Alternative Perspectives 2: Quality Publications & Indexing
By: Dr. Salihu Lukman
This is part 2 of the interesting engagement I had with Dr. Usman Isyaku in his posts about how to publish freely, where to publish, and whether university-based journals should be avoided entirely. I will reproduce his posts which are available on his Facebook wall, and my comments for context. In the end, I have added one comment by Olusegun and replied to it here because Facebook has restricted me from commenting for 13 days. Happy reading.
Dr. Usman Isyaku
I understand your optimisation, Prof. My condemnation is from my experience in making a change in that direction and was vehemently rejected. In theory, we can strive to change the way university based journals operate. In practice, it is an impossible task because the gatekeepers have more incentives to maintain the status quo than to change it. I have tried and failed, and am yet to see anyone who has succeeded in bringing quality to a junk journal. Kindly let me know if you know anyone.
My Response
While I acknowledge that there exist some shady practices affecting some of our journals, we can still make them better like the good old days. The new breeds of academics with excellent international exposure are gradually taking over the academe. No Nigerian university has made it to the list of the top 500 or 1000 universities based on the 2 prominent ranking bodies, THE and QS, in the last 10 years. With the infusion of competent academics with international experience, this has already changed. You can now find Nigerian universities among the top 1000 or 500 on THE list. Change is always a very slow process, especially when the existing structures have too many defects. Demolishing these defective structures and erecting standard ones in their places is an impossible task. These so-called junk journals that did not have any online presence, are now getting online presence starting with Google Scholar indexation. These are journals that were hitherto only purchased by authors whose articles appeared in them and kept these copies for promotion’s sake alone, they are now available online for a larger audience to read, cite, and critique. Some of them follow Google Scholar indexation with Scopus and ultimately ISI indexation. I can almost say that we have always had some of our local journals indexed by Scopus and ISI.
Dr. Usman Isyaku
Prof. Salihu Lukman and I have exchanged insightful opinions on academic and publication quality in Nigerian academia. I share his optimism that things will change in time. But I am not satisfied with the speed at which things are changing. In my opinion, the system cannot correct itself because the gatekeepers have too much vested interests to allow change to happen rapidly. The system can only be changed by outside elements, such as changes in funding policy (privatisation), creating a new knowledge economy that will demand quality research skills from graduates, and incentives to reward academic excellence beyond promotions and certification.
Additionally, if students are continously informed about research quality, they will demand it from the system, which will force the system to adjust itself to meet this new student orientation. Allowing existing and upcoming research students to remain in the dark, totally incapable of distinguishing between excellence and mediocrity, will continue to produce the results we are aiming to change.
I hope this conversation will continue.
My response
I share your sentiments. However, in my opinion, privatization of Nigerian public universities will remain a mirage that cannot produce water. There may be some school fee increments from time to time by the university administrations to increase their IGR. As promising as privatization may appear to be for uplifting the standard of our educational system, it will not be an option for our governments. Why? Because we operate a social economy rather than a capitalist one and I don’t foresee us going the capitalist way any time soon. Now, there is an upsurge of many private universities, especially in the North which had hitherto very few private institutions. Accordingly, the patronage of private universities is increasing exponentially. With the incessant strike actions that different governments force ASUU to embark upon to press home their demands before they can get a listening ear, public universities are no longer appealing, especially to those parents who can afford private universities. This has strengthened the private universities to outperform many of our premier universities. Take the case of Covenant University, usually, only UI and sometimes Unilag rank higher than it on THE ranking. Again, the remunerations offered by some of these private universities are many times more than what is obtainable in public universities. This imbalance could cause a massive migration of good brains from public universities to private ones. As they say, self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Olusegun (Commentator)
as a graduate student in 2012, I only got to know of ISI or Scopus while attending one of the sessions you organised upon your return from KSA. I reckon same for other members of faculty at the event.
The challenges you highlighted above will resonate with anyone who has gone through our system.
We had sparing access to ScienceDirect that year, though I’m not so sure of the availability of this database currently.
A number of graduate students and faculty members alike are unaware of these standards. You hardly get told, even in your research methodology module.
My response
The said workshop on ISI and other related publication issues took place in 2014 not 2012, just a year after completing my PhD at KFUPM. Those scholars and academics who had the privilege of getting both their MSc and PhD abroad will not resonate with the background story behind the paucity of the standard research methodology and expertise that had bedeviled Nigeria within those years and now. Those who earned their MSc in Nigeria and PhD abroad, like my humble self, will tell you that Nigerians are neither lazy nor incompetent. Give them the enabling environment and the sky will not be their limit but their starting point. This is not an exaggeration. I have seen many Nigerians with a 3rd class or pass degree from a Nigerian university who were privileged to pursue their higher degrees in the UK or US only to graduate with distinctions and on top of their class. Our learning environment is generally far from ideal, hence, it suppresses our grit in no small measure. An excellent learning environment abroad takes our God-given gift, the grit, to the fullest.
Can you imagine that my first article which I submitted to our Faculty of Engineering journal, ABU, in 2007 was rejected by the reviewers, but we were able to get it published in a Scopus-indexed journal in 2009 and yet, I did not know anything about Scopus at the time? One of my mentors, Prof. Ibrahim Musa Jaro, Department of Geography, ABU, invited me to collaborate.
Can you also imagine that my first set of ISI and Scopus-indexed articles were also published in 2009 and 2010 when I had no idea about ISI or Scopus indexation? I was in Nigeria during all these years, doing my MSc which I finished in 2009, and left for my PhD in Saudi Arabia in 2010. My other mentor, with whom we still work together now, Prof. Isaiah A. Oke, a former lecturer of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering ABU, but transferred to OAU, spearheaded the research. Again, I published part of my MSc thesis results in 2010 in a Scopus-indexed journal.
Do you see where I am heading? In 2009 as an MSc student, I had 2 papers, one was indexed by both ISI and Scopus, and the other one by Scopus only from research conducted in Nigeria, yet, we had no idea about these indexations. These were followed by another set of 2 papers in 2010, with similar indexations as the first 2 above. I started hearing about ISI when I came to KFUPM in 2010, only to realize that I already had 4 Scopus-indexed and 2 ISI-indexed papers when other students were struggling to get their first ISI-indexed papers. During that time, nobody talked about Scopus, ISI was the target, being the gold standard for scientific journals. That was what informed my decision to share with my colleagues and other postgraduate students the few things I felt could improve their research and I organized a series of 3 workshops in 2014 among which I discussed the ISI indexing.
Salihu Lukman is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Hafr Al Batin, Saudi Arabia
