Malaysian academics respond to study that says articles from Islamic countries dominate ‘predatory’ journals

KUALA LUMPUR - A recent study revealed that Islamic countries made up 17 of the top 20 nations or territories whose academic articles were published in “predatory” journals.

Articles from Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Iraq, Albania and Malaysia comprise the top five in publications that an editorial in the journal Nature defined as entities that “prioritise self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterised by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices”.

The same paper accused them of posing a “global threat” by accepting articles for publication without performing the type of checks for rigour that are expected by academia. They usually carry work in exchange for high fees and promise overnight publication, when a peer-reviewed article might take many months to appear in print.

THE LEAGUE TABLE

The study released in February by two economists in the Czech Republic looked at journals listed in the Scopus database, a global index of more than 30,000 journals covering a wide range of science-leaning academic disciplines that are considered to be rigorous in their approach to reviewing papers prior to publication.

They showed that this unwieldy Netherlands-based index had been “infiltrated” by as many as 324 journals that the authors considered to be predatory. Looking at the period between 2015 and 2017, the researchers identified some 164,000 articles in these suspect journals and devised a league table of nations whose researchers most often used predatory journals as an outlet for their research.

Academics from Kazakhstan were found to be authors of 17% of all articles in predatory journals during this period, followed by 16.73% from Indonesian researchers, 12.94% from Iraq, 12.08% from Albania, and 11.6% from Malaysia.

Broken down into research disciplines, Malaysia featured strongly in the corresponding lists for health sciences, physical sciences and social sciences, occupying second position in the latter two.

“Countries with large research sectors at the medium level of economic development, especially in Asia and North Africa, tend to be most susceptible to predatory publishing,” concluded the authors Vít Macháček and Martin Srholec.

“Policymakers and stakeholders in these and other developing countries need to pay more attention to the quality of research evaluation.”

THE MALAYSIAN EXPLANATION

According to a number of academics canvassed by Salaam Gateway, the Malaysian university system places much greater emphasis on publishing than systems in other countries, leading them to find more amenable outlets.

According to one senior Malaysian academic: “[Our universities] are chasing global rankings so they make us meet stiff KPIs. For a professor like myself, I have to publish at least five papers a year. Because of this, we have to find ways to speed up the process.”

Another, Erlane Ghani, a professor in the faculty of accountancy at Universiti Teknologi MARA, one of Malaysia’s leading research universities, said her colleagues “try to find journals that are more friendly in order to expedite publication”.

The university requires academics to publish their work in journals listed in databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, another index to certify academic rigour. 

To ensure that a “friendly" publication she is targeting continues to be on the SCOPUS database, Erlane emails the index, which is owned by Elsevier, the global academic publisher, before publication to check its status. If it is verified, she will send that journal her paper for publication.

“Of course, we will go through all the review processes; it's just that because maybe we have to pay a publication fee, it will somehow expedite the review process,” said Erlane, adding that this approach shows that she is acting in “good faith”.

“We would not send our paper to a journal if we knew that it was predatory. When you are talking about predatory journals, we are the victims here. If you wanted me to blame anyone for this, it would be Scopus,” she added.

Other academics who discussed the matter with Salaam Gateway concurred, saying that the habit of finding journals for quick publication begins early.

“Our universities put high publishing targets even on beginners, and new and inexperienced researchers will definitely struggle,” said one senior lecturer.

“They should be allowed to naturally develop and be trained to write papers for local journals that may not be be too academic in nature. Universities should recognise this because budding scholars need coaching and time to grow.”

Nevertheless, Wan Mohtar Wan Yusoff, a professor of fermentation technology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia does not agree that academics—in Malaysia or elsewhere—are singled out for intense pressure.

Instead, he believes that a lack of top-flight journals in the national language, Bahasa Melayu, is a more likely reason for the propensity for Malaysian academics to publish in predatory journals.

“We have to support our Bahasa because it is a language that has a sufficient body of words and phrases to express what is in the unknown. But when you talk about top scientific journals in Bahasa Melayu, there are only one or two,” he said.

“I teach everything in Bahasa, but when I publish, I need to have good journals under my bibliography, so I write in English. If I write in Malay, I can only write in Sains Malaysiana or Malaysian Applied Biology Journal, and even so, some chief editors will ask me to write it again in English.

“Not many people are ready to perish by not publishing in English. Only after you have reached a level of contentment with your career might you be willing to,” he added.

