Abstract. Criteria for assessing candidates are essential elements for the functioning of evaluation practices in academia. This article addresses a relevant issue of academia: the preference for evaluation criteria for tenure and promotion, as reported by female and male academics employed at Spanish universities. We use survey data from 4,460 faculty members, testing whether there are differences in the evaluation criteria that women and men prefer and exploring the factors that account for such preferences. Our focus is on bibliometric evaluation criteria. We propose an analytical model that considers the influence of career and quality factors, values about universalism and the mission of universities, and beliefs about meritocracy in the context of the academic evaluation system. We use a binary logistic model to explain the preference for bibliometric criteria and develop the comparisons by gender using predicted probabilities and marginal effects for estimating the difference. We find that female academics do not have the same preferences as men and report lower preferences for bibliometrics. However, women at the highest research quality levels have similar probabilities than males to prefer bibliometric criteria for evaluation.

Highlights

• Both interest-based and cognitive factors account for the preference for bibliometrics as evaluation criteria.
• Individual research quality influences positively the preference for bibliometrics.
• Differences in probabilities across genders are significant but small.
• At the top quality level, there are no differences between males and females in the probabilities of preferring bibliometric criteria

Keywords: Bibliometric assessment; Research evaluation; Merit criteria; Tenure and promotion; Value Judgment; Gender disparities; Academic values and beliefs; Preferences; Bibliometric evaluation criteria