Interesting, Thank you !

This is absolutely to be considered. In my country, we still take notice of letters of recommendation for academic posts, grants, scholarships, and so on. They are in fact, mandatory. But your view is correct. 

Excess always leads to misbelief !

Interesting, Thank you !

This is absolutely to be considered. In my country, we still take notice of letters of recommendation for academic posts, grants, scholarships, and so on. They are in fact, mandatory. But your view is correct. 

Excess always leads to misbelief !

An other aspect of the "recommendation business" is that e.g. applicants for academic positions will in their CV give a list of personal references, i.e. persons who can be contacted over the phone.

I know that some Swedish universities will do this. Recently, however, I heard a very experienced academic human resource administrator point out that this is should definitely be avoided, because such phone interviews are extremely difficult to carry out if they are to give a fair and unbiased view.

When hiring academics, we instead depend heavily on written evaluations of the documented merits of the applicants by independent experts, an open presentation by the applicant and a closed interview with the applicant.

He/she can have all the letters of recommendation in the world, but it's the documented merits, e.g. grants obtained, papers published, positions held etc which count.   

Professionalism (knowledge of the field) can best demonstrate by the results of their own work. It is quite certain.

There may also be other requirements - the willingness to cooperate, ability to teach (it is not entirely obvious), etc.

Now what? Some relevant link there could quite help.

I absolutely agree with George Stoica.

Personally, I never requested nor signed letters of reference, deeming them outdated and misleading.

The in-depth analysis of the CV is always the best way to proceed to the recruitment of a researcher or, more generally, of a worker.  

Totally agree with you sir Josef Punčochář. A person's talent is reflected in his/her work. Being a student, I know how difficult it is to get a letter of reference from a professor. The student has to spend a lot of time chasing the professor. Generally, get the letter of reference from professors, researchers or scientists who are busy people. So the student has to spend some time to get the letter from them. Moreover, the information provided by the referee may be biased. As indicated by Björn Thrandur Björnsson, a lot of letters are being written by the American academic system. When someone writes a number of recommendation letter, there is a chance that his views may not be fair. Suppose the referee knows a student personally who is not doing good in academics, but he is somehow related to the referee. Then the referee may give a good remark about his academic career which is actually not the case. 

From my personal point of view, I am totally fully agree with Prof. Björn Thrandur Björnsson's remark. The reference/recommendation letter is not absolutely required because from one letter you did not know that how is this person or his/her nature etc. and sometimes it blocks your opportunity to get some good position due to many factors....

For me, any recommendation is valid just if I know very well the writer of recommendation.

Example: If my mother recommend me a book or movie. Immediately I know that it is horrible. Our opinions is so different that I can use the opposite.

Dear Björn

Absolutely agree with your opinion. For me, the only relevant information contained in a letter of recommendation refers to the human qualities of the candidate. All other quantitative and qualitative information can be obtained by a experienced reviewer from the careful analysis of the merits contained in the CV. Surprisingly, many reputed institutions from USA, Canada and UK still request reference letters!!

Certainly RECOMMENDATION LETTER or REFERENCE should have no meaning because most of these letters are biased. The candidature must be judged by the person's own work and merits. Hence such recommendations should be not invited by institutions

Dear @Björn,

It is very interesting, Thank you!

This is absolutely to be considered for the near future. In my country, we still take notice of letters of recommendation for academic posts, grants, scholarships, postgraduate studies, doctorate and so on. They are in fact, mandatory. But your view is correct.

Excess always leads to disbelief!

Maybe, we can stop using letters of reference ... in near future ... maybe ...

I agree. Usually it is muck better to rank applicants from CVs and publications and thereafter contact reference persons for the top candidates, both those proposed by the applicants and those you track down yourself. The last step has saved me  a couple of times from mistakenly employing someone that most likely shouldn't be able to do the job properly.

Once I asked a US colleague to write a reference letter for me, he laughed "No problem, I will write some like 'Erik has twice given his life so other will live'". I think that this capture reference letters pretty well. 

