PETALING JAYA: With academic misconduct on the rise and millions of ringgit spent on payments for publication in journals, there is an urgent need to review key performance indicators (KPIs) set for researchers in Malaysian higher education institutions (HEIs), say academics.
Cases of academic misconduct include plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, ghost authorship and publication in predatory journals.
Academy of Sciences Malaysia fellow Emerita Prof Datuk Dr Asma Ismail urged the Higher Education Ministry to reconsider its policies on assessments, rewards and promotions for HEIs and educators.
She said the output-focused KPIs have led to an overemphasis on the production of publications in academic journals.
“Researchers are rewarded for meeting output quotas, rather than being mandated to conduct sufficient market-driven research, generate new knowledge to address societal challenges or foster collaborations beyond academia,” she said in reference to recent concerns about the significant number of research paper retractions in Malaysian universities.
On Dec 12 last year, the multidisciplinary science journal Nature, in existence since 1869, published a list of countries with the highest rates of retracted research papers.
Malaysia, with an average of 17.2 retractions per 10,000 papers, ranked sixth highest in retraction rates among countries with over 100,000 papers published in the past two decades.
The top five countries for retractions were Saudi Arabia (30.0), Pakistan (28.1), Russia (24.9), China (23.5) and Egypt (18.8).
This was not the first time Malaysia’s academic integrity had been called into question. In October 2018, the journal Science reported that Malaysia held the fifth position globally in retractions, with 6.8 retractions per 10,000 papers. In February 2021, Malaysia also ranked fifth in “fraudulent publications” globally – amounting to 11.6% of predatory journal articles – in a Czech study that analysed data in four fields of research between 2015 and 2017.
Malaysian Qualifications Agency deputy chief executive officer (Quality Assurance) Prof Khairul Salleh Mohamed Sahari said the aim of reviewing current policies should be to strike a balance between quantity and quality, and encourage meaningful contributions to knowledge without imposing excessive and detrimental pressures on academics.
Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities president Datuk Parmjit Singh said the ministry’s “publish or perish” policy exerts pressure on academic staff to publish research work in scholarly outlets for higher education success, often tied to promotions.
“The recommendation for the ministry to review or reconsider the policy is grounded in the diverse impacts that academics experience in various aspects of their roles, encompassing teaching and learning activities, research outcomes, and institutional or departmental leadership, ultimately contributing to societal impact,” he said.
He added that the ministry should broaden its focus beyond a singular emphasis on publishing and guide universities towards prioritising high-impact agendas for the economy, ensuring that academic programmes are industry-relevant and fostering graduate employability.
Vice-Chancellors’ Council for Private Universities chairman Prof Mushtak Al-Atabi expressed concerns that using metrics to measure academic citations opens the door to manipulation.
“For example, if a researcher is part of a big university where everyone cites everyone else, the citation numbers will go up,” he said.
On March 12, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir, in a written reply in Parliament to Tebrau MP Jimmy Puah Wee Tse, said the ministry has, through the Higher Education Department, formed a task force made up of experts to ensure that academic journals published by universities have quality and credibility.
He said the task force aims to study the publication trends in predatory or fake journals, and the retraction of articles in all public universities that are seen as more profit-based with weak evaluation criteria and less emphasis on quality aspects.
“These articles have cost the country millions of ringgit in payments to the publishers concerned,” he said.
He added that the task force will present several proposals for improvements to curb publication in predatory journals, such as sharing the list of predatory journals and reprojecting the criteria in the Malaysia Research Assessment Instrument.
He also said the Higher Education Department issued a letter dated July 13, 2023, to prohibit the use of government funds for the purpose of payment to certain publishers.
The ministry, he said, was often concerned with the quality of publications by every HEI under its supervision.
“In this regard, the university is always asked to ensure each article is published in a high-impact journal and is indexed by international bodies such as Web of Science and Scopus,” he said.
