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If offered the option of writing a master's thesis, seriously consider taking it, as it can form the core of your first refereed journal article. Plan out a publishing trajectory to ensure that you have at least one sole-authored refereed journal article before you defend your dissertation.

Attend every job talk in your department and affiliated departments religiously. It matters not if those talks are in your field or subfield.

Take every opportunity available to present your work publicly.

Never include your graduate school GPA

lot depends on the type of college to which you are applying.

clearly labeled headings for each kind of publication that you have: books, peer-reviewed journal articles, peer-reviewed book chapters, other kinds of peer-reviewed writing, book reviews, encyclopedia articles, other types of academic writing, and so on.

Such efforts haven’t always been executed with finesse. Texas A&M University, for example, issued a report in 2011 that listed faculty members’ names in red or black — like a corporate balance sheet — depending on whether the research and tuition dollars they generated covered their salary and expenses. Such heavy-handed efforts usually crumble under faculty opposition. Texas A&M abandoned its plan amid faculty objections to the perceived corporatization of the university as well as the accuracy of the data.

Mr. Usher says the metrics aren’t meaningful without context and often aren’t even accurate. He echoes faculty members on many campuses who have complained that reports based on metrics often show deflated grant awards and incorrect journal citations, and omit publications that should be included (and vice versa).

Peer-reviewed publications may be an effective productivity metric for some departments. For others, like computer science, which produce fewer papers, the metrics might be citations per publication, or conferences per faculty member, or honors and awards. Federal grants could be a productivity metric for a department like chemistry, but not for engineering, since engineering faculty members at MIT receive a large share of grants from private sources that aren’t captured by Academic Analytics’ data.