A teacher selects a high-impact factor paper as a representative work. Can it really be called a "representative work"?
When multiple people publish a paper, who is the first author, who is the second author, and what weight is assigned to each, turning collaborative relationships in research into competitive ones, how should this be addressed?
Talents with "hats" and talents without "hats" compete together. How can innovative, non-consensus ideas be protected?
...
These questions are the focus and difficulty of breaking the "Five Onlys", and they are also the issues that Zhang Rong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the party secretary of Xiamen University, has been constantly pondering. Recently, Xiamen University and 10 other units were selected as the first batch of co-construction units for education evaluation reform research bases.
"We will take breaking the 'Five Onlys' as a breakthrough in promoting comprehensive university reform. We are trying to create a better environment, allowing teachers and students to have a deeper understanding of educational principles, and guiding everyone to pay less attention to utilitarian pursuits." Zhang Rong said in an interview with the China Science Daily.
Academician Zhang Rong, Party Secretary of Xiamen University, provided by Xiamen University
Creating a Non-utilitarian Atmosphere in Small Environments
"Why make breaking the 'Five Onlys' the breakthrough point for comprehensive reform in universities?"
Breaking the "Five Onlys" essentially aims to eliminate old ideas and establish new ones, constituting a process of breaking old ecological systems and establishing new ones. The difficulty in breaking the "Five Onlys" lies not in whether a university possesses them or not, nor can it be solved by focusing on breaking a specific "only". It is, in fact, an ecological issue.
Truly breaking the "Five Onlys" requires a systematic solution, with efforts from multiple dimensions. This year's government work report mentioned the implementation of pilot comprehensive reforms in higher education, including a systematic design to break the "Five Onlys", which can be seen as macro-level policy support for breaking the "Five Onlys".
The existence of the "Five Onlys" is detrimental to universities, teachers, and students, seriously hindering the innovative development of universities and students.
The presence of the "Five Onlys" wastes scientific resources in universities, affects the acquisition of scientific achievements, and brings a series of harms to discipline construction, making it difficult for universities to make the contributions they should in scientific research.
The "Five Onlys" restrict thinking and may even lead to some academic opportunistic behaviors, and in severe cases, may induce academic misconduct.
The "Five Onlys" also lead to a situation where teachers prioritize research over teaching, which has a negative impact on student growth.
The harm caused by the "Five Onlys" is multifaceted, and the work to break them is pivotal to comprehensive university reform, making it necessary to use breaking the "Five Onlys" as a breakthrough.
"At different levels, what are the unresolved challenges in breaking the 'Five Onlys'?"
At the macro level, the development speed of universities varies. Therefore, from the top-level design of the national system to the implementation in different universities, there are inevitably issues with inconsistent goals, pace, and rhythm.
At the micro-level, behind the "Five Onlys" lies the driving force of utilitarianism, which is inseparable from some of the quick success and instant benefits mentality prevalent in society. This manifests in three aspects. Firstly, some universities are keen on producing "short, flat, and fast" papers and awards to boost rankings and acquire more resources. Secondly, some teachers view their work merely as a platform to achieve personal value, lacking lofty pursuits and love for teaching and research. Thirdly, some students pursue postgraduate education just for the degree, lacking ambitions to contribute to the scientific field. These factors to some extent provide fertile ground for the proliferation of the "Five Onlys".
"How does the tendency towards utilitarianism hinder comprehensive reform in universities?"
I've noticed that after many university policies are introduced, some individual teachers express opposition and complain about the policies privately, causing grievances for policymakers in universities. This situation arises as a result of the tendency towards utilitarianism. Sometimes, universities pursue specific reforms with strong objectives, focusing solely on the goals and neglecting the laws of running a university; some teachers worry that reforms will affect their personal income and promotion prospects, thus lacking the motivation to change.
Only when everyone diminishes their utilitarian motives, can consensus be more easily reached in reform. Therefore, universities should create a non-utilitarian atmosphere, fostering a good academic and educational ecosystem, allowing those who love science to do science, those who love scholarship to engage in scholarship, and those who love education to teach.
To achieve this goal, Xiamen University emphasizes three principles in evaluating reforms — breaking the "Five Onlys" in multiple dimensions, promoting connectivity through communication, and seeking change through simplification, aiming to establish a conducive small environment. By actively exploring and practicing the path to breaking the "Five Onlys" in the small environment and achieving certain results, it will be more conducive to promoting the establishment of a new ecological environment in the larger context.
