether these assertions are pervasive or idiosyncratic. Scholarship may receive more weight than teaching and service activities in the promotion and tenure process because the outcomes of research/scholarship (grants, journal articles, etc.) are more easily quantified. Critics of the tenure system in higher education often assert that once faculty are tenured and/or promoted (especially to the rank of full professor), the incentives to maintain previous levels of scholarly productivity declines, called the “dead wood phenomena”. 4 – 6 If senior and/or tenured faculty are less research productive, but enjoy greater salaries and job security than less senior faculty, there is an inequitable redistribution of institutional resources to these faculty. 7 Moreover, the Thompson and Harrison study suggests that department-level publication statistics may mask the dead wood phenomena, especially if the department houses a small number of prolific scholars. Conducting this assessment within a single school of pharmacy exhibits several advantages consistent with a natural experiment. Teaching loads are standardized via allocation by the school’s administration; individuals have a well-defined area of practice and a workload procedural document that codifies teaching expectations (with regard to both quality and quantity) regardless of promotion and tenure. Thus, focusing solely on research productivity does not automatically bias the results should faculty become less productive post tenure and/or promotion in their teaching and service activities. A process also exists that, given budgetary approval, allows non-tenure-track faculty to convert to tenure-eligible positions. These factors are important, because they allow a degree of comparability across different departments and faculty appointments within the school of pharmacy. Study design The study design is primarily descriptive in nature since this is a single site evaluation. Starting in 2008, information on the type of position, academic rank, and scholarly productivity was collected for all faculty employed in the school of pharmacy. While the focus of this research is on scholarship, the authors emphasize that such activities should also be conducted for other areas of evaluation (including teaching, service and clinical practice). The authors acknowledge that service and teaching responsibilities may impact scholarly productivity, especially if they do not remain static or not allocated consistently across faculty, and were not quantified in this study. Indeed, some faculty (post promotion and/or tenure) intentionally shift the relative balance of their time towards teaching or service (or both) at the expense of research. The quantity of grants, as well as the amount of grant funding, is especially problematic as a measure of the quantity of scholarly output. There are two major confounding issues with grants. The first is that grants are used to fund research, and are actually inputs, not outputs, of the research process. Because inflows of funds do not automatically and obviously translate into specific outputs, they are imperfect measures of long-term research productivity. Second, a single grant application may lead to multiple years of funding.