Mohd Noor bin Mohd Yunus, president of the Malaysian Association of Research Scientists, says he has never experienced barriers to publishing when his work is “academically substantial or novel”.

However, in cases when researchers are addressing specifically local issues, they might not be able to access Scopus-indexed journals. This might hint at intellectual snobbery, especially when Scopus is seen as a yardstick.

“I think this work is still genuine and contextual, and the issue of getting published in a Scopus-indexed journal is not relevant,” he said.

“My question is, what is the role of research if it’s not for the purpose of nation building? Using Scopus as a single measure for academic excellence is a half-truth.”

ISLAMIC COUNTRIES

Of the league table of top 20 offending countries compiled in the Czech research on predatory journals, it is notable that 17 of them are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Only three—India, in sixth place, behind Malaysia—the Philippines (14th) and South Korea (18th) are non-majority-Muslim countries.

There may be many reasons for this, although one of the study’s authors, Martin Srholec of the Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education—Economics Institute in Prague, is not certain why this might be.

“I have noticed this pattern. We highlighted that predatory publishing is widespread in North Africa and Asia, which makes a big overlap with Muslim countries. We also found that Arab, oil-rich and/or eastern countries also appear to be particularly vulnerable,” he told Salaam Gateway.

“I tried explanatory variables based directly on religion, but these variables were less relevant predictors than the level of development, size of research sector, language and oil and gas, so we did not report these results.”

ISLAMIC RESEARCH

Finding a suitable outlet for research can be taxing for Muslim academics, and especially those who focus on Islamic disciplines.

According to Marjan Muhammad, director of the research quality office at the International Shariah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA) in Kuala Lumpur, a limited number of highly rated journals accept Islamic social science research, and competition for inclusion in these publications can make it tremendously difficult for Islamic researchers to see their work featured.

“I have personally experienced this. When you send your article to Arab Law Quarterly, which is one of the highly respected journals for Islamic studies, you’ll have to wait—it’s common for you to wait one or two years until your article is finally published,” she said.

Even ISRA’s faculty complain about being forced to kick their heels while waiting for inclusion in the academy’s own, Scopus-indexed International Journal of Islamic Finance. It receives some 200 articles every year and can only publish about eight in each of its quarterly issues.

“It will definitely take two years for some of the articles to be published, but academics need to have their work in print if they want promotion,” Marjan added.

QUESTIONING ISLAMIC, MUSLIM RESEARCHERS

Meanwhile, Salaam Gateway understands that some secular journals are unwilling to publish work from Islamic researchers—and even studies by Muslim academics that are not of a religious nature.

A source in the academic publishing industry said that it is commonly accepted that editors in Europe or North America are wary of research done by Muslims, who they suspect of employing less academic rigour than their non-Muslim counterparts.

“They see studies that have title pages with Quranic verses and ‘insha’allah’ and ‘alhamdulilah’ in the text. That puts them off. This is often the case in papers from Saudi and the GCC,” said the source, who is neither Muslim nor Asian, on condition of anonymity.

“This can taint how they see research by other Muslims that doesn’t include any religion. These editors aren’t used to publishing anything with religion.”

Salaam Gateway spoke to others in the academic publishing industry who shared this view, though none were willing to go on the record, due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Srholec said that faith terms could be relevant in some corners of social sciences and humanities, but they are irrelevant in natural and medical sciences, which account for most of academic output.

“If somebody attempts to argue in natural and medical sciences using faith terms or Quranic verses, this would make it a religious text, not a scientific paper, which then has no place in a journal that has an ambition to call itself scientific.

“The underlying question is how journals that would publish such texts could be included in the Scopus citation database. But I cannot pretend to be an expert on science in predominantly Muslim countries,” he added.

According to Erlane, some of the prominent journals in her field of accountancy “do not want to accept papers that have any link to religion,” although she clarifies that this attitude is not solely directed towards Muslim research.

“I feel that if someone published from a point of view of Christianity or Buddhism, they would still not accept it. It's not because of Islam so much; I think it’s because they do not want to link their journal with any religion.”

Still, even though Islamic finance is growing in prominence around the world, as much in academia as on the high street, journals are still less willing to publish authoritative work on the matter.

“It doesn’t seem part of their scope, which I don’t blame them for. But since the industry is growing, then maybe we should urge them to consider Islamic finance as part of their journals’ scope as well, or introduce new ones that cover all aspects of the subject,” said ISRA’s Marjan.

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