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Faculty Rules and Procedures

Faculty Rules and Procedures

Recruiting at the Faculty of Economics and Statistics follows several guiding principles:

International Compatibility and Competitiveness

The Faculty of Economics and Statistics commits to international standards with respect to the qualification of graduates and employees at all career stages. We aim at (i) an international inflow into our study programs and successful placements of graduates; (ii) competitive hires at all career stages and successful career paths of our early stage researchers; (iii) an international visibility of our Faculty at all stages of the
international job market.

Transparency

The Faculty of Economics and Statistics commits to international standards with respect to the internal and external transparency and accountability of all hiring processes. All members of the faculty should be part of the discussion on personal planning and participate in the corresponding decision making processes. The organization of hiring procedures has to guarantee an appropriate participation of all groups within the faculty (regarding research methods, career stages, and organizational units).

Diversity

The Faculty of Economics and Statistics aims at an improved diversity of graduates and employees. To this end, our curricula, the organization of our study programs, and our hiring procedures have to accommodate and attract a diverse set of students and employees.

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Approved by the Faculty Council May 2023

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Independence

All professors (full and associate) according to paragraphs 98 and 99 UG are independent members of an institute. The direct superior is the head of department. Positions for PhDs and non-tenured Postdocs are assigned to a mentor (Pate) and a professor who acts as a supervisor and direct superior.Assistant professors on the tenure-track are assigned to a mentor.

1. Hiring Procedures

Following the above-described guiding principles, the Faculty of Economics and Statistics commits to the following recruiting procedures:

  1. All job offers need to be compatible with the international job market and have to be such that several high quality applications (in particular with diverse characteristics) can be expected.
  2. The field for tenured and tenure-track academic jobs have to be approved by the dean and the faculty council.All academic job offers are advertised on international websites (e.g., Inomics and/or EJM).
  3. For all job offers, active search is intended to induce a diverse set of applicants whenever possible.
  4. Tenured and tenure track jobs are allocated by committees representing all institutes, research centers or areas, and employment categories (Kurien); the composition of hiring committees needs approval by the dean and the faculty council.

2. Internal Hires

The Faculty of Economics and Statistics acknowledges that mobility, international networking, and a diversity of international experiences are crucial for the success of the faculty and competitive profiles of individual researchers. On this background non-tenured positions for PhD students and postdocs can be either utilized to offer our own graduates the resources to develop a competitive profile and launch successful applications on the international job market or temporarily attract graduates from other universities to be prepared for their next career step. The faculty aims at a good mixture of internal and external hires for these types of positions.
For tenure-track or tenured positions, the faculty commits to hiring candidates that crucially enrich the faculty with their experience of mobility and their own international academic network. To this end, including candidates holding a PhD or habilitation from Innsbruck University and/or are employed by Innsbruck University in a shortlist (Besetzungsvorschlag) needs to be justified. Next to an outstanding qualification for the job, reasons can be comparable job-offers
or multiple inclusions in shortlists for similar positions at other universities. Specifically, it needs to be established that the candidate has experienced  significant academic mobility (e.g., by employment at another academic institution for a year or more) and is well-connected in the international scientific community.

3. Impartiality

Following paragraph 7 AVG (”Verwaltungsorgane haben sich der Ausübung ihres Amtes zu enthalten und ihre Vertretung zu veranlassen .. wenn .. wichtige Gründe vorliegen, die geeignet sind, ihre volle Unbefangenheit in Zweifel zu ziehen”), the faculty commits to the following rules regarding the membership in a hiring or habilitation committee. A committee member fails impartiality whenever he/she is/was

  1. related (up to 2nd degree) or married or in a partnership,
  2. in an employment relationship with the candidate over the past 3 years
  3.  supervisor of the candidate’s PhD thesis
  4. a co-author and/or close collaborator of the candidate over the last three years

Members and referees of habilitation committees have to be impartial according to criteria 1-4. For hiring committees, a committee member satisfying at least one of the criteria 1-4 has to declare herself/himself in the first meeting that considers the corresponding application and has to abstain from voting when the committee decides upon further consideration of the corresponding candidate. If the candidate is considered any further, the committee member is to be substituted whenever possible. Otherwise, the committee has to take all necessary measures to ensure that a fair hiring process with equal opportunities for all candidates is guaranteed.


