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Factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff: Case of a Malaysian public university
Technology in Society 42 (2015) 160e166
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technology in Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc
Issues and opinions
Factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff: Case of a Malaysian public university Sharanjit Kaur Dhillon*, Roliana Ibrahim, Ali Selamat Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 7 December 2014 Received in revised form 15 April 2015 Accepted 30 April 2015 Available online
The importance of scholarly publications to an institute of higher learning cannot be exaggerated. Publication leads to the creation of new knowledge, increases an institution's reputation, stimulates modernization and innovation, enhance the quality of academic staff and improves the economic status of the institution. Although there has been a satisfactory level of scholarly publication production among the academic staff of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), the targets for the key performance indicators have not been achieved as desired by the institution. It is therefore significant to thoroughly understand the influencing factors for research productivity among the university staffs. The aim of this study is to investigate the factors associated with scholarly publication productivity at UTM by determining the influence of three factors, namely personal, environmental and behavioral is associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff. The study uses a descriptive survey to collect all relevant data. The target population consists of academic staff of UTM and particularly those from the middle management level. The results show that all three factors had a positive influence on the scholarly publication productivity among the targeted population. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Publication Productivity University Academic staff
1. Introduction Scholarly publication in institutions of higher learning has been consistently appreciated for its role in global economic development and its contribution to any nation's gross domestic product [17]. Publication in the form of research has been recognized worldwide as a medium through which to expand the social and the knowledge economy. Research quality is of supreme value in the attainment of excellence in academic activities, where it can be demonstrated through intellectual property, publications and citations, research funding and post-graduate supervision. Scholarly publications in first quartile journals or high impact publications and citations are quick
* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S.K. Dhillon), [email protected] (R. Ibrahim), [email protected] (A. Selamat). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2015.04.004 0160-791X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
indicators as they indicate international acknowledgment. The number of citations generated can also be used to measure a successful publication [29]. The culture in Malaysian public universities is inefficiently highlighted and the KPI for publication is a good method of pushing our academic staffs in the right track. Publications for the high impact factor journals are certainly a requirement in the era of globalization and their importance is made especially outstanding particularly when Malaysia is aiming to become a player in the global knowledge economy scene and also as a regional education hub [23]. According to Peter 1999 [30] publications were considered more important in tenure and promotion decisions. Tenure and promotion decisions in almost all universities are derived from the tripartite model which is, an academic staff's performance is evaluated based on three aspects, that is, (1) teaching, (2) publication and (3) service in the institute (committee duties, administrative works, and etc.). Most of the time, the first two criterion are measured
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as primary, and the third as secondary [20]. This means that academic staffs be required to outshine in both teaching and publication, or both to get promotion and tenure. Journal publishing in the course of high-quality channels is one more method to improve promotion through KPI evaluation. Journal publication at national or international level was rated extensively higher than other publishing channels. Some outstanding publication printed with well respected publishers or in first-tier journals or possibly more valuable than some produced with lessrespected channels. The capability to publish constantly in well known national and international presses reveals a scholar's scholarly capability and rigidity. There are several advantages to follow publication with such highquality channels. Murray 2009 [26] stated that publishing in a quality channels enhances impact on practice, citation, a project's readership, as well as the visibility and reputation of the authors along with their respective universities. Indisputably, publishing in high-quality journals is advantageous to both academic staffs plus their universities. In Malaysia, the main criteria for the establishment of a research university are publications in impact factor journals [16] and external research funding. It is mandatory for all Malaysian universities to conduct an annual selfappraisal based on the Malaysian Research Assessment (MyRA) tool. MyRA is a research performance indicator which is used to measure the universities' research achievements over five years. Funding, principal investigator or research project leader roles and publications are among the main performance indicators in MyRA [29]. There are few versions of MyRA, namely, MyRA1, MyRA2 and soon to be introduced; MyRA3. At UTM, MyRA2 is currently being used as a tool to evaluate the performance of the academic staff. The delivery of key performance indicators (KPIs) is among the strategic initiatives put into practice by Malaysian institutes of higher learning to progress the overall performance of academic staff towards achieving the university's strategic goals. The delivery process is derived from the targets that are set for all the relevant stakeholders. Although the KPI delivery process is straightforward in its objectives, its implementation and execution requires a variety of efforts from a diverse group of stakeholders. At UTM, for example, these stakeholders include the Research Management Centre (RMC), Research Alliance (RA) and the Research Group (RG), the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation or also known as TNCPI, as well as the individual academic staff members themselves. These groups of actors have their own potential, targets and outlook. Furthermore, the stakeholder's input into the requisite targets in the KPI delivery process varies at different levels of the organization [21]. The aim of this study is to investigate the personal, environmental and behavioral factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff. The paper is divided into several sections as follows: Section 2 reviews the literature, followed by an outline of the factors and hypotheses of this study in Section 3. Then, Section 4 describes the research methodology. Section 5