Hi Erik, when I came over to Sweden wanting to start graduate studies, my physiology teacher in Iceland wrote a letter of recommendation to my PhD supervisor-to-be, and according to him, the concluding remark was "He's nothing special, but he likes to drink port". I think it's still a pretty accurate assessment - and it got me into Stefan Nilsson's research group ;-)

"He's nothing special, but he likes to drink port". Nice one Thrandur.

To add my 2 cents to the discussion I guess ref letters are useful, no for what they say but for what they ommit.

Back to the Porto you should follow up 2015 harvest very closely . The grape was second to none and promisses quite a lot. 😎

Good question/point! I can subscribe to most of what was said before and would like to add my experiance with references. When I am asked to write a reference for somebody I supervised or worked with I am honest in the recommendation letter and offer to call me on more detail. When I applied at the University of Southern Danmark a while ago, somebody was asked by the University to write what they called a recommendation, I would rather call it a "career review". I don´t know if it was chance or purpose, but I got this piece to read. Whoever wrote it reviewed my career up to this point and stated: "He is of good international standard, but does not fit perfectly into what is demanded for this particular position. I also doubt he will be of command on the Danish language in three years. T hope you have better candidates for this position." An honest and clear statement in my eyes. I would have preferred he or she would have written: "But he likes Danish beer." Fortunately I already had a livetime staff position at that time...

Erik Maronde. The example you describe illustrates a particular aspect of the job application process in Sweden, and I'm therefore guessing, also in Denmark. This is the fact that all documents, including expert evaluations and/or letters of recommendations are public, and in Sweden, they are not anonymous in order to ensure that the process is transparent.

Therefore, the evaluators or those writing recommendations know that the applicants, or anybody else for that matter, can read what they've written. They therefore tend to choose their words very carefully, and I think that in many cases, they tend to be too positive rather than negative, in order not to risk getting into a conflict with a potential colleague.

Tobias Pamminger. Is this escalation you so elegantly describe due to the fact that the "applicants" can read the letters of reference themselves?  Would it make a difference if the letters were confidential, sent directly from the letter writer to the entity requesting a letter of reference?

I already know the answer for the Swedish academic sphere - all application documents including letters of reference and evaluations of applications are public, so confidentiality is not an option. This is a "price" we pay for keeping the hiring/granting system transparent.

Hi everyone, very interesting discussion! I generally include all the positives but - always - indicate any areas that need enhancing or those that would need quite extensive support. I think this gives amore rounded view but still think they are not worth the paper they are written on! So, like others, I also follow up with previous employers that way you can get a MUCH more accurate picture. I also agree that CVs are heavily fabricated, so get rid, I say!

Sadly, people's curriculum vitae are suspect today and therefore should always be checked.

Yes, they are. It is partly because we are supposed to 'sell' ourselves to prospective employers etc., so even if you have done something once with supervision, you can say that you are experienced at it. So as Ian rightly says, always check out the facts.

Dear Lorraine, Ian et al. Sorry for my previous post which didn't upload properly and I've therefore deleted.

What I meant to say, even if a discussion on the validity of CVs is a different discussion from that on letters of reference, is that I was surprised when Lorraine called them "heavily fabricated". I deal a lot with academic CVs, which mostly contain work, grant, and publication records of applicants. In the process of hiring academic faculty members, these CVs are routinely scrutinized by internal as well as external experts, and it is an absolute exception if they are not factual. So to call CVs "heavily fabricated" is not something I can sign on to. 

I entirely support the opinion that recommendation letters are obsolete in the context of applying for an academic position, research grants, etc. The applicant's CV (lists of publications) and scientometrics available online tell what there is to tell about the candidate's suitability. 

Besides, there are some "technical problems", such as language usage. For example, writing a letter of recommendation in a foreign language could be challenging or even impossible sometimes. One always can use English but, again, there are rhetoric moves and many finer issues of style that could be challenging for non-native speakers. In addition, sometimes that best person who could write you a recommendation letter is difficult to locate (e.g., retired, etc.).