4. Diversity

To systematically integrate the consideration of diversity into faculty policy, the Faculty of Economics and Statistics commits to the following set of rules:

  1. All job openings are accompanied by an appropriate active search for suitable candidates.
  2. Job openings have to be such that a suitable set of applicants can be expected.
  3. Decisions are taken on the basis of the academic age (according to the rules of the European Research Council) 1

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1 1I.e., discounting proportionally for part-time appointments, subtracting a minimum of 18 months for maternity with a corresponding extension if the actual leave had been longer, subtracting paternity leaves, and discounting for long-term illness or national services.

Positions with tenure-track will be advertised internationally and allocated in accordance with the procedures of the international job market. The criteria will be applied to the performance of the candidate over a period of five years before applying for tenure (or the period after signing the qualification agreement (Qualifizierungsvereinbarung) if this period exceeds five years because the assessment period has been prolonged by the tenure commission (Qualifizierungsbeirat). All criteria are to be understood as minimal requirements. Candidates are encouraged to exceed these criteria whenever possible - which can be considered necessary if the candidate aspires to apply for full professorships.

Research

1. Habilitation: Candidates are expected to successfully habilitate with a venia agreed upon in the qualification agreement.

2. Top quality publications: The criteria do not introduce weights to publications that control for the number of co-authors. When applying for tenure, candidates have to argue convincingly that they provided a pivotal contribution to the publications.2

  • Economics: When submitting an application for tenure, the candidate needs to document three publications in Category A journals (as indicated in the habilitation criteria). For tenure-track positions in economics, two publications have to be in a Category A journal in economics and one publication can be in a Category A journal general science or a Category A journal in another discipline.
  • Interdisciplinary: For positions with an interdisciplinary denomination, three publications in Category A are needed and the distribution over economics, general sciences, and other disciplines can be specified in the qualification agreement.
  • Statistics: When submitting an application for tenure, the candidate needs to fulfill the habilitation criteria, i.e., eight publications in peer-reviewed journals with at least four in Category 1 journals. The substitution options described in the habilitation criteria may be applied.

3. Independence and future perspective: The candidate is able to further develop and give new direction to his or her field in a fully independent manner. The candidate demonstrates research progress, international networking (e.g., conference presentations, co-authorship,
joint projects), and a competitive research pipeline, both in quality and quantity in comparison to her/his peer-group.

4. Grant acquisition: The candidate has obtained one substantive research grant (stand-alone FWF or OeNB or comparable with at least 100,000 EUR volume based on a peer-review process) during the period specified in the qualification agreement. The application must
have been written independently, with the candidate as the main applicant. The criterium is also satisfied if the funding agency considers the project fundable (C1 or C2 category at FWF) but rejected for budgetary reasons.

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2  2If this requirement is not met, revision requests by journal editors in round 2 or higher can contribute to a positive evaluation. Documents such as a letter from an editor positively indicating the likelihood of publication, and referee reports of a paper that is in an advanced stage of possible acceptance should be submitted for consideration.

Teaching

1. The candidate has a strong teaching record, participates in course evaluations on a regular basis, and can demonstrate experience in teaching a variety of courses at different levels as well as the ability to act as a supervisor for individual students.

2. The candidate has initiated and developed the set-up, content, and didactics for at least one course that has been held and evaluated several times.

Administration and academic citizenship

1. The candidate has been actively involved in organisational and/or administrative duties, such as organising seminars, taking part in educational marketing activities, membership of a body of self-administration, etc.

2. The candidate actively participates in activities organised by the faculty and/or the institutes.

1. Criteria for Internal Calls as in paragraph 99(4) UG

The Faculty of Economics and Statistics commits to the concept that major career steps should be the result of competitive procedures. To this end, the faculty only agrees to offer internal calls for full professorships following 99(4) (UG) if the candidate received an offer of a position or a grant indicating her/his suitability for a full professorship at UIBK (e.g., an offer of a full professorship at an internationally competitive university, START price by the FWF or comparable prices by ERC or national funding agencies) as the result of a competitive process.