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describes the data collection, and the data analysis and results are discussed in Section 6. Lastly, Section 7 summarizes the conclusions of this study, with recommendations outlines in Section 8 and direction for further research suggested in Section 9. 2. Publication KPIs Business performance refers to the measure of the performances achieved by individual members of a team. By not including KPIs, there is no reliable way of recognizing the value of someone's achievements until much later. By employing KPIs, the information that can be used to identify whether a team is performing its tasks properly or not, in addition to the information provided by the KPIs, helps to improve the work performance [6,7]. The KPI is an index that evaluates the qualitative and quantitative performances of an organization or institution. In higher education institutions, KPIs can be considered as an effective measure of the quality of the universities' output based on their planning and performance improvement [6,7]. Providing essence to the high level aspirations outlined in the organization's strategic documents is known as one of the key roles of KPIs and in doing so to make both of it to be more tangible to those who should make improvement towards them and to those who measure this improvement as of their job to do so [19]. As such, it is vital that the KPIs recognized branch straightforwardly as of these strategic procedures along with the testimonials in addition to not operate independently and autonomously to them. Nevertheless, there are countless features of the institution's performance that could be measured, however, if it is likely to depict an apparent idea between the strategic objective KPI that shares the significance of gathering and analyzing the facts needed to document growth is uncertain. An efficient organization knows that if they do not possess sufficient information about service, product or process, they cannot manage that element. There are huge figures of principles measured during work of any organization. To remain as a competitive business the organization should deal with relations with suppliers, reductions time, planed activities, processes and employees as well as the supplementary elements of the nature of the business. System for successful measuring of performances is used to recognize, alter and perk up business in all sections of the organization [34]. In an organization measuring performances can mean qualitative and quantitative expression of some consequences by selected indicators. PM allows efficient organizations to articulate their achievement by figures. A very important activity can be to get the choice of suitable indicators that will be utilized for the purpose of measurement along with appraisal of the performances. Along with all information that can be acknowledged it is crucial to choose some main quantity that on the best way points out the complete business [11]. Beside control function indicators of performances there are also two other functions which is; first is to develop and guide function since they give a foundation for implementation and formulation of
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the organization's strategy. While the second function is motivation function which stimulates the management to accomplish targets and encourage all stakeholders to comprehend those goals and go on for yet advanced stages [32]. The UTM KPIs related to research publication KPIs consider the SCOPUS and ISI citation indexing services. Particular importance is placed on the cumulative impact factor and on distinguishing high, medium and low impact journals. Academic staff in the Social Sciences are obliged to publish in ISI-indexed journals, and UTM have addressed the complexity that arises from these staff by setting them a lower target. In the case of papers written with co-authors, there is no differentiation between first and second authors, with each member receiving an equal score [6,7]. To increase competitiveness and accomplish highincome nation status by 2020, the Malaysian Government in 2010 initiated the New Economic Model with forceful economic reform policies [28]. Inadequate and appropriate skilled talent were seen to be two significant reasons behind the slow economic development [28] as well as the lack of involvement in the knowledge economy [25]. Among the issues associated with strategic planning in Malaysian higher education in recent years were the low research output and low citation output [27]. The Ministry of Higher Education subsequently proposed the promotion of a research culture by funding selected higher institution Centres of Excellence, the Accelerated Programme for Excellence, and research universities [27]. The ministry also stresses the importance of research collaboration between institutions of higher learning, research institutes and the industry, local or offshore. 3. Factors and hypotheses Numerous researchers have investigated and examined the relationship between research output and the factors that sustain academic staff in their endeavors to publish in scholarly journals [33]. Different variables that are associated with scholarly publication productivity have been identified. Previous studies have mainly focused on examining the relationship between publication productivity and variables such as institutional size [4], academic rank [13], age [3] and gender [22]. More recent studies have incorporated environmental factors in analyzing productivity [33]. The present study focuses on three core variables that have been discussed in most of the previous research, namely, the personal, environmental and behavioral factors. These three factors are also mainly discussed by Bandura 1988 [2] in his Social Cognitive Theory. Hence, this study will analyze in depth the main factors influencing the publication performance of the academic staffs. Personal factors such as the age, gender, experience and designation level of a staff member are highly associated with publication productivity as stated by Blackburn 1986; Gonzalez 2007; Giovanni 2011; Marianna 2013 [3,13,14,22]. Age is generally associated with the level of experience an academic staff member possesses throughout his/her
Fig. 1. Theoretical model.
academic career. Many researchers agree that female academic staff is less productive in publication compared to male academic staff [9,10,12]. This leads to our first hypothesis as follows: Hypothesis 1. Personal factors are associated with publication productivity among academic staff The research environment plays a crucial role in the conduct of research activities regardless of the management or the operational level. Sulo 2012 [33] pointed out that the university management can support research activities by organizing research seminars, workshops and conferences, promoting research networks, and appointing research coordinators, research fellows and research assistants; this support can foster the culture of research and develop positive attitudes toward sharing knowledge [18]. These initiatives are seen to be crucial in sustaining a conducive and productive research environment for better research production. This brings us to the second hypothesis as follows: Hypothesis 2. Environmental factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff Contributing knowledge to the virtual community depends very much on the willingness and attitudes of the knowledge owners. There is a cost in knowledge sharing, because knowledge contributors must allocate time and effort [1]. It takes time in knowledge coding, and after sharing knowledge, knowledge contributors will take more time to clearly explain or assist the knowledge seekers to have a better understanding of the knowledge provided [36]. Previous studies have shown that the knowledge sharing culture is theoretically unnatural. People think that their knowledge is valuable and important and they are unwilling to share their knowledge [29]. Therefore, the attitude of trust which consists of the trust and commitment of the knowledge owner towards the sharing culture is essential to make the sharing process a successful phenomenon. This leads us to the last hypothesis which is as follows: Hypothesis 3. Behavioral factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff The theoretical model is illustrated in Fig. 1. The dependent variable is scholarly publication productivity, while the independent variables are the personal, environmental and behavioral factors.
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4. Research methodology
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collaboration within or with other institution in Malaysia or around the world.