"What needs to be 'established' in breaking the 'Only for papers'?"
"The media has questioned some practices in universities, such as breaking the 'Five Onlys' becoming 'Anything quantifiable can be an 'only'.' Could you discuss the concept of 'breaking the 'Five Onlys' in multiple dimensions'?"
Excessive pursuit of quantifiable indicators leads to more "breaking" and more "onlys", turning teachers into "hexagon warriors" besieged by various pressures, which is undoubtedly problematic.
When evaluating, managers often encounter another dilemma — the inherent differences among the evaluated individuals, each with their own characteristics and strengths, and differences between disciplines. Faced with such a complex group, if handled simplistically, it can easily lead to internal tension.
In the principle of "breaking the 'Five Onlys' in multiple dimensions" advocated by Xiamen University, "dimensions" refers to diversity, not uniqueness. For example, some senior teachers may feel aggrieved and complain because they have worked for many years but have not been promoted to professor. The feelings of older teachers can be understood; this is their lifelong pursuit, reflecting their professional heights. But statistically, not every teacher will eventually become a professor. Conflicts often arise between personal interests and educational ideals.
However, from another perspective, although this teacher may not excel in academic research, they may excel in teaching or social services. If the university can pay more attention to them in terms of corresponding treatments and position levels, giving them more respect, could it alleviate some of the anxiety among teachers?
Being multidimensional means seizing opportunities and playing to people's strengths, realizing connection and communication through the construction of diverse development channels, making the choices for growth paths more diverse and achieving the professional ideals of older teachers.
Breaking the "Five Onlys" is not simply about eliminating a certain indicator. For example, being against the "Only for papers" does not mean being against papers; it means being against the word "only". In recent years, Xiamen University has consistently opposed using "whether it can be written into an excellent paper" as the absolute standard for judging teachers' research levels. Instead, we encourage teachers to express their achievements in various forms such as papers, patents, technical reports, and policy advice based on problem-solving. We encourage substantive results, hoping that teachers can genuinely solve scientific problems and provide scientific value, rather than just publishing papers in influential journals. We emphasize representative achievements, guiding everyone not to pursue quantity blindly but to focus on quality. Instead of writing numerous small papers, we encourage teachers to concentrate and delve deeply into solving scientific challenges, completing major papers and representative works.
"China Science Daily": There has always been a call to focus on "representative works" in order to break the "only papers" mindset. For domestic universities, how can the system of representative works be utilized effectively?
Zhang Rong: Typically, when selecting representative works, teachers tend to favor articles with high impact factors. In reality, the assessment of representative works is not simply based on impact factors, but on what scientific problems are actually solved, whether the problems themselves are valuable, whether they contribute to the advancement of the field, especially their critical role.
Therefore, in addition to the representative works system, we have also specially set up a defense session, considering both the publication of papers and academic contributions. During the defense, teachers need to explain their academic contributions clearly. Academic contributions here are distinguished from paper publications and cannot be replaced by them. Because solving problems and publishing papers are related yet distinct. Sometimes, a scientific problem solved by a teacher cannot be explained in just one paper; they may need to address the problem from different perspectives and eventually form a valuable solution. By solving a valuable problem, teachers can gain recognition within the system of representative works.
Delegating Individual Assessment to Teams
"China Science Daily": Objectively evaluating an individual or a team is not easy. Relying on traditional methods such as counting papers and awards is not feasible. In the new ecology, how can individual and team evaluations be carried out effectively?
Zhang Rong: In the past, we tried many methods, such as having multiple people co-publish a paper, determining the weight of each author, which tended to create competitive relationships among authors and made scientific collaboration difficult to sustain.
Nowadays, the country advocates for organized research and adopts an evaluation method that combines team and individual assessments. Schools are trying to evaluate teams and delegate individual assessments to them. By evaluating teams through the school and individuals through the team, autonomy in talent assessment is granted to the teams. As long as the team achieves results, the purpose of school evaluation is achieved. As for the size of individual contributions, the team that interacts with them on a daily basis understands it the best. This approach effectively addresses the problems of team and individual evaluations, achieving the goal of "simplifying for change".
Delegating the evaluation authority or platform for individuals mainly relies on two paths.
First, delegating evaluation authority to colleges allows them greater autonomy in talent assessment. Colleges often have a better understanding of individuals' specific situations than schools and can make more reasonable and fair assessments.
