Scientists, especially those in the universities, nowadays are under a lot of pressure to publish their research, a key factor in the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for lecturers. In fact, they are constantly hounded by the “publish or perish” warning.
Those who are behind in their publications risk losing out on promotions and other benefits. With the recent drying up of research money, meeting this KPI has become even more challenging. Researchers had to resort to all kinds of creative ways to meet that KPI. As a result, it has been inevitable that there have been some compromises on scientific integrity and ethics.
Has it always been like this for scientists? Not really. The truth is that such pressure to publish is a relatively new phenomenon.
A study of the history of science would reveal the fact that scientists of the past published not because they were under any kind of external pressure. They published because they needed to share their new-found knowledge with their peers.
The intention was to test the validity of their findings. They would write in the journals of the day, hoping to obtain feedback about their research. And, the consequent citations by fellow scientists would lead to further strengthening and fine-tuning of their research. In other words the knowledge would be validated and enriched.
The scientists then did that out of passion and interest in the subject or topic they were studying. They were never promised promotion or other forms of reward for their work.
It is different now. Publishing in the peer reviewed journals has become the top KPI of university scientists. Failure to measure up to an acceptable rate of churning out published papers will be at the expense of one’s career progression. Promotion in the universities is largely determined by publishing achievements in high impact journals.
And, because of the high demand, journals have become highly commercialised. In fact some have suggested that science journals have become a lucrative business.
In some of the top journals, you have to pay quite a large sum to get your articles published. No wonder journal owners earn big money.
With the advent of the Internet, some fake electronic journals have emerged, persuading scientists to use their platforms for a fee.
Publishing in the tier one journals has also become more demanding for university dons because of the recent increasing obsession with ranking.
Recent years have witnessed some disturbing development in the race to be ranked high. Oftentimes, some degree of manipulation may have taken place to look good in the ranking exercise.
A key criteria in many such ranking platforms is how much of the university research papers are accepted for publications in the high- impact journals. Though there are other criteria, the publishing KPI somehow dominates.
This is what creates the pressure on lecturers. There have been claims that such unbalanced demand has led to some amount of neglect on teaching, another core mandate of university education. Can this be the reason why the quality of graduates in local universities has shown a worrying decline?
Many in the higher hierarchy of the university administration have called for a reexamination of the almost religious patrony of the ranking culture. Their key argument is that it is pointless to compare us with the universities in advanced countries. We are at a different stage of development. We should, instead, come up with our own criteria and standard to help us improve.
Furthermore, our development agenda is unique to our own country. We should not equate with the likes of Harvard and Oxford. What we desperately need to do is to bring the universities closer to our own society. The culture of research, for example, is still low within our society.
University professors need to engage more with the society at large in order to address this weakness. Instead of asking scientists to devote most of their writings in tier one journals where the readers are only of their narrow discipline, the KPI should include writing to communicate their thoughts with the larger society.
The Majlis Professor Negara (National Professors Council) may want to give serious thought to this.
Dr Ahmad Ibrahim is a Fellow at Academy of Sciences Malaysia