4.1. Study area 5.1. Sampling design As this study is derived for the “questions and hypotheses acknowledged in advance in propositional form and subjected to empirical tests (falsification) under carefully controlled conditions” [15], therefore it will accede to overview of results [5]. In this case to test our hypothesis, the correlation approach is used to measure the relationship of the factors. It is in fact to see the viewpoint of RU in nurturing SP productivity. Therefore, a survey for this phase of study was used and it is testified that this method are commonly used approaches for the co relational research [8]. Based on the theoretical model the hypotheses are outlined in section 3. The deductive approach takes the way the research method is planned in collecting data for this study. This is due to the study which is intended to test the hypothesis [24]. The study was conducted at UTM because of its convenience to the researcher, and the likelihood to be able to access related data in the institution. UTM is an innovationled and graduate-focused research university. It is located on two campuses: one in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, and one in Johor Bahru, the southern city in Iskandar Malaysia, which is a vibrant economic corridor in the south of Peninsular Malaysia. As at 2013, the university had a total of twenty-one (21) faculties and schools and ten (10) research alliances with multiple research centers. As of 30 June 2013, UTM had a total of 2074 academic staff of whom 1188 were academic staff with PhD qualifications [35]. 5. Data collection A survey was conducted to collect data from the respondents comprising several designation levels in UTM. The sampling strategy followed several stages. Firstly, academic staff was selected randomly from the university during a series of workshops. Only academic staff from the top and middle management levels were selected. This is due to the scope of the questions being asked for all related factors for academic staffs at this level. A total of 50 survey invitations was sent physically to the prospective respondents. Among the returned surveys, 26 questionnaires were usable because 24 was removed due to incomplete or items with missing values, duplicates and nonsensical answered, hence rendering them unusable for the survey. The overall response rate was higher than 50%. Variables were all measured on a 5 point likert scale ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” with neutral in between. The measures were fir into the SP context. In order to preserve content validity, measures were adapted from previous studies. All items covering personal, behavioral and environmental were implemented using [2] SCT model. Measures of the publication types includes types of publication produced throughout their service years in the institution, the teaching load and community service involvement, the satisfaction level of current position and workload, availability of resources to carry out research related work as well as the frequency of
The study used non-probability sampling to include the respondents from the different designation levels. This was to ensure that the respondents ranged from full professors to associate professors, followed by senior lecturers and lecturers are included in the study. The non-probability sampling strategy guarantees an equal possibility sample and avoids the perversion of any stratum that may arise by chance. There are some reasons this study uses nonprobability sampling and initially, it is because the access to academic staffs in the university was not promising as it was time consuming and also for the fact of time constraint of the academic staffs themselves. Though the low response rate does not influence the validity of the statistical analysis of the survey data, it has a negative influence on the statistical power and increase the size of confidence intervals. This thoughtfully influence the credibility of the study's findings and cause non response error [31]. Responding or not responding mostly happened due to a systematic reason. Besides that, it was discovered that with offline questionnaire, respondents are not keen to answer correctly and many responses were deleted from pilot test previously. Hence, the only proper choice in current research was to use the non probability sampling technique. 5.2. Primary data and sources Primary data were rigorously used in this study. The data gathered addressed the three core variables, namely, personal, environmental and behavioral factors. Further information collected during the survey included the respondents' views of efforts to develop research activities within the research alliances. The data analyzed for this study is mainly the quantitative data collected from the survey conducted with the top and middle level management academic staffs. At the later phase of this study, the researcher will move on to gather the qualitative data via interview sessions for the verification purpose which will also involve the same designation level academic staffs. 6. Data analysis and results The respondents of this study consisted of academic staff in a research university in Malaysia. Around 72% (18) of the respondents were male, and 28% (7) were female academic staff. There was a good representation of designation levels among the respondents who consisted of professors (7), associate professors (10), senior lecturers (6), and others (lecturer and tutor) (2). In the sample, the academic staff aged more than 50 formed the largest group of respondents (44%). From the results presented in Tables 1 and 2, we can conclude that personal factors are positively associated with publication productivity among academic staff (Hypothesis 1). The academic position or rank, age and experience as well as the field of study played a crucial role in publication productivity among the
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Table 1 Academic position and age.
Table 4 Funding.
Position Professor Age
31e40 41e50 >50
Total
0 1 6 7
Total Assoc prof
Senior lecturer
Others
0 6 4 10
4 1 1 6
2 0 0 2
Valid 6 8 11 25
Table 2 Respondents' discipline area.
Valid
Engineering Computing Social sciences Business Humanities/arts Others Total
Frequency
Percent
Valid percent
Cumulative percent
1 2 10 2 5 5 25
4.0 8.0 40.0 8.0 20.0 20.0 100.0
4.0 8.0 40.0 8.0 20.0 20.0 100.0
4.0 12.0 52.0 60.0 80.0 100.0
respondents, whereby higher productivity in terms of publication is visible among the more experienced academic staff. The respondents of this study, which consist of the top and management level academic staffs were also among the academic staffs with longer service years in this institution. Therefore, they are more experienced in the research ecosystem based on the university requirements obtained from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE). Interest in research was shown to be high among the respondents of this study. The respondents were asked to choose from four options, asking them about whether their interest was “primarily in teaching”, “in both teaching and research, but leaning toward teaching”, “in both, but leaning toward research” or “primarily in research”. Table 3 shows the descriptive analysis of the respondents' interests which shows that the interest in research was the most popular choice. This could be because of many reasons, including recognition and promotion because publications count as one of the promotion criteria for academic staff. In addition, publications also sustain the research university status of the university, and the research output of the academic staff is evaluated by the MyRA tool for that purpose. Since the middle and top level managers in this sample had been serving the university for many years, it is likely that their interest in research had grown in response to the environment of the institution. Besides that, among the respondents were head of the Research Groups under one of the largest Research Alliance of this institution. The respondents were asked about their accessibility to funding for the purpose of carrying out research.
Total
Very excellent Excellent Neutral Poor Very poor
Frequency
Percent
1
4.0 28.0 48.0 12.0 8.0 100.0
7 12 3 2 25
Table 4 shows that 48% of the respondents stated that funding accessibility was “neutral”. This would be due to multiple issues. For example, attaining research grants from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) is difficult as the selection criteria are strict and applicants are faced with competition from all universities in the country, regardless public or private university. Funding from the university itself is limited and requires the academic staff to adhere to the policy set by the university management. This issue was known as one of the major reasons for the publication productivity among the academic staffs of this institution. The results show that the respondents considered the resources available at the university were good and they were satisfied with the resources given to them. The survey asked the respondents to validate resources, including teaching technology, laboratories, research equipments, computer facilities, library facilities, office space, secretarial support, telecommunication services, teaching support staff, research support staff and research funding as well as incentives for publication and citation. Again, the majority of the respondents was satisfied with all of these resources except the funding and incentives for publication and citations for reasons as stated above in relation to the funding-related issues. In addition, 48% of the respondents were mostly teaching or supervising students at the Master's and Doctoral level, where their environment is very much associated with research. Therefore, we can conclude that environmental factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff (Hypothesis 2). As shown in Fig. 2, the level of collaboration among the respondents was high and collaboration was positively
Table 3 Interest in research and teaching.
