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Carrying out academic research that contributes to mankind’s body of knowledge is no mean feat, as it demands a deep understanding of the field, follows a rigorous methodology and is subject to intense scrutiny to ensure validity.

Unfortunately, recent government plans to force students to publish papers in scientific journals seem to completely ignore these facts.

One general indicator of a nation’s ability to contribute to the noble pursuit of knowledge is the number of academic documents published. According to the SCImago Journal & Country rankings, which compiles its statistics from the Scopus academic publishing database, between 1996 and 2007 Indonesian academics published 12,776 citable documents, i.e., peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, which is far less than neighboring countries Malaysia (53,979), Thailand (57,.509) and Singapore (105,665), and pales in comparison to research powerhouses such as Japan (1,429,881), the United Kingdom (1,392,982) and the United States (4,972,679).

There are many reasons why Indonesia’s academic output is so low, the chief of which is a chronic lack of research funding. This results in poor facilities, incomplete libraries and insufficient experienced human resources. Perhaps more damaging is the absence of a research culture at most universities, which are primarily teaching institutions. Research is often seen as an afterthought.

Of course, there are many good researchers doing solid work at top universities such as the University of Indonesia, the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and others. However, such cases remain the exception to the rule.

So what is the government’s solution to this sorry state of affairs? A very simple one: Just force your students to do it. For free.

This is essentially what the director general of higher education at the Education and Culture Ministry, Djoko Santoso, decreed to rectors and directors of higher education institutions across the nation in a letter dated Jan. 27. He stated that starting in August, before they could graduate, undergraduate students must publish a paper in a scientific journal. Masters students must publish a paper in a national scientific journal and doctoral students must publish a paper in an international scientific journal.

This policy is harmful on many levels, particularly concerning undergraduates.

The aim of an undergraduate program is primarily to equip students with the necessary skills and attitudes to become independent and critical thinkers who are knowledgeable about their disciplines or professions. The vast majority of graduates do not pursue careers in academia. Publishing journal papers is not a required competency.

In a recent interview, Santoso stated that the rationale for this policy is that “graduates must possess the ability to write scientifically.” While this is a laudable outlook, it is not a reason to force students to publish journal papers. There are many other ways to train students to write scientifically.

However, this is not the real reason. The real reason is the dearth of academic publications coming from Indonesian universities. Santoso explicitly mentions a comparison with Malaysia, citing that our neighbors are approximately seven times more productive. One can only conclude that this is a cynical attempt to artificially boost the academic output of Indonesian universities in terms of published papers, and for free.

Not only is this policy misguided, it is harmful toward efforts designed to improve the quality of research in Indonesia.

First, it will damage the quality and reputation of Indonesian scientific journals. In academia, a thorough peer-review process is imperative to maintain high standards of quality. Research is greatly facilitated by the fact that one can rely on findings in the literature to be valid. As Isaac Newton is attributed as stating, researchers stand on the shoulder of giants: they can see further into the far reaches of undiscovered knowledge due to the efforts of their predecessors. It is crucial, therefore, that this giant stands strong and firm.

Now, think of what would happen to Indonesian journals if undergraduate students were required to publish papers in order to graduate. With approximately 2,800 higher education institutions in Indonesia, each of them producing hundreds, even thousands of graduates annually, such journals would be under huge pressure to compromise their review process due to the sheer number of submissions.

While there are many exceptional graduates who are capable of producing good work, journals would likely be inundated with vast amounts of poor-quality work. They would almost certainly lose credibility. Genuinely high-quality publications would drown in an ocean of dubious papers. Plagiarism could also become a massive problem.

Secondly, what message does this policy send out in terms of building a culture of research among academics in Indonesian universities? Why bother wasting time laboring over research grant proposals? Why bother doing a Ph.D. at all? Get students to write your papers for you for free.

The audacity to even consider implementing such a policy reveals the low levels of regard the government has toward improving standards of research in Indonesia.

The irony of all of this is that the decree is unlikely to bring about the desired changes. The decree states that Indonesia’s academic output is only one-seventh of that of Malaysia’s. This is likely referring to the statistic from the SCImago Journal & Country rankings that in 2010 Indonesia produced 1,975 citable documents, whereas Malaysia produced 14,103. These numbers are computed from recognized academic indexes such as Thomson Reuters or Scopus. The journals that would most likely be the destination of undergraduates’ papers would almost certainly not be among these indexes.

The numbers bear a closer look. The numbers state the amount of citable documents published from 1996 to 2007. However, they are not a fair reflection of the true impact these documents have toward academia. For that, we must turn to the world of citation analysis, where the basic intuition is that the more often a paper is cited by another paper, the more impact it has. SCImago produces such a statistic: citations per document. And here we have reasons to be cheerful.

While we may lag behind in sheer number of documents, Indonesia’s citations per document is 10.36, which beats Thailand (10.18) and Malaysia (7.24) and stands toe-to-toe with Japan (11.72) and Singapore (11.82). To put these numbers into context, the UK (17.42) and the US (20.18) still lead the way, but Indonesia beats much more established countries such as South Korea (9.82), India (7.27) and China (5.66). It would seem that Indonesian researchers give you more bang for your buck.

The problem of Indonesia’s low academic output is a serious one that needs addressing. But we cannot solve this overnight by implementing a policy that can only be qualified as haphazard.

 

Ruli Manurung is the computer science program coordinator at the University of Indonesia.