As the department dialogue about the pre‐tenure colleague’s scholarship progresses, important issues for discussion during the second and third year are:

• Appropriate goals regarding number and scale of scholarly projects planned for completion by the time of the tenure review.
• Time frames: how long does it take to go from submission to appearance in targeted dissemination outlets?
• Do plans need to be adjusted so that there is a record of externally validated scholarship at the time of the third year review? As an example, a large book project might need to be split into smaller article‐sized pieces to ensure that the work attains successful peer review and publication.
• Discipline‐specific issues regarding dissemination of scholarship (e.g. some fields put more importance on conference proceedings, while others put more value in traditional journal articles, while others put most importance on book publication).
• Discipline‐specific issues regarding external validation and peer review for each of the colleague’s research projects: Is a given volume of conference proceedings peer reviewed, and in what manner? What level of peer review is constituted by the editorial policy of a given book publisher? Is a given book chapter peer reviewed, and in what manner?

The most useful third‐year review department letter will reflect these conversations.