Interest
N
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
Std. deviation
25
2
4
2.80
.500 Fig. 2. Collaboration pattern.
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7. Conclusion
Fig. 3. Satisfaction with current position.
practiced among them. With 32% collaborating with colleagues within the department or university and 23% collaborating with the academic staff from foreign universities, it is indicated that knowledge sharing was emphasized among the respondents. In regard to collaborating with academic staff from other Malaysian universities (public or private universities), 21% of the respondents reported collaborating with academic staff in those institutions. Twenty-four percent (24%) of the respondents reported that they conducted their research individually. These were the academic staff identified at the junior level who were still fresh in the academic field. Regarding their satisfaction with their position in the current academic year, a total of 18 respondents (8) stated that they strongly agreed that they were satisfied with their current position and ten respondents (10) agreed. However, four (4) respondents were neutral in their level of satisfaction and three (3) disagreed that they were satisfied with their current position. Fig. 3 shows the distribution of the satisfaction levels among the respondents. As shown in Fig. 4, the highest percentage of the respondents (52%) stated that if they had to do it over again, they would become an academic staff again. In contrast, those who disagreed and those who were neutral on this statement comprised 4% and 4% of the sample, respectively. This indicates that behavioral factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff (Hypothesis 3).
Fig. 4. Prefer to be academic staff.
The aim of this study was to investigate the factors associated with scholarly publication productivity in UTM by determining the influence of personal, environmental and behavioral factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff. Specifically, this study focused on the relationship between personal factors such as age, experience, position and gender with research funds and time allocation on research, and the relationship between the research environment, behavior and research output among academic staff. Based on the analysis of the results, the study concluded that the researcher's experience was the variable that had the most influence on research output besides the researcher's academic position. This was followed by the research environment such as funding for research, and finally by the attitude of the academic staff which is behavioral. The results therefore indicated that all three factors have a positive influence on increasing the production of scholarly publications among academic staff specifically those in the top and middle levels of management at the university who were chosen to participate in this case study. Since the study was conducted in one of the youngest research university in this country, therefore the results obtained will be analyzed for the next phase of this study to generalize it for the larger sample which consist of all academic staffs from this institution.
8. Recommendations This study has identified the researcher's age and experience as key factors in research productivity. Universities should continuously execute strategies that will promote the academic staff to pursue their higher degrees. Meanwhile, the institution should also promote the writing culture among the fresh graduates who have returned to teach; for example, fresh graduates could receive assistance to alter their thesis into the form required for publication. In addition, the findings of this study suggest that institutions should develop the research surroundings by publishing internal journals as a start for the fresh academic staff to venture into the research field. Internal journals published by the university's press itself will promote the young academic staff to publish more and at the same time improve their writing skills. Furthermore, resources such as the availability of library equipment and materials, and access to the Internet, laboratories, and computers should be improved to enhance the research environment. The relevant personnel should organize frequent research activities for the research alliance members, and should create associations and partnerships for more collaborative research among the academic staff from within the university and with other universities in the country. The significance of funding for research is also indicated in this study. The university management should undertake programs that will attract funding for research with the goal to improve the levels of funding.
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9. Suggestions for further research The results of this study are based only on the academic staff in top and middle management levels at a public university in Malaysia. Further research can therefore be performed for all academic staffs of the university or at other public universities in the country to consider the differences in the working environments of those institutes. Finally, investigations into the other factors associated with a scholarly publication productivity need to be carried out to further determine the output efficiency. Acknowledgments This work is supported by the Ministry of Higher Education under Research University Grant (Vote No. Q.J130000.2628.07J52). The authors would like to thank the management of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, the Faculty of Computing and the Research Management Centre for their support in making this study a success. References [1] Ba S, Stallaert J, Whinston AB. Research commentary: introducing a third dimension in information systems design-the case for incentive alignment. Inform Syst Res 2001;12(3):225e39. [2] Bandura A. Organizational applications of social cognitive theory. Aust J Manag 1988;13(2):275e301. [3] Blackburn RT, Lawrence JH. Aging and the quality of faculty job performance. Rev Educ Res 1986:56. [4] Carole JB, Bruce AC, Deborah AF, Kelly RR, Justin GS. A theoretical, practical, predictive model of faculty and department research productivity. Acad Med 2005;80(3):225e37. [5] Chen WS, Hirschheim R. A paradigmatic and methodological examination of information systems research from 1991 to 2001. Inform Syst J 2004;14:197e235. [6] Dhillon SK, Ibrahim R, Selamat A. Strategy identification for sustainable key performance indicators delivery process for scholarly publication and citation. Int J Manag Inform Technol 2013a;3(3): 103e13. [7] Dhillon SK, Ibrahim R, Selamat A, Sani SI. Diagnosis of key performance indicators delivery process using viable system model. Int J Digital Content Technol Appl 2013;7(13):64e84. [8] Fawcett J, Downs FS. The relationship of theory and research. United States: Appleton-Century-Crofts; 1986. [9] Fox MF. Gender, family characteristics, and publication productivity among scientists. Stud Sci 2005;35(1):131e50. [10] Gander JP. Faculty gender effects on academic research and teaching. Res High Educ 1999;40(2):171e84. [11] Garbarino S, Holland J. Quantitative and qualitative methods in impact evaluation and measuring results United Kingdom. Governance and Social Development Resource Centre; 2009. [12] Giovanni A, Ciriaco A, Caprasecca Alessandro. Gender differences in research productivity: a bibliometric analysis of the Italian academic system. Scientometrics 2008;79:517e39. [13] Giovanni A, Ciriaco A, Flavia DC. Research productivity: are higher academic ranks more productive than lower ones? Scientometrics 2011;88(3):915e28.
