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[US]

I am not farmiliar with UK system. I know that there are three levels: lecturer, reader, and professor. However, it seems that one can stay at lecturer level forever without getting promoted.
What are requirements for promotion at each level?
Occasionally, there is a "senior lecturer" at some UK universities. What are the comparable postions at US?

[science expat]

It's not easy to explain and the equivalencies aren't one to one. At my fairly good research oriented university the grades are lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, and professor. There's no tenure but there are permanent jobs so it's very common to be a lecturer with a permanent post (similar to US assist. prof. but without the possible lack-of-tenure dismissal in the future).

Payscales are common across the institutions, see www.aut.org.uk for more info. Basically, you march up the payscale with an increment each year until you reach the top of your current scale; you then need discretionary points or a promotion to get more than cost of living increases - a promotion will put you on the next payscale in the chain.

Just to make it more confusing, senior lecturer (sl) and reader are on the same payscale although reader is perceived to have more status. The exact criteria vary between institutions but in general sl focuses on both teaching and research while reader is more research oriented. Most people who progress go through each stage although it's possible to jump from lecturer to reader or from sl to prof. Professor is much less automatic, though, then in the States.

Just curious, are you looking at a post in the UK?

[uk sub]

Old University hierarchy (New Universities are somewhat different):

UK :                                             Rough US equiv:

Lecturer A                                   assistant prof
Lecturer B  
Senior Lecturer = Reader           associate prof
Professor                                    professor

Senior Lecturer and Reader are parallel on the salary scale.
Promotion to Reader is a prestige rank that denotes you're
on the path to professorship.

Promotion along the "levels" within a rank is automatic, but there's a (somewhat flexible) ceiling.  Promotion to another rank depends, I'm sure, on the university.  At a research-led university, look at the research activity of people promoted to Reader.

Here's a more detailed example:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/personnel/public/payscale/acad-sal.pdf

[%sig%]

[sidey]

I'd agree with the above, except for the idea that a UK professor is th same as a US one - it is MUCH harder to be promoted to full porfessor in the UK than it is in the US.

[US]

I have just came back from UK for an interview last week and will travel there again this Saturday for another interview.
My impression is that the professor is much harder to get. It is almost equivalent to an endowed  professorship at US.
The biggest shock was the incredible living expense. How can they survive?

[sidey]

they can't, hence they leave the uk

seriously though, it is easier outside of london, but it's still hardly the life of riley...

[Lucy]

To get appointed as a Professor, a UK university would be looking for someone with an international reputation for their research.  Their main concern would be that you would be someone who would help them in the upcoming RAE (Research Assessment Exercise).  That means you would need an excellent publication list (although only your 4 best would count for the RAE).  They would expect a track record of funded research, of running a research team, and of supervising graduate students (we call them postgrads).  They would also be looking for esteem factors such as being on the editorial board of a journal, being a keynote speaker at international conferences, being an external examiner for PhDs.  (The importance of esteem factors for the RAE varies depending on your discipline).  Of course, for an external appointment, they might be willing to go for a 'rising star' so long as your publications were good enough.

If you were already at a UK university and hoping to be promoted to Chair, there might be more than one route.  There would be the research route (proving your international reputation) but probably there would also be a route that took account of distinctive contribution to the running of the university (i.e. service or teaching).  

As someone else already said, Reader is a position that shows you are well on the way to becoming a professor, and generally means that you have a lot of publications, and your main focus is on research.  

Promotion procedures from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer (probably equivalent to Associate Professor) vary depending on the University.  Some will require letters from external reviewers, others will have an entirely internal process.  Usually, it requires having achieved certain standards in the three areas of research, teaching, and admin (service), but you can compensate for lower levels in one by very high levels in the other.  For example, you might not have had the opportunity to do much service (lucky you if this were the case in a UK uni!), and so compensate for this by exceptionally good research.

As for the salary scales, if you're offered a job it can be a good idea to negotiate  to try to start a bit further up the scales.

[%sig%]

[US]

After Lucy's comment, I realized why they needed 3 of my past publications. Meybe they wanted to evaluate my research program. So, in RAE, every faculty needs to provide 4 of their best papers. How do you define "best"? By number of citation?

