Research in Malaysia - again

Given that SPM results are out, it is not surprising that Malaysian universities and colleges are putting up advertisements to recruit students.  Most of the universities and colleges in Malaysia claimed that they are world class.  This is hardly surprising as Malaysia's deputy prime minister believes that Malaysian education is indeed one of the best in the world, better than American, British universities.

One way to judge a university is probably through their publications.  So I randomly picked a private university in Malaysia which published its research work http://sunway.edu.my/university/research/publications . I guess the university will put up their research if they are proud of their research work.  So how do our so called one of the best university in Malaysia fare? in 2011, there are about 6 papers in the whole university.

They did much better in 2010, although I was surprise to find this publisher "LAP Lambert Academic Publishing". I mean their so called Professors don't even know that LAP Lambert Academic Publishing is a scam????? Come on, take a look http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2009/06/academic-spam.html or http://www.writingnetwork.edu.au/content/email-lap-offering-publish-my-masters-thesis

Another interesting thing I find is that the whole publication in the university, is not even more than a single person in some universities in let's say Hong Kong or Singapore.  More importantly, look at the type of publications produced by people in these universities http://www.polyu.edu.hk/mm/mm_dev/content.php?id=1&content=area&aid=76 , yes, we are talking about MIS Quarterly, Journal of Marketing, Management Science, these are the journals that are ranked as among the top journals in the world, and is in the Financial Times Top 40 journals.  So do we still think we are world class?

Sadly, in Malaysia, we just like to make ourselves feel good with illusion that we are doing great research.

Guardian UK University Ranking

This is the latest UK University Guide 2012 by Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2011/may/17/university-league-table-2012 . It is interesting to note how some post 92 universities such as Oxford Brookes and Sunderland are ranked better than traditional universities such as Liverpool University and Bradford. Will give more comments on this later.

Increasing your H-index overnight?

The recent article by Jacso titled "Google Scholar duped and deduped- the aura of "robometrics" published in Online Information Review, Vol 35 No. 1 presented an interesting insight as to why H-index, in particular the one computed by Google Scholar, is not a reliable tool. Google Scholar and tool such as those by Anne-Wil Harzing's Publish or Perish are used by some academics and universities as a tool for calculating their research impact. However, Jasco showed an interesting case whereby a researcher created a fake author – Antkare I., and generated 100 "fake" papers using SciGen (a software that generates fake computer science manuscripts using all the IT technical jargons to make the paper look as if they are genuine, the interesting thing is that some of these papers were actually accepted by conference!). Anyway, these fake papers in turn cited each other's paper. I guess you know the outcome, within few months, once these papers and citations were captured by Google scholar, and Harzing's Publish or Perish which is based on Google Scholar, the fake authors Antkare received a total citations of 9626, thus giving him the computer scientist with the 2^nd highest number of citations! So for those universities that based their promotions on google scholar, think twice.

H-index anyone?

As part of the games to improve universities ranking, many university administrators are starting to look at the H-Index. According to my reliable source Wikipedia, The h-index "is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications". According to a recent report, universities in Singapore use H-index to determine the appointments of professors in certain discipline.

However, H-index is a dangerous tool. This is reflected in the recent surprise ranking of Alexandria University, which is ranked top 200 in the world, whereby its professor Mohamed El Naschie is accused to have manipulated his citations. More can be found here on how H-index might not be a trustworthy tool for measuring a scientist's actual impact: http://francisworldinsideout.wordpress.com/

Fake Degree in Malaysia

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• I am not sure if using fake titles is considered a crime in Malaysia. However, what if the title misleads the public? Richard Li claimed that he graduated from Stanford years ago, and when it was found that he did not graduate from Stanford, it create quite a big hoo-ha. So does this apply to only famous people?
  
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• Mr. Peter Yee claimed that he has a DBA from Golden State university, and the "Dr" title was given for his major in Investment Management. Now he is providing property advice on The Star, and of course he runs workshops in Malaysia as well. Unfortunately, Golden State University is a degree mill, and there is no such actual university. Please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_University or http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.aspx
  

  
  

  Q&A: Will I have to use years of rental income to cover initial repairs? | StarProperty Malaysia
  

  Now what is ironic is that in 2009, the Star had an article "unmasking degree mill and bogus varsities" and here they are, having this guy with a fake DBA providing advice to the readers. Well done The Star, well done Star Education Fund. Malaysia boleh.
  