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technology in Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc
Issues and opinions
Factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff: Case of a Malaysian public university Sharanjit Kaur Dhillon*, Roliana Ibrahim, Ali Selamat Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 7 December 2014 Received in revised form 15 April 2015 Accepted 30 April 2015 Available online
The importance of scholarly publications to an institute of higher learning cannot be exaggerated. Publication leads to the creation of new knowledge, increases an institution's reputation, stimulates modernization and innovation, enhance the quality of academic staff and improves the economic status of the institution. Although there has been a satisfactory level of scholarly publication production among the academic staff of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), the targets for the key performance indicators have not been achieved as desired by the institution. It is therefore significant to thoroughly understand the influencing factors for research productivity among the university staffs. The aim of this study is to investigate the factors associated with scholarly publication productivity at UTM by determining the influence of three factors, namely personal, environmental and behavioral is associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff. The study uses a descriptive survey to collect all relevant data. The target population consists of academic staff of UTM and particularly those from the middle management level. The results show that all three factors had a positive influence on the scholarly publication productivity among the targeted population. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Publication Productivity University Academic staff
1. Introduction Scholarly publication in institutions of higher learning has been consistently appreciated for its role in global economic development and its contribution to any nation's gross domestic product [17]. Publication in the form of research has been recognized worldwide as a medium through which to expand the social and the knowledge economy. Research quality is of supreme value in the attainment of excellence in academic activities, where it can be demonstrated through intellectual property, publications and citations, research funding and post-graduate supervision. Scholarly publications in first quartile journals or high impact publications and citations are quick
* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S.K. Dhillon), [email protected] (R. Ibrahim), [email protected] (A. Selamat). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2015.04.004 0160-791X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
indicators as they indicate international acknowledgment. The number of citations generated can also be used to measure a successful publication [29]. The culture in Malaysian public universities is inefficiently highlighted and the KPI for publication is a good method of pushing our academic staffs in the right track. Publications for the high impact factor journals are certainly a requirement in the era of globalization and their importance is made especially outstanding particularly when Malaysia is aiming to become a player in the global knowledge economy scene and also as a regional education hub [23]. According to Peter 1999 [30] publications were considered more important in tenure and promotion decisions. Tenure and promotion decisions in almost all universities are derived from the tripartite model which is, an academic staff's performance is evaluated based on three aspects, that is, (1) teaching, (2) publication and (3) service in the institute (committee duties, administrative works, and etc.). Most of the time, the first two criterion are measured
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as primary, and the third as secondary [20]. This means that academic staffs be required to outshine in both teaching and publication, or both to get promotion and tenure. Journal publishing in the course of high-quality channels is one more method to improve promotion through KPI evaluation. Journal publication at national or international level was rated extensively higher than other publishing channels. Some outstanding publication printed with well respected publishers or in first-tier journals or possibly more valuable than some produced with lessrespected channels. The capability to publish constantly in well known national and international presses reveals a scholar's scholarly capability and rigidity. There are several advantages to follow publication with such highquality channels. Murray 2009 [26] stated that publishing in a quality channels enhances impact on practice, citation, a project's readership, as well as the visibility and reputation of the authors along with their respective universities. Indisputably, publishing in high-quality journals is advantageous to both academic staffs plus their universities. In Malaysia, the main criteria for the establishment of a research university are publications in impact factor journals [16] and external research funding. It is mandatory for all Malaysian universities to conduct an annual selfappraisal based on the Malaysian Research Assessment (MyRA) tool. MyRA is a research performance indicator which is used to measure the universities' research achievements over five years. Funding, principal investigator or research project leader roles and publications are among the main performance indicators in MyRA [29]. There are few versions of MyRA, namely, MyRA1, MyRA2 and soon to be introduced; MyRA3. At UTM, MyRA2 is currently being used as a tool to evaluate the performance of the academic staff. The delivery of key performance indicators (KPIs) is among the strategic initiatives put into practice by Malaysian institutes of higher learning to progress the overall performance of academic staff towards achieving the university's strategic goals. The delivery process is derived from the targets that are set for all the relevant stakeholders. Although the KPI delivery process is straightforward in its objectives, its implementation and execution requires a variety of efforts from a diverse group of stakeholders. At UTM, for example, these stakeholders include the Research Management Centre (RMC), Research Alliance (RA) and the Research Group (RG), the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation or also known as TNCPI, as well as the individual academic staff members themselves. These groups of actors have their own potential, targets and outlook. Furthermore, the stakeholder's input into the requisite targets in the KPI delivery process varies at different levels of the organization [21]. The aim of this study is to investigate the personal, environmental and behavioral factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff. The paper is divided into several sections as follows: Section 2 reviews the literature, followed by an outline of the factors and hypotheses of this study in Section 3. Then, Section 4 describes the research methodology. Section 5