[%sig%]

[Lucy]

The RAE is based on publications from 1 Jan 2001 to 31 Dec 2007, and each UK academic (who is included) will be asked to put forward their best four that were published in this time slot.  Other information, e.g. about the department, is also included, but it's the publications that matter most.   You can read all about it, if you wish, on www.rae.ac.uk.  A panel of experts has been appointed for each subject, and they will actually read many of the submissions, and afaik it is their opinions that will decide whether your publication is a 1 or a 4 (or somewhere in between).  Lots of citations and being in a journal with a high impact factor will help, but there seems to me to be something a bit inchoate about it too.

[working in the UK]

Some comments on what people have said before.

1) It used to be very hard to become a professor. There were a lot of very distiguished scholars who were readers in Oxford and Cambridge. That has changed, now people are getting promoted much more than they used to. It's still harder than in the US, though.

2) A senior lecturer is usually someone who was appointed as a lecturer many years ago, but has not done much research, and never made it to reader. Such a person has usually a much higher teaching load.

However this is not always true, there universities with senior readers and senior lecturers who are on their way to promotions to professors or readers.

3) Not every faculty member submits papers for the RAE, only those selected by the department. Thus, there is a choice: present a large number of faculty members, and risk getting a lower rating (which is very bad), or be more selective and get less money. The rating is enourmously important, for money and prestige.

The papers submitted for the RAE are judged by the members of a committee, who have considerable freedom: they can, and will, consult external advisors. There is no formula. In practice, the number of papers that have to be examined is such that, for example, a paper published on a prestigious journal will almost automatically get the highest rating, unless some committee member knows the paper or the author, and has good reasons to be wary.

I used to be a big supporter of the RAE: its impact on the system here has been enourmous, and overall beneficial. The emphasis on research has grown enourmously here: recently, faculty members at a certain university got a memo from the principal, asking them to cut the time they spend on their teaching. (The administrations of many universities, though, would like to see their faculties do more teaching and more research simultaneously.)

Now, however, I see more and more departments playing games to increase their rating. For example, they might appoint a big star for a couple of years, with no teaching and no obligation to ever show up, just so that they can use his name. Thus, while I still think that the RAE is a good idea, I agree that it should probably be reformed.

5) The salaries of professors vary a lot, although not as much as in the US; they can be considerably higher than 50,000 pounds: many salary scales only give a minimum for professor, not a maximum. For lecturers or readers there is usually not much room for bargaining.

The cost of living is a problem; in London it is totally insane.

[US]

I wish that I could have learned that earlier. I just submitted three of my papers that characterize my research better, but they were not necessarily on high-impact journals. I could have chosen other papers that appeared on high-impact journals. Do the papers have to be produced while the author is working for the university? They could hire a rising star elsewhere who had a couple "high impact" papers already. Suddenly, I have a very bad feeling about this coming interview.

[science expat]

Why don't you follow up with your higher impact papers or be able to demonstrate their existence at the interview? In science, the most prestige is generally assigned to Nature and Science (in that order). It can be a problem, as your best work may be published in a more specialist journal.

As noted above, many (all?) of the panels say that they won't go strictly on metrics (i.e. citation scores). The panel to which we submit, for example, claims that they will read and assess each of the 4 publications submitted by every participant. This seems crazy to me as the original reviewers are no doubt much more expert in my specialty than the members of the panel.

I would strongly suggest that you look at website noted above, www.rae.ac.uk, and particularly at the draft criteria for the unit of assessment to which your future deparment may submit. If you're applying as a strong researcher then they clearly want you for the RAE and a good knowledge of the RAE process may help your interview significantly.

[Lucy]

US, at this stage they are probably just wanting to get a good idea of your work.  Presumably they have a list of your publications in your application, so they can see that you have published in different journals.   At interview, you can make sure that in your job talk you refer to the papers in the high impact journals, and you can always tell the interview panel that you chose to send them papers that best characterize your most recent work, and that you already have a number of papers to choose from when thinking about the upcoming RAE.

Good luck for the interview.

[working in the UK]

US wrote:

> I wish that I could have learned that earlier. I just submitted
> three of my papers that characterize my research better, but
> they were not necessarily on high-impact journals. I could have
> chosen other papers that appeared on high-impact journals. Do
> the papers have to be produced while the author is working for
> the university? They could hire a rising star elsewhere who had
> a couple "high impact" papers already. Suddenly, I have a very
> bad feeling about this coming interview.

Dear US,

don't worry, the selection of the papers is going to be made later, right now you are trying to get hired, which is a different process. The papers don't have to be produced while you are working for the university.

Also, your other papers will be listed in your CV.