Cited References and the promotion and tenure process

I certainly understand that faculty are very anxious when they submit their CV's to be considered for promotion or tenure. Obviously if someone is denied tenure, the employment as a faculty member will be terminated. In academia, a person is given a terminal contract for the next academic year. In buiness, if a person is terminated, they get the notice on Friday afternoon with a severance package and must immediately leave.

As a librarian I have done many cited reference searches in support of faculty. There is no magic number of cited references that are needed for tenure, but faculty often want us to leave no stone unturned in determined their number of cited references. However, the Promotion and Tenure Committee uses many criteria in evaluating a candidate. Today I revised a search that I did for someone in biomedical engineering since he found 4 articles that were not on his original bibliography. I remember one person who had a mediocre publications record and was promoted to full professor. Another person had an excellent publication record with numerous cited references and was denied tenure and had to leave.