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describes the data collection, and the data analysis and results are discussed in Section 6. Lastly, Section 7 summarizes the conclusions of this study, with recommendations outlines in Section 8 and direction for further research suggested in Section 9. 2. Publication KPIs Business performance refers to the measure of the performances achieved by individual members of a team. By not including KPIs, there is no reliable way of recognizing the value of someone's achievements until much later. By employing KPIs, the information that can be used to identify whether a team is performing its tasks properly or not, in addition to the information provided by the KPIs, helps to improve the work performance [6,7]. The KPI is an index that evaluates the qualitative and quantitative performances of an organization or institution. In higher education institutions, KPIs can be considered as an effective measure of the quality of the universities' output based on their planning and performance improvement [6,7]. Providing essence to the high level aspirations outlined in the organization's strategic documents is known as one of the key roles of KPIs and in doing so to make both of it to be more tangible to those who should make improvement towards them and to those who measure this improvement as of their job to do so [19]. As such, it is vital that the KPIs recognized branch straightforwardly as of these strategic procedures along with the testimonials in addition to not operate independently and autonomously to them. Nevertheless, there are countless features of the institution's performance that could be measured, however, if it is likely to depict an apparent idea between the strategic objective KPI that shares the significance of gathering and analyzing the facts needed to document growth is uncertain. An efficient organization knows that if they do not possess sufficient information about service, product or process, they cannot manage that element. There are huge figures of principles measured during work of any organization. To remain as a competitive business the organization should deal with relations with suppliers, reductions time, planed activities, processes and employees as well as the supplementary elements of the nature of the business. System for successful measuring of performances is used to recognize, alter and perk up business in all sections of the organization [34]. In an organization measuring performances can mean qualitative and quantitative expression of some consequences by selected indicators. PM allows efficient organizations to articulate their achievement by figures. A very important activity can be to get the choice of suitable indicators that will be utilized for the purpose of measurement along with appraisal of the performances. Along with all information that can be acknowledged it is crucial to choose some main quantity that on the best way points out the complete business [11]. Beside control function indicators of performances there are also two other functions which is; first is to develop and guide function since they give a foundation for implementation and formulation of
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the organization's strategy. While the second function is motivation function which stimulates the management to accomplish targets and encourage all stakeholders to comprehend those goals and go on for yet advanced stages [32]. The UTM KPIs related to research publication KPIs consider the SCOPUS and ISI citation indexing services. Particular importance is placed on the cumulative impact factor and on distinguishing high, medium and low impact journals. Academic staff in the Social Sciences are obliged to publish in ISI-indexed journals, and UTM have addressed the complexity that arises from these staff by setting them a lower target. In the case of papers written with co-authors, there is no differentiation between first and second authors, with each member receiving an equal score [6,7]. To increase competitiveness and accomplish highincome nation status by 2020, the Malaysian Government in 2010 initiated the New Economic Model with forceful economic reform policies [28]. Inadequate and appropriate skilled talent were seen to be two significant reasons behind the slow economic development [28] as well as the lack of involvement in the knowledge economy [25]. Among the issues associated with strategic planning in Malaysian higher education in recent years were the low research output and low citation output [27]. The Ministry of Higher Education subsequently proposed the promotion of a research culture by funding selected higher institution Centres of Excellence, the Accelerated Programme for Excellence, and research universities [27]. The ministry also stresses the importance of research collaboration between institutions of higher learning, research institutes and the industry, local or offshore. 3. Factors and hypotheses Numerous researchers have investigated and examined the relationship between research output and the factors that sustain academic staff in their endeavors to publish in scholarly journals [33]. Different variables that are associated with scholarly publication productivity have been identified. Previous studies have mainly focused on examining the relationship between publication productivity and variables such as institutional size [4], academic rank [13], age [3] and gender [22]. More recent studies have incorporated environmental factors in analyzing productivity [33]. The present study focuses on three core variables that have been discussed in most of the previous research, namely, the personal, environmental and behavioral factors. These three factors are also mainly discussed by Bandura 1988 [2] in his Social Cognitive Theory. Hence, this study will analyze in depth the main factors influencing the publication performance of the academic staffs. Personal factors such as the age, gender, experience and designation level of a staff member are highly associated with publication productivity as stated by Blackburn 1986; Gonzalez 2007; Giovanni 2011; Marianna 2013 [3,13,14,22]. Age is generally associated with the level of experience an academic staff member possesses throughout his/her
Fig. 1. Theoretical model.
academic career. Many researchers agree that female academic staff is less productive in publication compared to male academic staff [9,10,12]. This leads to our first hypothesis as follows: Hypothesis 1. Personal factors are associated with publication productivity among academic staff The research environment plays a crucial role in the conduct of research activities regardless of the management or the operational level. Sulo 2012 [33] pointed out that the university management can support research activities by organizing research seminars, workshops and conferences, promoting research networks, and appointing research coordinators, research fellows and research assistants; this support can foster the culture of research and develop positive attitudes toward sharing knowledge [18]. These initiatives are seen to be crucial in sustaining a conducive and productive research environment for better research production. This brings us to the second hypothesis as follows: Hypothesis 2. Environmental factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff Contributing knowledge to the virtual community depends very much on the willingness and attitudes of the knowledge owners. There is a cost in knowledge sharing, because knowledge contributors must allocate time and effort [1]. It takes time in knowledge coding, and after sharing knowledge, knowledge contributors will take more time to clearly explain or assist the knowledge seekers to have a better understanding of the knowledge provided [36]. Previous studies have shown that the knowledge sharing culture is theoretically unnatural. People think that their knowledge is valuable and important and they are unwilling to share their knowledge [29]. Therefore, the attitude of trust which consists of the trust and commitment of the knowledge owner towards the sharing culture is essential to make the sharing process a successful phenomenon. This leads us to the last hypothesis which is as follows: Hypothesis 3. Behavioral factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff The theoretical model is illustrated in Fig. 1. The dependent variable is scholarly publication productivity, while the independent variables are the personal, environmental and behavioral factors.
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4. Research methodology
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collaboration within or with other institution in Malaysia or around the world.
