This guide uses the word "narrative" in two ways. One is a formal document, referred to as an Impact Statement at Texas A&M, that is a personal statement about your research, service, and teaching used in the promotion and/or tenure process. The other meaning of narrative is associated with how you want your career, research, service, teaching, and other accomplishments represented and communicated to the broader world (i.e., academic, professional, public, potential collaborators, etc.). The latter has a lot to do with your scholarly identity and building your reputation in the field, sharing your expertise, and connecting with others. One's narratives can be strengthened through planning and metrics.
The Impact Statement "...is a concise statement...that conveys the quality and impact of their contributions within each of their areas of responsibility. The statement should individually address each area of responsibility, and include past accomplishments and evidence of impact, present activities, and future plans in each area. The statement should also state plans for future directions." 2023-2024 Texas A&M Tenure & Promotion Guidelines
Texas A&M University Promotion & Tenure Materials
Texas A&M University Promotion & Tenure materials are available on the Faculty Affairs website.
Appendix I at the end of the Statement on Academic Freedom, Responsibility, Tenure and Promotion has examples of criteria that may be employed in evaluation of faculty .
Context, Context, Context
It is important to provide context. If using research impact metrics, quantitative citation-based metrics should be normalized using ratios or percentiles to provide context.
For example, knowing an article has been cited 25 times has little meaning by itself. Using the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) in Dimensions or a Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) in iCite allows you to compare the times cited to similar research published during the same period (e.g., cited four times more than articles in the same field). There are also the Author Impact Beamplot Summary that provide citation percentiles for individual publications and the author overall (e.g., the article was in the 70th percentile among 2019 Information Science articles). Additional details about these tools and metrics can be found under the Author Metrics and Article Metrics tabs.
The Washington University Bernard Becker Medical Library has several textual examples and tips for Telling Your Story that demonstrates how metrics might be reported in promotion/tenure materials, grants, etc. to provide additional context.
Beyond Citation-Based Metrics
In addition to traditional citation-based metrics, there are alternative metrics (altmetrics) and other approaches that could be used to craft a more compelling narrative demonstrating one's impact to the field and beyond. These are discussed under the Altmetrics, Societal Impact, and Visualizations tabs.