'Publish or perish' mentality driving academicians to questionable journals
Some Malaysian professors and lecturers are publishing their research in questionable scholarly journals that allow them to pay to be published and over time this will weaken the overall reputation of our universities, academicians say.
Malaysia was ranked as among the fifth-highest contributors in the world of countries surveyed by two Czech Republic economists Vit Machacek and Martin Srholec, who mapped the infiltration of so-called "predatory" scholarly journals into the citation database Scopus over a period of three years from 2015 to 2017.
The data was obtained from research involving 172 countries in four fields, namely health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences and indicated that some academicians who are seeking ‘shortcuts’ to be promoted to associate professor and professor.
“This is not new and we have to look at the root cause,” Dr Mohamad Hussain Habil (above) of Mahsa Universiti told Malaysiakini.
“The pressure on professors and lecturers to publish in order to get promotions is quite large. When I was in Universiti Malaya, the mantra was ‘to publish or perish’.
“The problem is that to be republished in a reputable journal – and these journals require high standards – your work must be groundbreaking.
“So, there is stiff competition and when people are under pressure, they look for loopholes,” Mohamad Hussain said.
He said that the proliferation of unscholarly academic journals rose to meet the demand.
“It’s simple capitalism – they are businesspeople and they spot the demand for this. They can charge up to US$1,000 to publish the article, it’s not cheap also. Another factor is that in reputable journals you also have to wait. When you wait too long, you might not be getting your promotion, or someone else publishes the paper.
“Apparently not only junior lecturers but senior professor are doing this,” he added.
“When they find out that there are predatory journals, for them it's an opportunity. But after some time, articles from cooked-up data get exposed in the industry. The objective of the research is to improve our scientific understanding, but an article that is full of mistakes – statistics skewed for a false conclusion – it serves no purpose.
These days, with social media, you can't hide if someone exposes it, Mohamad Hussain said.
“It's not difficult to expose, go to Google Scholar and it can be found,” he said.
“When I first started, we never had these predatory journals. They only came out when universities became so worried about rankings, not more than 15 years ago.”
In the Czech survey, a total of 324 predatory journals were found to have infiltrated Scopus, a Netherlands-based global citation database made up of more than 30,000 journals covering life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences and health sciences.
Kazakhstan is the most culpable, with 17 percent of such articles, followed by Indonesia, Iraq, Albania and Malaysia.
Former deputy education minister P Kamalanathan served from 2013 to 2018, which is the period covered by the study.
Kamalanathan said that while the government consistently focused on academicians achieving higher recognition and and came up with hundreds or millions of ringgit of quality spending towards this aspiration, the Ministry of Higher Education would have to investigate the claims of predatory research papers.
“They should verify its authenticity and if culpability exists, then I’m sure they will take stern action to protect the integrity and the reputation of Malaysian academicians,” he told Malaysiakini in a text message.
Reflection of a corrupt system
Prof Zaharom Nain, chairperson of the Malaysian Academic Movement (Gerak) didn’t pull his punches when discussing the matter.
“It’s a sad consequence and reflection of a corrupt system, both nationally and globally. Much of higher education and much of research in higher education – in Malaysia and elsewhere – have become exercises in gaming a system that emphasises rankings and ratings (national, regional and global).
“The higher your university goes up the rankings or is rated – the more attractive and prestigious will be your university. There’ll be higher student intake and quality faculty and, hence, more income to succeed in a wider neo-liberal system,” Zaharom said.
He said that are many good, honest and hardworking academicians in contemporary Malaysian universities, some of them even world-class.
“But there are also those who are pressured to meet uncompromising KPIs often set by pen-pushing university administrators hell-bent on playing a system that seeks to quantify scholarly output, often at the expense of quality.”
Zaharom said there are also those really not qualified to teach or research in universities.
“They get into the public universities through a system of, say, ‘kulitocracy’, given our quota system. And, let’s not forget, the same system brings in the administrators, whose idea of administrating is to openly and uncritically receive ideas from the top.
“Combine these – a leadership that is more politicised than wise, an administrative class that believes that it must menurut perintah (follow orders) and largely-clueless academicians bereft of a public service ethos, and only wishing to get to the top of the university ladder – and you get the sad state we are in now,” he said.
Malachi Edwin Vethamani, a former professor at University of Nottingham Malaysia, urged academicians to be careful where they publish their work.
“It has been a steep learning curve for many academicians. There is certainly a lot of pressure on meeting publishing KPIs.
“Over the last few years, there have been a lot of information on predatory academic journals and academicians should do the due diligence on a publisher before they submit their work. You cannot plead ignorance,” Malachi said.
UMT vice-chancellor denies emphasis on publishing
In contrast, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) vice-chancellor Prof Nor Aieni Mokhtar responded to the recent study, saying that journal publication is not the main criteria for a lecturer to be promoted to associate professor or professor.
In a statement yesterday, Nor Aieni said other criteria for promotion as a professor at UMT include teaching trust, supervision, research, publication of indexed journal books and articles, knowledge transfer as well as academic and management leadership.
She said every promotion application submitted by UMT academicians must go through various strict vetting processes to meet the academic excellence requirements set by the Senate, as the highest academic body at the university, and approved by the University Board of Directors as the university’s highest authority body.
“Candidates must submit an application through the dean, the director of their respective institute or centre and if it is supported by the head of the department, a committee consisting of professors at the faculty, centre or institute will screen and evaluate the application.
“If a candidate fails to pass this internal screening, the application will not be extended to the censorship committee at the university level. However, when the application is brought to the censorship committee, it will be screened and evaluated by a committee composed of professors,” Nor Aieni said.
Her views appeared to be firmly in the minority, with another former UM lecturer telling Malaysiakini that the predatory journal phenomenon was not surprising considering the university’s obsession with rankings.
This academician cited other dubious practices, like forcing PhD students to put the names of their supervisor on their journal articles as co-writers.
“This may be normal in pure sciences, but in social sciences, it can be highly unethical,” said the lecturer, who did not want to be named.
Zaharom concurred: “Academic dishonesty – in the form of plagiarism, supervisors (and now even universities) pressuring post-graduate students to put them as the main authors of the students’ publications, and, yes, universities coming up with their journals of questionable quality – is the end result.
He called for serious and sincere academic reform.
“But such reform won’t come about when the system – nationally and internationally - is headed by clueless and self-serving individuals and institutions, like our current Ministry of Higher Education,” Zaharom added.
Mohamad Hussain said that if the problem was left unchecked, it would undoubtedly bring down the reputation of the country’s higher learning institutions.
“Universiti Malaya was recently ranked number 59 in the world according to the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, and we have other good universities, so there is a lot of good work that could be undone.
“If there is any reason to suspect the publications of academicians, the authorities must order an investigation and not sweep it under the carpet,” Mohamad Hussain said. - Mkini
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