UK universities at risk?

With the cut in subsidies, many UK universities seem to be at a high risk of being closed down. The recent report from The University and College Union (UCU) showed that at least a third of the 130 universities in the UK are at risks. More at http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/t/a/ucu_universitiesatrisk_dec10.pdf

Will this influence students' choice in selecting which British universities to pursue their studies?

Is it worthwhile to do a PhD?

Well , the Economist seems to think that it isn't. They have an interesting article that probably kills the aspiring young graduates' hope of pursuing a PhD

http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

Top universities in Malaysia

The Malaysian government came up with the SETARA rating which "ranked" universities into 6 tiers , 1 – weak and 6 – Outstanding. It is interesting to note that some universities such as Taylor's University, Sunway University College are ranked in the same tier with University Malaya. This suggests that the oldest university in Malaysia either has quality as bad as private institutions, or private institutions such as Sunway have excellent quality as University Malaya, or the rating is, well, rubbish http://www.mqa.gov.my/setara09/result_en.cfm

What interest me the most is some of the universities included in the list. For example, Management and Science University is ranked in tier 5 as excellent. I never knew how good this university is, but one thing for sure, it does not belong in the same league with University Malaya, University Science Malaysia, Monash Malaysia, or even Sunway and Taylor's. What interest me the most is the lack of information being provided by the university website as well http://www.msu.edu.my/ I mean if you click on the link, you can't find any profiles of their academicians. You will not be able to see the lists of publications by their professors, how many of them hold PhD, how many of them are professors etc. Compare this with University Malaya and Multimedia University, where this information are shown on their websites.

The reason why I am interested to look at their profiles are due to the types of IT degrees being offered :

http://www.msu.edu.my/v6/fise/fise.php

They have forensic computing, IS auditing, mobile and wireless technology etc. These are quite specialized degrees and you will need capable people to develop and deliver these courses. What concern me is that does the university has such people? I am not sure as I can't see it from their website.

Another thing that bothers me is that when I click on their computer forensic programme link, the following information is being provided:

Offering of this program aims at:

 

a.to provide students with a full understanding of current and developing computer forensic technologies.

b.to facilitate students in the development of expertise in areas of direct and complementary relevance to gaining employment.

c.to encourage students to become autonomous learners

d.to provide students with an understanding of current computer forensic research issues.

e.to develop students' analytical, creative, problem-solving and evaluation skills.

f.to provide a platform for career development, innovation and/or postgraduate student.

 

I mean look at how poorly written are the objectives. "Understanding and developing computer forensic technologies"? " facilitate students in the development of expertise in areas of direct and complementary relevance to gaining employment."

The degrees proposed by MSU sounds fancy, but I am not sure what is the process involved in developing these courses. Is it developed by some lecturers in their faculties, whereby they just merged some subjects, add/adapt some subjects from books, websites etc?

As an IT researcher, I am really concern when university offers this sort of courses, as we are not sure are they being fair to the students, and are they really producing competent graduates in these specialized areas.

World Class University with World Class Professors?

Sometimes in its efforts to build up a university's brand name, a university might starts to recruit "star" professors with great recognitions. However, how can you truly classify someone as being world class? I found this visiting senior lecturer in University Malaya.

http://umexpert.um.edu.my/cv_papar.php?id=4f6acf01c00fb6ed4a666ee996504553

Look at his achievements and recognitions. You might be impressed until you slap yourself and look at the actual awards and honours. They are mostly awarded by International Biographic Centre (IBC). I googled it and found this

"The Department of Commerce of the Government of Western Australia classified the Centre's offers as a scam and said:

The material promoting the International Biographical Centre creates a false impression about the credentials of the organisation. It also wrongly implies that the receiver of the letter has been picked through a special research process considering their work and qualifications".

Hmmm…being lazy, I tried not to search a list of all the impressive awards listed there. However, since this guy was given the best scientist award, he must have lots of publications. However, to search his name through web of science and scopus would greatly disadvantaged him, as his journals might not be listed in these databases. So I tried google scholar, and keyed in "Akcell Chiang Chii-Chung". How many papers? THREE. Well, try it yourself and you might even argued that it is only 1. Now, outstanding scientist who has 3 publications… HMMMMMMMMM……

I mean if you go through the list, there are hell lots of interesting awards. IBC Hall of Fame, Top 100 Scientists, etc. But what is interesting is that he only obtained his PhD in 2008. SO…. A phd grad in 2008, and a hall of famer in the field? You must be freaking Einstein.. even Einstein spent his early years working in a patent office before getting some recognitions later on.

