Should a professor tenured in field X receive research credit for research in a field other than X?
What is your experience on this question?
It is an important issue of academic freedom. If the answer is NO, then it means that tenure pigeon holes you for life in one field. That would be contrary to academic freedom.
Indeed, this question exposes a paradoxical aspect of "tenure"... Certainly in the U.S. system, and also Canada and western Europe, so far as I know. Namely, people get tenure basically by showing that they can energetically conform to rules and expectations (for their work, its direction, etc.) Yes, in one ideal scenario, tenure certifies the good judgement of the person, who can now follow their curiosity without worrying about getting fired for not doing what someone else wants.
However, even though in the U.S. we currently are in a period of low inflation, there is the issue of getting good raises. Also, the issue of getting punitive teaching assignments, punitive committee assignments, and possibly having one's teaching load increased at the caprice of the dept head or dean, if one is insufficiently compliant research-wise.
Well, yes, but why shouldn't the university feel justified in getting something for the pay they give faculty? Thus, justifying hassling "non-performing" (to expectations...) faculty? I think the point is that the whole business is a sort of gamble, and if sometimes the gamble does not pay off, it doesn't necessarily mean that the whole enterprise is misguided. Further, many universities (as entities) are smart enough to know that it is hard to judge the virtues of innovative stuff, so it's best to not over-manage.
And, as has often been said, lots of people are happy to be faculty at a university, rather than pursue far-better-paying jobs available to smart people (regardless of academic specialties), exactly because of the freedom to choose one's projects/goals. If (when? as?) universities are more corporatized, they'll catch fewer and fewer such people.
I think you have a very big misconception that this is the state of academia. Just looking at the nobel prizes, many have been won by very interdisciplinary researchers. Many nobel prizes in chemistry go to physicists who developed very specialized and sensitive measurement and manipulation methods that could be applied to very big questions in chemistry. You could argue if these noble prize winners are true experts of chemistry in comparison to professors of chemistry that studied chemistry, graduated with a PhD in this field and got tenure. But often for great science it is imho not the deep and broad knowledge that enables great and important research, but the ingenuity and awareness to ask the right scientific question that can also be methodologically tackled at that time.
If academia would discourage this modus operandi of researchers to work on questions independently of their education, then it is not much more than technology optimization in a company. Good science is applying new methods (experimental/mathematical) to unsolved questions, that's how most scientific paradigms are shifted.
In the light of publish or perish you can of course ask yourself if all universities follow the modus operandi above. Some do and require distinct number of publications, some not, but few high impact papers to get tenure. If the professor already has tenure, he likely has much more incentive, patience, freedom and risk assessment to go for the latter.
In my view (from the US) and experience, tenure is pretty absolute in the absence of severe breaches of conduct. But changing research fields isn't a breach.
However, while a department in which you earn tenure will almost certainly honor it if you change research fields, the extra "perks" that come with the professorate may be denied you. Perhaps you don't get raises. Perhaps you don't get promoted. Perhaps you have to teach the courses no one else wants. Lots of things.
If you just quit working altogether in the department you can probably be fired - a breach. But if you teach the required load and provide some other services, your job is probably (minimally) safe. Some people, nearing retirement, give up serious research altogether. No one worries a lot about it, provided that there is sufficient activity by other people. And such a professor might be made an offer to give up tenure to make room for a younger professor. A year's salary might be offered as a sort of un-signing bonus to give up tenure. This also happens when too many professors hold positions that might be better offered to more productive people.
And in those fields in which external grant funding is a must and the teaching means advising doctoral students, you can't give that up and expect to keep the job. But some minimal compliance may be enough.
I have a case in mind. A colleague was tenured in CS - an associate professor. But his research was both poor and closely related to another field in which he had no academic credentials. He wanted to be promoted to Full Professor, but never was. I advised him for a while (a formal mentorship) and told him what he needed to do. He said that he understood all that and appreciated my advice, but chose not to do any of it. He served till retirement as an Associate Professor and sort of the goat of the department. He was unhappy about not getting advanced, but sufficiently happy with the situation to continue on.
Some people changing fields can switch to a different department. Whether they keep their tenure or not would be questionable, since it is really a new position, even in the same university. But it is something that might be negotiated (in some places, anyway). But it would require getting some credential to do that.
However, keep in mind that new fields arise from old ones pretty regularly. CS, for example, emerged, in part at least, from mathematics departments. So, the pioneers in CS were often trained in mathematics or engineering, say. They kept their tenure and they got credit for founding a new field.
And, there are situations in which a change of fields can lead to a certain synergy, fusing the ideas of both fields and creating something new. I don't think such situations are especially rare, but not all cases will fit this pattern.
Don't assume all will be well if you want to change fields. But don't assume that it will be catastrophic. As with many things in academia, it is up to the individual to make the case for their own productivity.