1. Preface

The legal requirements for a habilitation are specified by the Austrian University Law (UG) and the bylaws (Satzung) of the University. The following criteria for cumulative habilitations only resemble a guideline for applicants. If the criteria are not met, submitting a habilitation is not recommended. In any case, the decision on any submitted habilitation is formed by the habilitation committee as an independent commission on the basis of external referees, and - in a last step - by the rectorate.

2.  Evaluation of Journals

To evaluate the quality of publications that are part of a cumulative habilitation, we refer to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) provided by Clarivate Web of Science. For convenience, the category assigned to a journal is the best category in the respective JCR category a journal reached either at the time of initially submitting an article or publishing the article. For a publication to count, a letter of acceptance by the editor suffices.


2.1 Evaluation in Economics

Journals are differentiated as follows:

  • AA: Top 5 journals in economics (American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy).
  • Category A journals in economics: A journal ranked among the Top-50 according to the invariant method in Ham et al. (2022)1 not in AA.
  • Category A journals general science: A journal in the top-decile of the JCR ‘Multidisciplinary Science’ as ranked by the five-year average article influence score.2
  • Category A journals in other disciplines: A journal in the top-decile of a JCR category as ranked by the five-year average article influence score.
  • Category 1 & 2 journals in economics: Journals from the SSCI JCR ‘Economics’ that are neither AA nor A and ranked above or below the median according to the five-year average article influence score are labelled Category 1 and 2, respectively. Depending on the habilitation, other JCR categories can be considered if the focus of the publication is in economics (or the corresponding venia). It is the task of the habilitation commission and external referees to assess whether the (papers of a cumulative) habilition has/have a focus in economics (or the corresponding venia).

2.2 Evaluation in Statistics

Journals are differentiated as follows:

  • AA: Top 5 journals in statistics (Annals of Applied Statistics, Annals of Statistics, Biometrika, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B.).
  • Category 1 & 2 journals in statistics: Journals from the SSCI JCR ‘Statistics and Probability’ that are not AA and ranked above or below the median according to the five-year average article influence score are labelled Category 1 and 2, respectively.

    Depending on the habilitation, further JCR categories can be considered if the focus of the publication is in statistics/statistical methods (or the corresponding venia). It is the task of the habilitation commission and external referees to assess whether the (papers of a cumulative) habilition has/have a focus in statistics/statistical methods (or the corresponding venia).

3. Number of Papers

A cumulative habilitation consists of at least eight publications in peer-reviewed journals. At least four publications have to be in Category 1, except when the following substitution rules in the respective field apply.

3.1. Substitution in economics

One publication in AA (A) counts as four (two) publications in Category 1. E.g., if a habilitation contains one publication ranked as A, only six more publications are needed (two at least Category 1 or A and four at least Category 2). Furthermore, six publications ranked as Category 1 or A are also regarded as sufficient.

3.2 Substitution statistics

One publication in AA counts as two publications in Category 1. At most one publication in Category 1 can be substituted by two publications in Category 2. E.g., the required eight publications can consist of four publications in Category 2 and one of the following combinations:
four publications in Category 1; one AA publication and two in Category 1; three publications in Category 1 plus two more publications in Category 2; one AA, one in Category 1, and two in Category 2 etc.


3.3 Co-authorship

The criteria do not introduce weights to publications that control for the number of co-authors. But it is recommended that at least one publication in a cumulative habilitation is single-authored. In this case, the number of required publications is seven rather than eight. Quality-based substitution as described above remains unaltered. If papers are co-authored, the candidate needs to specify her/his contribution to the publication. A publication only counts if the candidate can convincingly argue that they provided a pivotal contribution to the paper.

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1 John Ham, Julian Wright, Ziqiu Ye (2022). Documenting and Explaining the Dramatic Rise of the New Society Journals in Economics. Working Paper, November 28, 2022. https://app.scholarsite.io/s/1990b5 .

2 For 2022 these are the journals Nature, Science, Nature Human Behavior, Nature Communication, National Science Review, Science Advances, and PNAS.

Journal Lists

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