Daily Times

In reviewing literature for my current research, I have gone through a vast array of publications, both by Pakistanis and international researchers who have been working in and on Pakistan. Articles by a sizeable number of my compatriots lack something. Sometimes it is clarity, sometimes it’s coherence or articulation; it is never the content. I draw here on two of the articles from medical and social sciences to make an argument. One of these contained a spelling mistake in the topic. The other had a conceptual mistake in the second line of its introduction. Both these articles were published in international journals. None of these was a single-author effort.

The mistakes may be down to poor typing but the articles intrigued two professors in Vienna. One of them commented, “See, this is the kind of quality we get from my colleagues from Pakistan. This is the main problem with them. They have not even corrected the spelling mistake in the topic. It’s either that they are not taught well, or that they don’t want to learn. It is owing to this problem with quality of presentation that we avoid citing their work.”

One can certainly not make a generalisation from here. Nonetheless, it prompted me to ponder what the underlying problem was, how it came about and why it had persisted? Why do people go wrong after substantial effort? The intention here is not to identify the ‘culprits’. It is an attempt to understand how something fundamental has gone wrong, something that needs to be identified and corrected. A cursory glance shows that the quality of research is poor. What caused it to be so? We know that it has become a leading cause of lack of trust inour publications and underdevelopment of our research culture.

One of the major causes appears to be the link between the number of publications and promotion in the job. The emphasis on the number of research papers has affected the quality of research. The urge for promotion compels researchers to get as many articles published as possible even at the risk of compromising the quality standards and ethics.

An emphasis on the number of research papers has affected the quality of research

While linking the number of publications to promotion from one pay scale scale to another in the academia was a wise and necessary move, it started a race among researchers.

However, everything, including dominant theories in a discipline, grows weaker with the passage of time and no longer serves the intended purpose. The asame thing has happend here. The trend for publication has become an anomaly. Rather than promting research, the policy is having an adverse effect on the reserch culture.

It is time, therefore, for taking our research to the next level. The country is passing through turbulent times. Quality research would prove a gigantic push to the understanding of the determinants of this turbulence. This understanding would lead to everlasting development. The authorities concerned should consider revising the policy and making quality publications compulsory.

How can that be done? One way to ensure quality is to publish in top journals in the relevant fields. However, the temptation to quantify by specifying an impact factor should be resisted. In some fields impact factor are in double digits while in some they aer limited to a single digit. A universal impact factor policy would thus create yet another anomaly and more problems. The policy should cater to specific needs and criteria since publishing in top journals would upgrade the research standards. These journals do not publish anything that does not bring something new to the stream of knowledge. The peer review phase ensures the quality.

Also, researchers should shift their mode from quantity to quality. Publishing one or two articles a year in renowned journals is better than producing several articles that never get cited or are cited only to be criticised.

It is important to write research articles and have them published as a contribution to knowledge production. Getting a promotion should not be the principal motiation for it. There is no dearth of topics and domains to explore. What is lacking is quality. A shift in policy and praxis requires imagination, ambition and dogged determination.

Making the quality of research publications the chief parameter in weighing the worth of a scholar, especially those in the academia, would greatly ease the pressure on researchers to publish. Our research articles would be better, and be cited by the international research community. It will be a new beginning.

The writer is a PhD scholar at an Austrian university