A comparative investigation of academic promotion criteria in higher

Academic promotion is a major mechanism for the maintenance and enhancement of quality in higher education and research activities. Considering the current revision process of the national academic promotion procedures for faculty members at universities and research centers in Iran, a comparative investigation of promotion practices in the academic institutions of other countries can contribute to more profoundly informed perspectives of the process of revising these procedures. The present study investigates the promotion criteria of the newly proposed procedures in comparison with the academic promotion criteria of 35 universities of Turkey, South Africa, Ireland, Lebanon, New Zealand, Canada, US, UK and Australia. These criteria were extracted from documents available on the official websites of the universities under investigation. They were grouped into three categories of criteria concerning education, research and services. The three sets of criteria were then compared with their corresponding categories in the newly proposed national academic promotion procedures. On the basis of these comparisons, suggestions are provided to policy makers with the aim of contributing to the enrichment of the promotion criteria and the procedures under development.