NOW, is this what Prof. Ghauth Jasmon, VC of UM, has been promoting in terms of attracting the "Best" academics to join UM????

 

Malaysia’s H-index 1996 - 2008

This is an interesting data on Malaysia's H-index.

	Country		Documents	Citable documents		Citations	Self-Citations	Citations per Document	H index
1	United States		4,318,928	4,052,816		75,766,251	35,474,244	18.08	1,048
2	United Kingdom		1,244,316	1,134,839		18,030,898	4,476,611	15.48	636
3	Japan		1,224,465	1,198,879		12,485,837	3,920,215	10.53	492
4	China		1,223,278	1,215,927		4,328,817	2,240,814	4.83	246
5	Germany		1,134,216	1,078,356		15,140,549	4,116,637	14.07	558
6	France		824,601	781,988		10,475,265	2,511,263	13.46	510
7	Canada		630,525	599,602		8,825,916	1,803,543	15.54	495
8	Italy		609,192	579,114		7,169,107	1,732,478	12.86	442
9	Spain		449,406	423,791		4,623,796	1,225,409	11.59	347
10	Russian Federation		405,499	402,701		1,856,149	577,757	4.61	245
11	Australia		401,930	376,906		4,986,938	1,101,340	14.05	380
12	India		393,536	376,276		2,107,271	729,613	6.09	206
13	Netherlands		347,423	329,111		5,634,691	1,001,727	17.68	430
14	South Korea		319,976	315,392		2,217,068	530,243	8.53	232
15	Sweden		250,129	240,309		4,008,063	708,092	16.95	381
16	Switzerland		247,655	234,947		4,391,015	643,764	19.44	432
17	Brazil		236,703	230,272		1,614,792	517,211	8.35	219
18	Taiwan		233,763	229,301		1,612,728	416,490	8.27	192
19	Poland		209,744	206,235		1,317,141	373,845	6.91	213
20	Belgium		188,493	179,544		2,596,630	416,166	15.09	334
21	Turkey		171,048	162,252		886,307	259,644	6.37	144
22	Israel		154,402	147,884		2,143,484	340,029	14.75	315
23	Austria		130,548	123,673		1,675,616	255,272	14.19	290
24	Denmark		129,742	123,928		2,186,505	341,907	18.04	314
25	Finland		124,445	121,124		1,800,702	322,469	15.79	281
26	Greece		109,440	104,470		902,351	180,820	9.74	185
27	Hong Kong		103,462	99,704		992,830	180,238	10.88	203
28	Mexico		96,625	94,410		700,094	160,114	8.3	165
29	Norway		94,617	90,777		1,236,892	215,909	14.55	243
30	Czech Republic		93,563	91,278		649,726	165,673	7.69	168
31	Singapore		82,159	79,715		702,120	109,807	9.91	175
32	New Zealand		80,299	75,790		925,791	160,983	12.91	212
33	Ukraine		74,325	73,902		253,451	75,267	3.46	106
34	Argentina		73,705	71,775		622,317	144,908	9.12	158
35	Portugal		72,826	70,910		630,969	137,362	10.49	165
36	Hungary		72,235	70,082		666,510	123,247	9.81	188
37	South Africa		71,731	67,560		582,693	133,165	8.97	163
38	Iran		68,401	66,918		261,974	109,888	6.57	83
39	Ireland		58,545	55,123		664,497	84,077	13.76	195
40	Egypt		47,420	46,731		239,623	55,012	5.62	95
41	Romania		42,320	41,858		186,021	45,957	5.24	97
42	Thailand		41,892	40,906		278,002	51,460	8.7	118
43	Chile		37,347	36,482		352,382	69,866	11.26	143
44	Slovakia		35,274	34,417		211,727	49,365	6.39	114
45	Croatia		31,748	30,897		145,119	36,722	5.14	95
46	Bulgaria		29,893	29,399		174,697	34,490	6.2	101
