Sad state of research

From Lorelei R. Vinluan of the College of Education of UP Diliman comes this letter to me dated April 13 that I reprint in full:

“It is with great interest that I read your Mini Critique column in the Philippine STAR yesterday. I agree with you that our scholars should strive to publish in high-impact journals, get cited, and compete with the world (not with each other). Please allow me to make a few comments.

“I am happy to note that you didn’t propose to abolish the award of financial incentives for each article published in an ISI journal despite your apprehensions. It is a practice observed in a few other countries. Many in the UP Diliman faculty will agree with me when I say that the published article is a reward in itself. However, the cash reward is still very much welcome if only to augment our meager government-mandated salaries. That a faculty member’s publication record carries a significant weight in tenure or promotion decisions, especially in the context of a research university (or one that aspires to be one), is just an added bonus. Again, publication is THE reward already.

“I still need to verify this but I think that the total of 1,796 published articles for UP Diliman is understated. Of course, you did mention that what you did was a ‘quick glance’ only. My experience is that scholars from UP Diliman don’t know how to refer to their institution in their manuscripts. It varies, take your pick — University of the Philippines Diliman, University of the Philippines, Diliman, University of the Philippines, or even the acronym UPD.

“I agree with you that there exists a distinction between journals that have a high impact factor and a low impact factor. But the line that divides the two categories of journals (based on the impact factor) is not well-defined. For example, an impact factor of 2.0 might be low for a science journal but that is already relatively high for a social science journal. As I mentioned earlier, I agree with you that we should strive to publish in high-impact journals. But at this stage in the country’s publication history (where even Vietnam has overtaken us about eight years ago), can we afford to be choosy with regards to publication outlets? Shouldn’t it be enough for now to publish in an ISI journal knowing the stringent requirements to make it to the list of ‘core’ journals? Once our Filipino scholars develop the habit of reflecting, writing, and then publishing (always the missing piece), then perhaps that would be the time to think in terms of publishing in high-impact journals that would get cited and, in your words, would be read by the world’s leading scholars.

“Related to this, while we do have scientists who have published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Lancet, and other leading journals, I think our research topics are somewhat narrow in scope and focus to be of any significant interest to others in the rest of the world. Don’t you think so? In addition, I have data showing that some of our local journals also get cited by non-Filipinos, so I believe that Filipino scholars can publish something that the rest of the world notices.

“Then there is the entire matter of funding sources, which is more of a problem in the social sciences than in the sciences. Our Department of Science and Technology is annually appropriated a large budget for research and development activities, though not large enough (even miniscule) by UNESCO and global standards. (The efficiency of its R&D program, measured by the number of ISI publications per one million pesos in R&D funding, is another matter.) There isn’t an equivalent department for the social sciences.

“I would like to end this message by sharing with you an article that was recently published in the April 2012 issue of Scientometrics (2010 impact factor = 1.905). It can be the story of research productivity in the country - starting out relatively strong, then struggling for a long time, and now hopefully picking up again.

“Thanks again for a wonderful column.”

Thank you, Dr. Vinluan, for your candid and intelligent remarks. I recommend that all university administrators read Vinluan’s paper, “Research productivity in education and psychology in the Philippines and comparison with ASEAN countries” (in Springer).

Also interesting is a similar paper in Springer, “Scientific output and its relationship to knowledge economy: an analysis of ASEAN countries,” by Tuan V. Nguyen and Ly T. Pham. In both papers, the Philippines is shown to lag behind our neighbors in research, outranked by Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. It may be more fun in the Philippines, but it is certainly not fun to be a Filipino scholar, lacking the respect of the international academic community that has been earned by our ASEAN neighbors.