Second, leveraging the role of small peer groups in evaluations. In the past, it was generally believed that the more objective the evaluation, the better, and there should be no conflicts of interest between the evaluator and the evaluated. We also sent teaching assessment materials for external peer review, but sometimes the evaluation results did not align with the impression of the teacher's home unit. This is because the evaluation materials provided to external peers may only consist of a few papers or achievements, leading to insufficient evaluation criteria.
In fact, in a university or a field, everyone is familiar with each other, and the most qualified to evaluate someone's performance are their peers. Therefore, we have tried to adopt an "unavoidable" attitude, allowing small peer groups to participate in evaluations and linking evaluations to the development of team leaders. The evaluation of team members by team leaders influences the individual's work status to some extent. If team leaders evaluate individuals based solely on personal preferences or other ulterior motives, the team will quickly lose cohesion and morale. Therefore, by linking the evaluation of team members with their own interests and development, team leaders become more serious and cautious.
While evaluating teams, schools also assess the leadership role of team leaders. Generally speaking, in addition to evaluating the team's performance and individual achievements, schools also pay special attention to whether the team leader has created favorable conditions for discipline development and team building.
"China Science Daily": How can a relaxed environment be created to support individuals in long-term research during their evaluation?
Zhang Rong: One thing we care about a lot is that talents engaged in research in different fields have different cycles for tackling problems. For scientific problems, some fields can solve multiple problems in a year, while others may only solve one in over ten years. How to resolve this contradiction? We adopt a method of differentiating between annual evaluations and promotion evaluations. The former ensures stability, while the latter reflects competitiveness and selection.
The daily assessment standards for teachers are relatively flexible, mainly to provide them with a more relaxed environment to engage in long-term research. Daily assessments are conducted every three or five years because most disciplines can produce results within this timeframe, avoiding situations where achievements are insufficient due to short evaluation periods, thus avoiding intellectuals losing face. In addition, since the establishment of Xiamen University by Mr. Tan Kah Kee, it has had a fine tradition of treating teachers and students well, giving them full trust, which also ensures harmonious relationships between teachers and students.
On the other hand, the promotion assessment standards for teachers are relatively high. To stand out among the teacher community, one must contribute more than others. Promoting a teacher to a professor before they have produced results can bring about more controversies in terms of fairness.
Additionally, we are exploring long-term and phased talent evaluation methods for talents engaged in basic research to encourage them to focus on research and produce original and leading innovative results.
Breaking the "only hat" mentality requires valuing non-consensual ideas
"China Science Daily": How do you view the competition between "hatted" talents and untitled talents?
Zhang Rong: When it comes to basic research, we value breakthroughs from "0 to 1," meaning original and disruptive innovations. Nowadays, project generation is based on consensus, but truly disruptive innovative ideas often come from non-consensual thoughts. "Capable" individuals are often selected through a consensus-driven process, which is why we frequently see them having an advantage over those without "caps" in competitive evaluations. This stems from a psychological inclination towards accepting validated solutions, meaning those with "caps" tend to score higher in impressions compared to those without.
However, this doesn't necessarily imply that the level of individuals without "caps" is inferior to those with "caps." Valuing non-consensus ideas and providing more growth space for individuals without "caps" allows for disruptive innovation to emerge.
In the context of academia, the distinction between individuals with and without "caps" has been a concern for many educators, given the significant differences in treatment and resources. How can we help teachers take a lighter view of "caps"?
In the realm of competition, there exists a "barrier" between individuals with and without "caps." Universities need to clear the path for talent development, shifting away from the tendency to solely base salary and resource allocation on "caps." Instead, individuals with similar achievements should receive equal support and treatment regardless of whether they have "caps" or not.
In evaluations, we implement a "three-way passage" system, facilitating internal and external communication, bridging the gap between different academic disciplines, and ensuring smooth operations from top to bottom.
For talent programs where there's a focus on STEM but not humanities, we establish corresponding systems for humanities within the university based on the external STEM talent system. This includes creating named professorships emphasizing performance and contributions, decoupling "talent titles" from faculty appointments and compensation.
Some talent programs have age restrictions, such as disallowing applications from those over 45. However, 45 is still a prime age for scientific research, during which individuals without "caps" can still achieve results comparable to those with "caps." As long as they deliver results, individuals without "caps" can receive recognition through the internal talent system.
By implementing the "three-way passage" system, we construct a talent matrix that facilitates interconnectedness, allowing individuals with and without "caps" to connect and compete on an equal footing, thereby fully unleashing the innovative vitality of talent.