Hello Bjorn, George and all, I gather that most of you consider that a letter of reference is obsolete.  What about a situation where a person is applying for a job in another country?  This can happen to some of us whose country has uncertain economy.  If I wish to apply to teach K12, pre-university, in UK, perhaps I may need a letter.  

And if I happen to be from Syria, at this point in history, would I need a letter that I am an educator, a skilled worker (or perhaps I am mistaken for a refugee?)...what do you think?

Dear All,

The question is why to ask a letter of reference and why the majority of these letters are not accessible to the candidate? Does the letter of reference confirm that the applicant is good or not good or the letter of reference consolidates that the Institute or the University follows the rules of the system?

Letters of reference provide two things in my opinion 1) that the system is doing well and 2) that the University, the selection Committee or the person in charge will select the person of preference.  A letter of reference is only politics.  The majority of the Universities are built on a hierarchical schema, the Professor – that is almost a political decision in many countries, his students, the students of his students and etc. etc. 

A nice world safe and under control. We could run a nice experiment so to detect/observe the transformation of a scientist to an administrator. Under these conditions the system is safe.

A relative article has been published last year in Nature, "Corruption Good governance powers innovation Nature 2015" and I think letters of reference are exactly playing this role of “Good governance”. Regards, Vassilis

I use to see very lazy student in the lab with very powerful letter, so applying for top university and job. We should follow etic principles when do this. I think the letter should be written by at least 3 professors  in double blind model.

Miranda, Vassilis and António. Thank you all for interesting additions to this discussion. You all seem to see the letter of reference as a very powerful tool, so it obviously must be so in your countries. I initiated the discussion by citing the Science paper which suggests that letters of reference should not be given so much weight, something which I agree with.

Miranda: If you arrive to Sweden and apply for an academic job (this is ResearchGate, remember ;-) a "letter of recommendation" explaining your qualifications would not do as there is no way that its content can be verified. You'd have to have official records of your academic degrees etc.

Vassilis: You seem to live in a very hierarchical academic world. In my world (Sweden) all academic hiring is done through open advertisements and then, external experts evaluate the CVs of the applicants, a system which has been in place for about 200 years to avoid nepotism within the universities. A letter of recommendation from some big shot director/professor bears very little weight in this process.

António: What you describe is exactly the reason why letters of recommendation are fundamentally flawed - as they are inherently biased. Therefore, they shouldn't been given weight in an unbiased recruitment process.

Dear Bjorn,

I think my message was misunderstood.  Of course, I am opposed to the system of letter of reference or blind letters of external experts.  In Sweden and in other places academic hiring is done by open advertisements – as you said – but as you likely did not said this system that exists both in USA and in Europe and in other places is not a valuable system.  External experts and external reviewers are preselected by the Institute/University and in fact confirm largely the wishes of the open call.  This is why many colleagues around the world never participate in this “selection blind system”. 

The selection committee has the cards of the decision. Why you need external reviewers or external reference which is practically the same ? You post a position, you define the objectives of the call and you advertise.  To postulate, you need a CV which is composed by international publications, by a citation record, by patents, by inventions, by the strength of the project and the potential of the scientific achievements of the candidates.  These all data are very concrete.  If you note to 100, then you get the numbers with a precision. RG score could be a way to do. Why you need in addition “secret letters of reference or as you said of external reviewers / experts”?  

What in fact is doing an expert? You are not confident of the scientific value and the decision/expertise of your selection committee?  In my opinion this selection system keeps the nepotism in the selection, you call it letter of reference or external reviewer is the same - what exactly you said Universities avoid to do.   Regards, Vassilis

Dear Vassilis,

I think you're wrong in thinking that a letter of reference and an external reviewer is the same.

Here's the difference, let's imagine that a position has been announced and that there are 10 applicants:

Letter of reference: Is written for a single single, usually by somebody who knows the person well and is thus usually favorably biased towards that person. The 10 applicants would be presenting letters of recommendation from 10 different people, all more or less biased. How can these be used to select the best applicant?