4.1. Study area 5.1. Sampling design As this study is derived for the “questions and hypotheses acknowledged in advance in propositional form and subjected to empirical tests (falsification) under carefully controlled conditions” [15], therefore it will accede to overview of results [5]. In this case to test our hypothesis, the correlation approach is used to measure the relationship of the factors. It is in fact to see the viewpoint of RU in nurturing SP productivity. Therefore, a survey for this phase of study was used and it is testified that this method are commonly used approaches for the co relational research [8]. Based on the theoretical model the hypotheses are outlined in section 3. The deductive approach takes the way the research method is planned in collecting data for this study. This is due to the study which is intended to test the hypothesis [24]. The study was conducted at UTM because of its convenience to the researcher, and the likelihood to be able to access related data in the institution. UTM is an innovationled and graduate-focused research university. It is located on two campuses: one in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, and one in Johor Bahru, the southern city in Iskandar Malaysia, which is a vibrant economic corridor in the south of Peninsular Malaysia. As at 2013, the university had a total of twenty-one (21) faculties and schools and ten (10) research alliances with multiple research centers. As of 30 June 2013, UTM had a total of 2074 academic staff of whom 1188 were academic staff with PhD qualifications [35]. 5. Data collection A survey was conducted to collect data from the respondents comprising several designation levels in UTM. The sampling strategy followed several stages. Firstly, academic staff was selected randomly from the university during a series of workshops. Only academic staff from the top and middle management levels were selected. This is due to the scope of the questions being asked for all related factors for academic staffs at this level. A total of 50 survey invitations was sent physically to the prospective respondents. Among the returned surveys, 26 questionnaires were usable because 24 was removed due to incomplete or items with missing values, duplicates and nonsensical answered, hence rendering them unusable for the survey. The overall response rate was higher than 50%. Variables were all measured on a 5 point likert scale ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” with neutral in between. The measures were fir into the SP context. In order to preserve content validity, measures were adapted from previous studies. All items covering personal, behavioral and environmental were implemented using [2] SCT model. Measures of the publication types includes types of publication produced throughout their service years in the institution, the teaching load and community service involvement, the satisfaction level of current position and workload, availability of resources to carry out research related work as well as the frequency of
The study used non-probability sampling to include the respondents from the different designation levels. This was to ensure that the respondents ranged from full professors to associate professors, followed by senior lecturers and lecturers are included in the study. The non-probability sampling strategy guarantees an equal possibility sample and avoids the perversion of any stratum that may arise by chance. There are some reasons this study uses nonprobability sampling and initially, it is because the access to academic staffs in the university was not promising as it was time consuming and also for the fact of time constraint of the academic staffs themselves. Though the low response rate does not influence the validity of the statistical analysis of the survey data, it has a negative influence on the statistical power and increase the size of confidence intervals. This thoughtfully influence the credibility of the study's findings and cause non response error [31]. Responding or not responding mostly happened due to a systematic reason. Besides that, it was discovered that with offline questionnaire, respondents are not keen to answer correctly and many responses were deleted from pilot test previously. Hence, the only proper choice in current research was to use the non probability sampling technique. 5.2. Primary data and sources Primary data were rigorously used in this study. The data gathered addressed the three core variables, namely, personal, environmental and behavioral factors. Further information collected during the survey included the respondents' views of efforts to develop research activities within the research alliances. The data analyzed for this study is mainly the quantitative data collected from the survey conducted with the top and middle level management academic staffs. At the later phase of this study, the researcher will move on to gather the qualitative data via interview sessions for the verification purpose which will also involve the same designation level academic staffs. 6. Data analysis and results The respondents of this study consisted of academic staff in a research university in Malaysia. Around 72% (18) of the respondents were male, and 28% (7) were female academic staff. There was a good representation of designation levels among the respondents who consisted of professors (7), associate professors (10), senior lecturers (6), and others (lecturer and tutor) (2). In the sample, the academic staff aged more than 50 formed the largest group of respondents (44%). From the results presented in Tables 1 and 2, we can conclude that personal factors are positively associated with publication productivity among academic staff (Hypothesis 1). The academic position or rank, age and experience as well as the field of study played a crucial role in publication productivity among the
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Table 1 Academic position and age.
Table 4 Funding.
Position Professor Age
31e40 41e50 >50
Total
0 1 6 7
Total Assoc prof
Senior lecturer
Others
0 6 4 10
4 1 1 6
2 0 0 2
Valid 6 8 11 25
Table 2 Respondents' discipline area.
Valid
Engineering Computing Social sciences Business Humanities/arts Others Total
Frequency
Percent
Valid percent
Cumulative percent
1 2 10 2 5 5 25
4.0 8.0 40.0 8.0 20.0 20.0 100.0
4.0 8.0 40.0 8.0 20.0 20.0 100.0
4.0 12.0 52.0 60.0 80.0 100.0
respondents, whereby higher productivity in terms of publication is visible among the more experienced academic staff. The respondents of this study, which consist of the top and management level academic staffs were also among the academic staffs with longer service years in this institution. Therefore, they are more experienced in the research ecosystem based on the university requirements obtained from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE). Interest in research was shown to be high among the respondents of this study. The respondents were asked to choose from four options, asking them about whether their interest was “primarily in teaching”, “in both teaching and research, but leaning toward teaching”, “in both, but leaning toward research” or “primarily in research”. Table 3 shows the descriptive analysis of the respondents' interests which shows that the interest in research was the most popular choice. This could be because of many reasons, including recognition and promotion because publications count as one of the promotion criteria for academic staff. In addition, publications also sustain the research university status of the university, and the research output of the academic staff is evaluated by the MyRA tool for that purpose. Since the middle and top level managers in this sample had been serving the university for many years, it is likely that their interest in research had grown in response to the environment of the institution. Besides that, among the respondents were head of the Research Groups under one of the largest Research Alliance of this institution. The respondents were asked about their accessibility to funding for the purpose of carrying out research.
