What is considered academic work? I.e. what is society paying us (university professors) for? What should be considered as criteria for academic promotion and hiring?
It seems to me that there has been a continuing narrowing in the way that the academic establishment is answering this question. It is getting closer to being narrowly defined as “international journal publications” (in CS, also conference publications). The two other pillars of academic duty are losing their gravitas: teaching is often belittled in practice (despite much lip service to the contrary) and academic administrative duties (department chairing, editorships) are loosing their prestige. Other forms of publication (national journals, popular press, even academic books) are getting less credit. (It used to be standard for Israeli economists to publish in Hebrew on the Israeli economy, but little academic credit is given for this anymore.) Founding commercial companies or consulting for them is frowned upon in some places, and slightly encouraged in others, but certainly not considered part of the academic work. Having a wide disciplinary knowledge (or even being a Renaissance man) is not expected or rewarded. Being involved with public policy, K12 eduction, public opinion, or politics is definitely not considered part of one’s academic mandate.
This is all not new. Am just ranting here? Maybe. But what I don’t quite understand is why we, tenured professors, keep going in this direction. Regarding our own work, we can do whatever we want — we are tenured — why are we so “academic”? Regarding others — it is us who sit in all these promotion, hiring, and tenure committees — why don’t we take the wider view more often?
Turing's Invisible Hand 
Oh well, I’m sure loads of people will have their answers to these questions. One possible answer is that publishing papers is a tough habit to kick. Combine that with the endowment effect – if I’ve got something (like journal publications) I tend to assign it a higher value than I should. Plus, I guess I tend to value something (such as currency) on the grounds that other people value it (is there a technical term for that?).
Clearly there’s a big payoff for doing stuff that’s less “academic” and more high-profile outside one’s own community, but there’s also a big risk that you won’t get anywhere.
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Could it be, possibly, that research funding is a factor? (see http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2009/09/15/the-hard-truth-about-research-grants/)
At least in North America, we have grown research funding into an industry of its own. The goal is no longer to get money to support the research, but rather to do the research in order to get the money.
Right on. When you get your CAREER award or your Sloan Fellowship or your big NSF grant it’s considered great success. But in fact it should be viewed as a great opportunity; for what’s the use of these awards if you don’t deliver what you proposed..
Picky misspelling notification: loosing should be losing
Nice post, and I agree with the sentiment behind it.
Daniel Lemire is right that research funding plays a large role in all of this. The US National Science Foundation has been trying to have grant writers focus on education on “broader impact”, but in practice most proposers don’t have much to say there and panels tend to ignore the issue. On the other hand, NSF panels will take notice if someone has a particularly innovative idea regarding education or broader impact.
On the positive side of things, there are plenty of people who do focus outward and they are usually the most successful academics. (In some cases, they are successful and can therefore “afford” to do things besides publish; in other cases, they have become well known because of their external activities.) E.g., people like Steven Levitt (author of “Freakonomics”) and Paul Krugman (who writes columns for the New York Times). In the computer security field, there are people who consistently get mentioned in the popular press — personally, I question whether this is really the kind of contribution we want to be encouraging, but I can assure you that universities value it.
Maybe because writing papers is more fun than most of these other activities… And papers are relatively small projects compared to writing a book or similar projects.
This is all heavily dependent on one’s particular institution. Certainly some of the “brand-name” institutions reflect the reality described in the post. But the world ain’t all like that. At my institution, for instance, teaching is the ultimate criterion. Research and outreach (especially of the K-12 variety) are appreciated, to an extent, and one could probably not get tenure or promotion without doing some of at least one of these, or, for that matter, without some good-faith institutional service. Other places don’t value research at all, but (especially very small institutions) place a rather large premium on institutional service.
This reminds me of the manifesto at the beginning of Jerry Macguire where he makes some good points about what agents out to be, all his colleagues applaud when he enters the office, and then they all go back to their offices and carry on in the usual way.
LOL. so true.