Expert evaluation: The same (usually 2-3 in our system) external persons, experts in the field from another university, with no ties to any of the applicants (no copublications, collaborations etc), evaluate and compare all the applicants. The evaluator thus compares the concrete data you mentioned. The conclusion of the evaluators about who are the strongest candidates is of decisive importance for the hiring.

To answer your question " You are not confident of the scientific value and the decision/expertise of your selection committee?": No, if the selection committee is local, there's simply too much of a risk that it will favor local candidates = nepotism.

You refer to "blind" and "secret" letters/evaluations. As I've explained in my former discussion points, all documentation in the Swedish hiring process is public, there are no such secret documents.

Dear Bjorn,

Thanks for your immediate reply. I understand the differences between a letter of reference and an expert - evaluation but I still think that is almost the same.  As you said “The conclusion of the evaluators about who are the strongest candidates is of decisive importance for the hiring’. 

This comes to my point. The evaluators propose but they do not establish a rank based on concrete values.  So, if you come to three candidates then the committee makes the decision.   I do not think that you need the “expert” when the candidate is not presenting a philosophical document but a very concrete measurable profile.

You certainly know how the scientific system works.  In order to avoid this “System Control” by calls or anonymous letters or international project funding – then you introduce a valuable counting method to MEASURE candidate’s scientific record.  

This obliges the local or not local selection committee to accept or not accept on a concrete value a candidate.  This should be public and no letters of references or letters of experts are needed. That gives the possibility to a person wherever is coming to compete for a research position independently of the status-quo of  the different scientific projects around the world.

The Research/Academic system needs transparency and to do so we need to incorporate valuable, impartial and concrete methods so to advance. Vassilis

Absolutely!  This is a waste of everybody's time.

This discussion is confused, some are commenting on external reviewers or assessors while other talk about letters of references to students. Which is which?

I also read a paper advocating cancelling interviews, removing names, nationality/ethnicity and gender in CVs or application letters. The authors argue in such circumstance, women out perform men in hiring rates. Actually there was a university which has started experimenting with this concept.

Letters of references should not be stopped. They actual help to have an idea of how the participant relates with mentors and or supervisors. They also provide another information which might not be presented in the CV.

I rely on an honest opinion of potential postgraduate students from their previous supervisor before I take them on. I also provide a very candid reference of my students when requested. Good or bad, the reference is meant to prepare the potential supervisor for what calibre of student/personel s/he is taking on; for example, whether that person has the ability to lead a team or an entire laboratory. We have to believe in the integrity of the referee and if the reference is contradicting the candidate, then of course the referee would not be trusted again.

I think letters of reference system is very discriminatory. For example, in India, it is largely the influential who manage to get wonderful letter of reference written by someone they know. For example if my father is a Professor, I can get more than thirty references written for me. The academic elite are very networked. They help each others kids in different ways. A person like me has found it always difficult to get letters of reference written. Especially if your politics is different. I have not submitted 90% of my application because of the requirement of LOR's. In India, faculties in universities are lazy and majority don't even read/reply emails. 99.9% of the emails are unanswered in India, from my experience. This is a huge racket. Better to stop using this LOR system.

It can be considered a positive point for applicants but better not to be compulsory.

We will have recommendation letters as long as we take them seriously.

Personally, I have a hard time taking them seriously. The most ridiculous letters on my behalf were for a visa-related process for a western, still democratic country. They were drafted collaboratively between me and lawyers. The undersigners asked me not to use them for anything else. They were too positive for scientific career purposes.

Whenever I hire people, I do not ask for letters. I might call personal references. Whenever people ask me to issue letters, I have them draft the letters. Usually I sign them without much changes. I refuse to learn recommendation letter codes to communicate different notions of 'good' - its like with coffee sizes at Starbucks, they start with 'large'. What nonsense and what overhead this genre produces. What inequalities of power. What burden, what unnecessary submission for students to play nice with professors for the sake of getting a letter.

IMO we should all spend our time on something else.

At least, letter of recommendation should me waived during covid 19 because too many postgrad classes were arranged online. People who gave me high grades claimed that they are not the right person to ask for. Usually, this is not a question of suitability but a question of collecting seemingly enough recommendations.