Resolution 210 regarding collaborative scholarship
Passed: December 19, 2025
Posted: October 2024
Proposed resolution regarding Collaborative Scholarship
Sponsor: Committee of Academic Freedom and Professional Status of Faculty
Background: When faculty provide an intellectual contribution to scientific or social enquiry led by other investigators, it is considered collaborative scholarship. The tradition at Cornell University is to recognize individual accomplishments for promotion with tenure. However, faculty do provide leadership in cooperative or multidisciplinary teams that may work with public and industry partners to achieve their goals, such as by serving as co-primary investigators on proposals. Collaborative scholarship of this type is being increasingly recognized and even required by federal and non-federal funding agencies for successful grant submissions. We conducted a survey of different units at Cornell University and found that collaborative scholarship is generally valued and even expected of individual faculty in certain units for successful promotion to tenure. However, there is a general lack of clear guidance for faculty performing collaborative scholarship on the criteria required for promotion.
The resolution:
Whereas collaborative scholarship brings diversity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and effective solutions to complex problems, strengthens our standing as a research university, and enhances our ability to obtain prestigious high-level funding.
Whereas insufficient guidance on the criteria required for successful promotion is provided to faculty with an expectation for participating in collaborative scholarship.
Be it resolved that Cornell University recognizes the value of collaborative scholarship and considers engagement in such scholarship as tenurable activity, commensurate with the faculty member’s distribution of effort in individual and collaborative scholarship.
Be it further resolved that the weighting of collaborative scholarship in tenure decisions will be determined by each unit; more weighting may be applied for a leadership role in collaborative scholarship.
Be it further resolved that participation in collaborative scholarship may be an expectation for an individual faculty member but is not a requirement of all faculty within a unit or department.
Be it further resolved that individual units or departments support those faculty pursuing collaborative research and generate written guidelines on criteria required for promotion for faculty engaging in collaborative scholarship and for internal and external reviewers evaluating these faculty. When generating these guidelines, units should consider equity across stage of career, workload, job expectations, and title. Guidelines should include information on how faculty document and provide evidence of their role in collaborative scholarship and how their contributions to collaborative scholarship will be weighted in promotion decisions.
Be it further resolved that these guidelines be widely promoted within the unit or department and uniformly applied for promotion purposes.
4 thoughts on "Resolution 210 regarding collaborative scholarship"
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To my reading, this proposal mostly serves as top-down encouragement to unit heads to carefully consider the value of collaborative research. It won’t impose any requirements, and units will still be allowed to make the decisions that work for their fields.
This seems a very reasonable ask by those who have found it difficult to obtain guidance on the value of collaborative work in their field, and I would encourage all to vote ‘YES’ on this proposal.
The resolution as listed appears to be focused on tenure track promotions and not RTE ones. For many RTE, collaborative scholarship is vital to the success of their own programs. Need to include promotion and reappointment of RTE faculty in any written guidance that is prepared.
I appreciate the spirit of the resolution but have a number of questions. I think it’s a good idea to ask departments and fields to communicate clear standards around collaborative research and tenure. However, I don’t think it makes sense across the board to resolve that “Cornell University recognizes the value of collaborative scholarship and considers engagement in such scholarship as tenurable activity.”
The status of collaborative research varies quite a bit across fields, and in book-based fields like mine the book monograph is an essential requirement for tenure. Even if my colleagues were to decide that a co-authored work might “count,” other scholars in the field certainly would not. Cornell faculty do not determine themselves whether a colleague meets the standard of tenure, and evaluations by other experts in the field are a crucial part of a tenure dossier. I could still see the value of the department preparing guidelines about collaborative research, which in my discipline might take the form of co-authored articles or edited collections. Guidelines could specify how these compare to single-authored works, how many might “count” toward tenure, etc. But I think a blanket affirmation of collaborative research goes too far and is not realistic or appropriate for many fields.
I am not eligible for tenure at Cornell, as I am RTE faculty (and my fields are not represented at Cornell as tenurable), but as a scholar in the humanities, I am writing to express my support for this proposal.
Collaborative scholarship is especially important in the humanities as it allows for collaborative writing, which allows for collaborative thinking, knowledge sharing, and learning, all of which enhances scholarship. And collaborative scholarship promotes cross-disciplinary collaboration.
As a rhetoric and writing studies scholar, I have engaged published work with scholars fields as diverse as organic chemistry, 19th century European history, early American literature, social work, education leadership, linguistics, and speech-language pathology, and each time, my thinking, scholarship, and writing has been indelibly enriched.
I fully support this resolution.