Dear Dr. Paine,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Thanks for submitting you article to PLOS ONE. It has been reviewed by two individuals, one who has a review similar to mine and one accept. You need to check the Information for Authors for citations, formatting etc as your manuscript  does not follow the guidelines.In addition, it is difficult to understand your analyses as presented. Finally, in the discussion and limitations from the findings it seems to me that these teaching professors are not really teaching professors. --they just needed a job. They are more similar to research professors without the support. They are more like those who select to go to traditional teaching colleges.  Please discuss the possibility  of this in your discussion.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 05 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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Kind regards,

Mary Diane Clark, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Important topic as many research trained PhDs are accepting jobs as Teaching faculty most with as little educational backgrounds as those in tenure track research positions.

Reviewer 1 and I have provided many suggestions for improving the manuscript. I have some concerns about how the analyses were conducted as what is provided in the paper is somewhat limited to allow me to evaluate how the statistics were conducted. To avoid this you Data Analyses section needs to be much more detailed to allow the reader to understand your analysis

Please read the comments in the attached file.

In addition, there are three sections that I suggest you eliminate. Figure 1 takes a lot of space and could be conveyed easier in text or at most a table. DEIi is not the focus on this manuscript, I suggest you take it out. Then Brofenbrenner does not contribute to this manuscript.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1:  The manuscript contains minor grammatical errors that require correction for improved clarity and readability.

There are inconsistencies in the formatting and usage of in-text citations that should be addressed.

The abstract does not include mention of the qualitative or statistical methods used in the study, which may limit readers' understanding of the research design.

Up to the Methods section, the manuscript lacks any discussion of statistical analysis, which makes the later emergence of a mixed methods approach feel abrupt and disjointed. Earlier sections read as though the study was exclusively qualitative.

The Discussion section opens with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but these themes are not introduced or addressed elsewhere in the manuscript. As a result, this section appears disconnected and underdeveloped.

In the Data Analysis section, the investigators do not address potential statistical relationships between participants’ gender identity and their perceptions of their roles as STEM Teaching Faculty members. Given the near-even gender distribution of participants and the male-dominated nature of STEM fields, exploring this relationship may yield valuable insights.

The research questions are not accompanied by explicitly stated hypotheses. In a mixed methods investigation, articulating at least tentative expectations would strengthen the study’s rationale and coherence.

For RQ3, the discussion of participants’ influence on colleagues’ teaching lacks cohesion and depth. Additionally, the basis for measuring this influence is unclear, as no data were collected from the colleagues themselves, only three Likert-scale questions of the participants' opinions on their influence were presented. This section appears hihgly speculative, potentially misleading, and would benefit from further investigation, elaboration and clarification.

Reviewer #2:  This article highlights the increased reliance of some universities, in this case, within the UC system in STEM fields, upon teaching faculty, that these faculty are expected to and are engaging in significant pedagogy research, and that their pedagogically informed methods are perceived to impact teaching improvements and departmental teaching strategies.

The article clearly elaborates theoretical framework, methods, and data collection, as well as results demonstrating that teaching faculty are perceived to contribute to internal capacity for educational change in meeting students’ learning and inclusion needs to a greater degree than research focused colleagues. The article also reveals that teaching faculty report significant concerns that include not being provided with adequate training and resources and feeling less included and respected than research-focused faculty within their departments.

Results: RQ1 considers whether an increase has occurred in research expectations for teaching faculty. Results indicate assistant teaching professors report greater research expectations and spending more time on research than their tenured counterparts. The reviewer notes that some mention could be made that this finding might reflect motivation for promotion, in addition to perceived increase in demand.

RQ2 considers how “scholarly activities correlate with professional identity and self-reported influence of TP/PoTs.” Findings indicate that assistant teaching professors engaging in educational research report greater identification as researchers than their senior teaching counterparts and that educational publications increased influence more than teaching and mentoring practices.

RQ3 considers preparedness in terms of training and resources, shedding light on the fact that although teaching faculty are expected to focus on that activity and related research and service, few have received training other than the pedagogical research they conduct. Teaching faculty also report inadequate developmental resources due to lack of departmental awareness that pedagogical research is a form of research that also warrants institutional support. The article concludes with appropriate recommendations for teaching faculty and their institutions to explore strategies to improve training and resources. The article sheds light on important issues that affect faculty, students, and academic departments and suggests that this area of inquiry warrants further research, for which this article provides a foundation.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Teaching professors.docx

Dear Dr. Paine,

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 03 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Mary Diane Clark, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. 

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

Thank you for the major revision. It makes the manuscript clearer. I am not going to send it out for a second review but I do have a few things that I need you to address prior to recommending publication.

In general—you have extremely long sentences. –give it a look a see if some of them can become two or more sentences. One example is below

Very end of page 3 to 4

Comprising roughly 10% of tenure-eligible faculty across the UC system, the promotion criteria for TP/PoT faculty reflect that of the Research Professor (which we define as the traditional academic tenure-track faculty position that is evaluated primarily on the strength of their research program) but with a greater emphasis placed on the value of teaching excellence (Harlow, et. al., 2020, UC 63 University of California, 2020).

Above is a long sentence—if you could take out the definition of traditional academic tenure track faculty it would be easier to parse

Page 4 line 71

Influenced by---add the by

Page 5 83-84

In particular, research on TP/PoT faculty indicates that they are currently doing so 84 within the UC system

Please be more specific about currently doing

Page 5 97-98

it is key that we better understand the role the perspective of TP/PoTs 98 themselves.

Not sure what you mean by the role the perspective

Page 14—why not include the t value with the significance level

What p level did you use given the multiple t tests?

You need to correct the alpha for multiple tests

Same comment for Table 3—did you correct for increased t tests?

I still don’t see the need to take up journal space with the large non-significant effects in Tables 5 and 6

If seems that statements that specific variables are not significant would be enough

I strongly recommend using the tables you now have in the supplemental files witht eh ANOVAs for each and moving these models in to the supplemental data.

I think that readers of this paper will find that more informative

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<p>Reimagining the Role of Teaching-Focused Faculty in Research-Intensive Universities: The Evolution of Scholarly Expectations and Departmental Influence

PONE-D-25-02548R2

Dear Dr. Paine,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Mary Diane Clark, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you for these changes. It makes the manuscript easier to follow and to better understand the significant differences.

Reviewers' comments: