The move is positive as many academics in University Malaya are now aiming to publish in journals indexed in web of science/ISI, or at least try to get their papers published in scopus indexed journal. One area which interests me is in the field of IS/IT. Most quality IS/IT journals are in general indexed in SSCI. It would be too ambitious at this point to compare University Malaya academicians' performance with those from Singapore (e.g. NUS, NTU), Japan (Tokyo University) or HK (HKU, HKUST, HK Chinese Uni etc). They are way ahead of Malaysian universities in terms of the level of their academicians, and their research faciliites. It would be like comparing a league one football team with premier league teams such as Man Utd or Chelsea. Nevertheless, among the countries in Asia, those universities from Thailand, Korea and Taiwan could be considered as belonging to the same level with universities in Malaysia. Although some would argue that their universities are better, well, using the football analogy again, some of them could be Man Utd, but it doesn't deny the fact that perhaps we are sort of the Blackpool or Bolton of the premier league.
An interesting link on Tainwan's research SSCI research can be found here http://dr-wangson.blogspot.com/2009/02/ssci.html (apologize to those who can't read Chinese, but the data presented in the Tables are quite clear).
So, that brings us to how about Malaysia? Using a "Unscientific approach", and just briefly searching through web of sciece, and this is what it shows for SSCI publications between 2000- 2010 for Malaysian universities:
IS/IT/Computing related
JOURNAL TITLE | No. |
MALAYSIAN JOURNAL OF LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE | 26 |
INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT & DATA SYSTEMS | 18 |
COMPUTERS & EDUCATION | 11 |
ELECTRONIC LIBRARY | 7 |
JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS | 5 |
EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS | 4 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT | 4 |
LIBRI | 4 |
JOURNAL OF COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS | 3 |
JOURNAL OF LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION SCIENCE | 3 |
SCIENTOMETRICS | 3 |
ASLIB PROCEEDINGS | 2 |
FUZZY SETS AND SYSTEMS | 2 |
GOVERNMENT INFORMATION QUARTERLY | 2 |
INFORMATION & MANAGEMENT | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INNOVATIVE COMPUTING INFORMATION AND CONTROL | 2 |
INTERNET RESEARCH | 2 |
ONLINE INFORMATION REVIEW | 2 |
ROBOTICS AND COMPUTER-INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING | 2 |
Business/Management/Operations Research/ Industrial Engineering etc
JOURNAL TITLE | No. |
AFRICAN JOURNAL OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT | 48 |
APPLIED ECONOMICS LETTERS | 29 |
INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT & DATA SYSTEMS | 18 |
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS EXCELLENCE | 16 |
APPLIED ECONOMICS | 15 |
VALUE IN HEALTH | 13 |
GLOBAL ECONOMIC REVIEW | 12 |
ASIAN JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION | 8 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ERGONOMICS | 8 |
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS | 8 |
JOURNAL OF POLICY MODELING | 8 |
JOURNAL OF THE ASIA PACIFIC ECONOMY | 8 |
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT | 8 |
ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW | 7 |
SINGAPORE ECONOMIC REVIEW | 7 |
ECONOMICS LETTERS | 6 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND ERGONOMICS | 6 |
JAPAN AND THE WORLD ECONOMY | 6 |
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY | 6 |
ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE | 5 |
DISASTER PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT | 5 |
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH | 5 |
SOCIAL INDICATORS RESEARCH | 5 |
ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL | 4 |
DEVELOPING ECONOMIES | 4 |
ECONOMIC MODELLING | 4 |
ERGONOMICS | 4 |
EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS | 4 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION ECONOMICS | 4 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH | 4 |
PATIENT EDUCATION AND COUNSELING | 4 |
TRANSPORTATION | 4 |
ACCIDENT ANALYSIS AND PREVENTION | 3 |
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS-ZEMEDELSKA EKONOMIKA | 3 |
BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW | 3 |
CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW | 3 |
CROSS CULTURAL MANAGEMENT-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL | 3 |
EMPIRICAL ECONOMICS | 3 |
FOOD POLICY | 3 |
INTERNATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS JOURNAL | 3 |
PERSONNEL REVIEW | 3 |
PRAGUE ECONOMIC PAPERS | 3 |
REVIEW OF WORLD ECONOMICS | 3 |
SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS | 3 |
SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL | 3 |
TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE | 3 |
APPLIED ERGONOMICS | 2 |
ASIAN CASE RESEARCH JOURNAL | 2 |
ASIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS | 2 |
BUSINESS ETHICS-A EUROPEAN REVIEW | 2 |
BUSINESS HISTORY | 2 |
CHINESE MANAGEMENT STUDIES | 2 |
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT | 2 |
DISABILITY & SOCIETY | 2 |
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS | 2 |
EMERGING MARKETS FINANCE AND TRADE | 2 |
ENTERPRISE & SOCIETY | 2 |
HITOTSUBASHI JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS | 2 |
HUMAN ORGANIZATION | 2 |
INFORMATION & MANAGEMENT | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OPERATIONS & PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SHIPPING AND TRANSPORT LOGISTICS | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT | 2 |
JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING AND PUBLIC POLICY | 2 |
JOURNAL OF BANKING & FINANCE | 2 |
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT | 2 |
JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES | 2 |
JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH | 2 |
MANAGEMENT DECISION | 2 |
PUBLIC RELATIONS REVIEW | 2 |
QUALITY & QUANTITY | 2 |
SERVICE INDUSTRIES JOURNAL | 2 |
SYSTEMIC PRACTICE AND ACTION RESEARCH | 2 |
TIME & SOCIETY | 2 |
TOURISM MANAGEMENT | 2 |
WORLD DEVELOPMENT | 2 |
The results although can't conclude anything in details, but looking at it, perhaps some observations can be made:
1. Academics at Malaysian universities in general, rarely publish in top tier journals (except for a few). There are few if not none in MISQ, Information & Management, Technovation. What I am saying is that their is very few journals that are ranked top 5 (based on web of sciences' ranking of journals based on impact factor and discipline) in their respective fields. In fact, that many journals are tier 1/ Q1 journals except for a few.
