**5. Discussion**

The analysis in Section 3.2 describes the shortcomings of the Lattes CV platform. In the authors' opinion, Lattes CV should not be imposed as a mandatory CV format in job or funding applications, and most of its features need to be improved to allow its e ffective use, as described in the previously presented analysis. In order to overcome a crucial drawback, the authors recommend the automatic creation and updating of each CV based on information taken from more e ffective, popular and renowned platforms such as Microsoft Academic, Google Scholar, ORCID, ResearcherID, or similar. The authors consider that an e ffective CV should be as short as possible, and easy to read and compare (the same holds for the platform where the CV is built).

Examples that should be followed are Microsoft Academic and Google Scholar, where either references are automatically found and included in one's profile (including a hyperlink to the article's official website), or a hyperlink is automatically created when a reference is manually added to an author's profile. Alternatively, a tool can be programmed (such as Top Academia in Saudi Arabia [40], which crawls the Web of Science database) to collect relevant information from the available bibliometric sources and build a profile for the candidate. As the abilities of scripting for sorting information increase [38], we should make use of such tools ye<sup>t</sup> keep in mind that the procedures should be democratic in the face of standardization.

The feature of showing the number of citations mentioned in Section 3.2 could be introduced into existing platforms (e.g., Microsoft Academic, Google Scholar, Science Open, ResearchGate, ResearcherID, etc), either explicitly, and/or implicitly by providing citation indices per author based on the proposal of Abambres and Arab [39], i.e., weighting the authorship order/credit in each publication, as well as the source (WoS, Scopus, or 'others') of each citation. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a combination of di fferent indexing databases, whereas the current Lattes CV metrics separate the di fferent indexing databases.

As compared to the international state of the practice, we can see that the ideal hiring procedures do not exist yet. We could turn to best-practice manuals from universities in the United States [34], ye<sup>t</sup> need to keep in mind that there is systematic inequality related to prestige in the hiring procedures in the United States [41]. Most universities in Europe mention their hiring procedures on their website. KU Leuven [42] follows a typical hiring procedure of two steps. In the first step, candidates send their CV, a discussion of their five most important publications, and an autobiographical essay. Then, candidates on the shortlist will be invited for an interview, a sample lecture, and/or for sending their publications. Similarly, TU Delft [43] first requires candidates to submit a CV, a research plan, list of publications, and the names and e-mail addresses of at least three potential references along with a letter of application. In a second stage, candidates are invited to give a presentation outlining their research and teaching vision. Similar requirements and a two-step procedure are described by RWTH Aachen [44].

Although currently no ideal hiring procedures exist, we consider it important to highlight the shortcomings of the current state of practice in Brazil, so that Brazilian academia can move towards fairer hiring procedures. As mentioned previously, the main influence on the outcome of the public tenders is on the budget available for graduate students—the students are thus most a ffected by the hiring decisions, and they currently have no voice in these procedures.

When developing improved methods for hiring faculty in Brazil, we should learn from the experience and the international state of the practice. At the same time, we should consider the unique cultural and social aspects of academia in Brazil, as earlier research comparing academia between two countries (United States and the Czech Republic) showed that there is no "one size fits all" at an international level [45]. Lamont [46] also warned against exporting customary rules of evaluation from the United States to an international context.

One issue hiring panels should be aware of, is related to minorities. This problem lies deeper than just our personal biases, as the current status is one of systematic methodological disqualifications of contributions from members of underrepresented social groups [47]. As Saul remarked, this issue directly influences hiring panels:

"*[m]any admissions and hiring committees have a commitment to improving gender balance and perhaps even to choosing a woman over an equally qualified man but implicit biases may well prevent them from seeing which women are equally qualified.*"

As a solution to this deep-rooted problem, Leuschner [47] proposes mechanical methods. In terms of hiring, she proposes a quota for hiring women and shows that a ffirmative action programs have been and are helpful.

While we have focused in this work on meritocratic procedures (in terms of finding the best candidate for a vacancy, while keeping in mind biases against minorities), we should be aware of the flaws of meritocracy itself. As Leuschner [47] pointed out, meritocracy has resulted in the self-production of elite groups and fails to adhere to pluralistic standards. At its worst, meritocracy is elitist and inequitable, obstructing consent and cohesion in society [48]. Paradoxically, opportunities for merit are themselves determined by non-meritocratic factors (talent is not distributed in a meritocratic way) [49], and the definition of "merit" itself implicitly favors some groups of society over others. Mijs [49] thus argues that meritocracy itself is an unfulfillable promise. Instead, we should strive to adhere to the principles of justice, need and equality in academia. While his analysis focused on higher education, and questions whether universities should train students for the labor market or build character and citizenship, further research seems necessary to identify how the principles of justice, need and equality can also be included during the academic hiring procedures to create a level playing field where bias will not (inexplicitly) a ffect the hiring procedures.

The comments in the previous paragraphs related to the obstacles minorities face, should be more than "good to know." The guidelines for hiring procedures in Brazil should directly address these challenges, and the mechanical methods proposed by Leuschner [47] could be used in the context of Brazilian academia. From this perspective, the evaluation of a researcher's CV as outlined in Section 4, should also be evaluated from the gender perspective. Nielsen [50] shows that bibliometrics used as a driving factor during hiring procedures perpetuate existing gender inequalities in academia. We should also make sure that reduced productivity during and after maternity leave does not reflect negatively upon the evaluation of the CV of a woman with children (to remove the so-called "motherhood penalty"). His solution is then articulated as follows:

"*my suggestion therefore is to always supplement the use of quantitative proxies for merit with in-depth and systematic qualitative considerations about variations in expertise, experience, activities and career progression along gendered lines; even when comparing large numbers of researchers. Such an approach could help render visible some of the potential gender biases related to the use of quantitative performance metrics, hereby making academic recruitment and selection processes less gendered in their stratifying outcomes.*"

The neoliberal reality of today's university landscape also poses significant limitations to researchers [51,52], which are di fficult to evaluate and take into consideration during hiring procedures.

For all good intentions on developing the best hiring procedures, we should keep in mind that human emotions play a role in these procedures [53]. These extra-cognitive emotional aspects of the hiring procedures are not well-known nor researched. We should be aware of these: how they influence how favourably we rate a candidate, and how we could possibly quantify these emotional aspects. Again, this knowledge could be used in the future to improve hiring procedures.

Based on the investigation carried out and the authors' professional experiences, it is no surprise that the Brazilian academic market is still inward-oriented, even though most universities have developed stronger links with foreign institutions. A limited number of foreign students and professionals (especially from outside Latin America) [8] work at Brazilian universities, and Brazilian scientists still [54] publish a significant amount of work in national journals, which sometimes are only available in Portuguese. By limiting its capacity to attract foreign talent, Brazilian academia fails not only to identify the most suitable (national or international) candidates, but also to promote diversity and pluralism.