47	Slovenia		29,493	28,922		192,212	44,163	7.37	106
48	Malaysia		29,166	28,456		122,942	23,912	6.2	85
49	Saudi Arabia		26,763	25,588		134,758	19,320	5.35	87
50	Pakistan		24,564	23,485		89,584	26,902	4.53	73
51	Nigeria		20,341	19,860		70,415	17,874	4.36	60
52	Tunisia		17,785	17,249		67,659	16,222	5.15	61
53	Venezuela		17,580	17,168		115,854	19,204	7.14	100
54	Belarus		17,401	17,322		68,529	15,867	4	76
55	Morocco		15,952	15,477		80,545	16,051	5.48	69
56	Cuba		15,277	14,835		65,948	17,155	4.68	67
57	Colombia		14,754	14,345		97,872	15,017	8.79	88
58	Lithuania		12,834	12,650		72,953	16,624	7.32	83
59	Algeria		11,664	11,560		42,679	8,760	5.12	57
60	Jordan		10,751	10,599		46,485	8,143	5.2	53
61	Estonia		10,647	10,489		102,112	20,250	11.04	94
62	Kenya		10,026	9,560		105,629	19,244	11.8	97
63	Bangladesh		9,590	9,359		51,173	9,982	6.23	65
64	Indonesia		9,194	9,022		70,283	7,767	8.79	79
65	United Arab Emirates		8,908	8,542		41,981	5,608	5.9	58
66	Kuwait		8,780	8,590		48,357	8,133	5.91	58
67	Lebanon		7,499	6,971		45,043	5,116	7.78	65
68	Philippines		7,484	7,300		70,624	9,001	10.48	84
69	Viet Nam		7,359	7,210		57,816	8,107	9.74	78
70	Puerto Rico		6,770	6,604		80,088	6,770	13.04	93
71	Iceland		5,962	5,757		102,055	10,412	19.59	115
72	Armenia		5,610	5,548		35,844	6,783	6.64	72
73	Uruguay		5,580	5,406		57,473	8,872	11.95	80
74	Latvia		5,426	5,374		38,170	6,157	7.4	65
75	Serbia		5,280	5,157		6,428	1,977	2.55	20
76	Uzbekistan		4,727	4,697		15,532	3,286	3.35	40
77	Tanzania		4,549	4,378		42,860	7,221	11.01	68
78	Georgia		4,490	4,426		27,136	3,897	6.68	58
79	Peru		4,474	4,304		43,339	5,089	11.98	73
80	Sri Lanka		4,465	4,210		28,442	3,387	7.91	56
81	Cyprus		4,342	4,229		29,387	4,027	9.7	59
82	Cameroon		4,282	4,175		29,010	6,277	8.41	52
83	Oman		4,234	4,029		19,457	2,848	5.51	42
84	Ethiopia		4,218	4,137		27,878	5,646	7.79	52
85	Costa Rica		3,940	3,831		43,762	5,614	12.11	75
86	Azerbaijan		3,922	3,896		8,003	2,123	2.38	29
87	Zimbabwe		3,806	3,686		30,400	3,726	7.91	54
88	Uganda		3,694	3,462		39,935	6,514	13.53	69
89	Ghana		3,394	3,275		24,045	3,053	8.26	50
90	Kazakhstan		3,298	3,262		10,494	1,731	3.39	37
91	Nepal		3,278	2,968		19,730	2,838	7.63	51
92	Senegal		3,072	2,911		24,096	3,450	8.51	58
93	Moldova		3,020	2,997		14,064	3,160	4.8	42
94	Ecuador		2,427	2,331		21,403	2,887	10.63	58
95	Jamaica		2,294	2,147		16,345	2,256	8.09	43
96	Luxembourg		2,274	2,173		18,852	1,566	10.77	54
97	Macedonia		2,201	2,136		11,675	2,071	6.2	41
98	Côte d'Ivoire		2,176	2,089		17,856	2,148	9.02	50
99	Syrian Arab Republic		2,173	2,134		13,753	1,979	7.58	42
100	Qatar		2,162	2,065		6,621	675	3.91	28
Retrieved from: http://www.scimagojr.com.

 

At least Malaysia is not badly ranked as our football team. BUT, it also shows that our DPP should not questions Thailand universities' recognition, as we are way below them in terms of publications, and perhaps some manners as well.