2. For those journals that are tier 1, they seem to be published by the same few academicians.
3. Some of the journals although are SSCI, they are certainly not quality journal. The no 1 ranked business journal is African Journal of Business Management. This is one of the poor quality journal in the field of management. Its reviewers are recommended by authors, and they do not verify the relationships between the nominated reviewers and the author. They don't even verify the reviewer. You can create a fake email, and when submitting the paper, nominate a Professor ABC that doesn't exist, and use that email address you created, and they might email the paper to that non-existant professor. Furthurmore, the journal accepts USD500 for publishing accepted paper.
4. Malaysian journal of library and information science is the no.1 journal where Malaysian academic published their paper. Is it a coincident that the journal belongs to University Malaya, and most UM academicians publish in that journal?
In conclusion, no doubt universities in Malaysia wants to improve its ranking by publishing in SCI/SSCI etc indexed journals, but we must be careful or we will fall furthur behind due to lack of citations (do we really want to cite papers from African journal of business management in an excellent quality paper?), or become the laughing stock of others when they see the type of journals that Malaysians publish in.
I totally agree with your observations. In the case of Malaysia, here are my observations:
ReplyDelete(1) Majority of Malaysian researchers (social sciences) are either incapable of conducting good research or not interested in doing research. They do not have passion and drive to carry out the responsibilities of advancing the frontier of knowledge.
(2) The rules and guidelines by Malaysian universities are in favour of quantity over quality research. Just look at the KPI of public universities for Professor, that is 3 - 5 SSCI journal publications per year. This absolutely crazy and unimaginable for someone to publish for 3 - 5 tier 1 journals in one year. The solution to meet KPI is to publish in any SSCI journal regardless of quality. But, for few. they disregard those crazy rules and focus only publishing in good journals regardless whether they meet KPI or not. Normally they met and excel.
In short, we love number so we put 3. We glorify impact factor so that is why we publish in African Journal of Business Management (AJBM) where the impact factor is more than 1. I rather publish in Journal of Asian Economics which is only SCOPUS rather than AJBM.
Thank you for the statistics of Malaysian publications. It should be an eye opener to everyone.
I think there is a lot of dodgy-ness in public university academic promotion exercises especially appointment of professors.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of crony cases where academicians play the numbers game and published tonnes of papers in blacklisted journals such as what was classified by UM to gain promotion.
Recently my fren doing a phd at a public university told me some staff are being promoted to full professorships in their respective universities by their VCs, and their research and publications quality GOD knows. Are these textbook professors?
I find these promotion exercises to be plain ridiculous. Wonder who are their crony assessors in their promotions? The Malaysian taxpayers are paying their fat salaries.
Are these genuine academic professors, or just Kangkungs?
ReplyDeleteHow can we expect kangkungs to conduct original research and publish at the frontiers of knowledge?
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ReplyDeleteI wonder why the researchers in Malaysia are still not comparable with those in Singapore?
ReplyDeleteI can't help but feel that it has something to do with the academic culture within which our researchers operate in. We've come from similar roots. Our capabilities should not be that far off.
In spite of all this, I wonder what does the ministry thinks.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to wages, allowances, titles, cars and houses, these university policy makers want these to be of the developed world. But when it comes to research and publications, these are to be of the developing world.
With all the Non-stop meetings, Non-stop overseas flights, how on earth can research at the frontiers of knowledge be encouraged and strived to be generated at local public universities?
Furthermore with the forthcoming autonomy of universities that is to be granted, God knows where we are heading in Quality.
Local Universities, especially research universities need to produce original quality research.
Leave the textbooks to the teaching colleges.
There is a need to review and reform some of the practices of the public universities.
Firstly, recognize and elevate academicians who produce high impact journals that other academicians may emulate and perhaps learn from them.
Secondly, stop all the nonsensical games that are being played. A few people, one in particular with not a single journal in the list as required by UM, was promoted to full professorship after just 3 years of obtaining pHD. Ministry of Education, please investigate what kind of crony game is being played. Did these people win the Nobel Prize?
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ReplyDelete