Total
Very excellent Excellent Neutral Poor Very poor
Frequency
Percent
1
4.0 28.0 48.0 12.0 8.0 100.0
7 12 3 2 25
Table 4 shows that 48% of the respondents stated that funding accessibility was “neutral”. This would be due to multiple issues. For example, attaining research grants from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) is difficult as the selection criteria are strict and applicants are faced with competition from all universities in the country, regardless public or private university. Funding from the university itself is limited and requires the academic staff to adhere to the policy set by the university management. This issue was known as one of the major reasons for the publication productivity among the academic staffs of this institution. The results show that the respondents considered the resources available at the university were good and they were satisfied with the resources given to them. The survey asked the respondents to validate resources, including teaching technology, laboratories, research equipments, computer facilities, library facilities, office space, secretarial support, telecommunication services, teaching support staff, research support staff and research funding as well as incentives for publication and citation. Again, the majority of the respondents was satisfied with all of these resources except the funding and incentives for publication and citations for reasons as stated above in relation to the funding-related issues. In addition, 48% of the respondents were mostly teaching or supervising students at the Master's and Doctoral level, where their environment is very much associated with research. Therefore, we can conclude that environmental factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff (Hypothesis 2). As shown in Fig. 2, the level of collaboration among the respondents was high and collaboration was positively
Table 3 Interest in research and teaching.
Interest
N
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
Std. deviation
25
2
4
2.80
.500 Fig. 2. Collaboration pattern.
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7. Conclusion
Fig. 3. Satisfaction with current position.
practiced among them. With 32% collaborating with colleagues within the department or university and 23% collaborating with the academic staff from foreign universities, it is indicated that knowledge sharing was emphasized among the respondents. In regard to collaborating with academic staff from other Malaysian universities (public or private universities), 21% of the respondents reported collaborating with academic staff in those institutions. Twenty-four percent (24%) of the respondents reported that they conducted their research individually. These were the academic staff identified at the junior level who were still fresh in the academic field. Regarding their satisfaction with their position in the current academic year, a total of 18 respondents (8) stated that they strongly agreed that they were satisfied with their current position and ten respondents (10) agreed. However, four (4) respondents were neutral in their level of satisfaction and three (3) disagreed that they were satisfied with their current position. Fig. 3 shows the distribution of the satisfaction levels among the respondents. As shown in Fig. 4, the highest percentage of the respondents (52%) stated that if they had to do it over again, they would become an academic staff again. In contrast, those who disagreed and those who were neutral on this statement comprised 4% and 4% of the sample, respectively. This indicates that behavioral factors have a positive influence on research productivity among academic staff (Hypothesis 3).
Fig. 4. Prefer to be academic staff.
The aim of this study was to investigate the factors associated with scholarly publication productivity in UTM by determining the influence of personal, environmental and behavioral factors associated with scholarly publication productivity among academic staff. Specifically, this study focused on the relationship between personal factors such as age, experience, position and gender with research funds and time allocation on research, and the relationship between the research environment, behavior and research output among academic staff. Based on the analysis of the results, the study concluded that the researcher's experience was the variable that had the most influence on research output besides the researcher's academic position. This was followed by the research environment such as funding for research, and finally by the attitude of the academic staff which is behavioral. The results therefore indicated that all three factors have a positive influence on increasing the production of scholarly publications among academic staff specifically those in the top and middle levels of management at the university who were chosen to participate in this case study. Since the study was conducted in one of the youngest research university in this country, therefore the results obtained will be analyzed for the next phase of this study to generalize it for the larger sample which consist of all academic staffs from this institution.
8. Recommendations This study has identified the researcher's age and experience as key factors in research productivity. Universities should continuously execute strategies that will promote the academic staff to pursue their higher degrees. Meanwhile, the institution should also promote the writing culture among the fresh graduates who have returned to teach; for example, fresh graduates could receive assistance to alter their thesis into the form required for publication. In addition, the findings of this study suggest that institutions should develop the research surroundings by publishing internal journals as a start for the fresh academic staff to venture into the research field. Internal journals published by the university's press itself will promote the young academic staff to publish more and at the same time improve their writing skills. Furthermore, resources such as the availability of library equipment and materials, and access to the Internet, laboratories, and computers should be improved to enhance the research environment. The relevant personnel should organize frequent research activities for the research alliance members, and should create associations and partnerships for more collaborative research among the academic staff from within the university and with other universities in the country. The significance of funding for research is also indicated in this study. The university management should undertake programs that will attract funding for research with the goal to improve the levels of funding.
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9. Suggestions for further research The results of this study are based only on the academic staff in top and middle management levels at a public university in Malaysia. Further research can therefore be performed for all academic staffs of the university or at other public universities in the country to consider the differences in the working environments of those institutes. Finally, investigations into the other factors associated with a scholarly publication productivity need to be carried out to further determine the output efficiency. Acknowledgments This work is supported by the Ministry of Higher Education under Research University Grant (Vote No. Q.J130000.2628.07J52). The authors would like to thank the management of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, the Faculty of Computing and the Research Management Centre for their support in making this study a success. References [1] Ba S, Stallaert J, Whinston AB. Research commentary: introducing a third dimension in information systems design-the case for incentive alignment. Inform Syst Res 2001;12(3):225e39. [2] Bandura A. Organizational applications of social cognitive theory. Aust J Manag 1988;13(2):275e301. [3] Blackburn RT, Lawrence JH. Aging and the quality of faculty job performance. Rev Educ Res 1986:56. [4] Carole JB, Bruce AC, Deborah AF, Kelly RR, Justin GS. A theoretical, practical, predictive model of faculty and department research productivity. Acad Med 2005;80(3):225e37. [5] Chen WS, Hirschheim R. A paradigmatic and methodological examination of information systems research from 1991 to 2001. Inform Syst J 2004;14:197e235. [6] Dhillon SK, Ibrahim R, Selamat A. Strategy identification for sustainable key performance indicators delivery process for scholarly publication and citation. Int J Manag Inform Technol 2013a;3(3): 103e13. [7] Dhillon SK, Ibrahim R, Selamat A, Sani SI. Diagnosis of key performance indicators delivery process using viable system model. Int J Digital Content Technol Appl 2013;7(13):64e84. [8] Fawcett J, Downs FS. The relationship of theory and research. United States: Appleton-Century-Crofts; 1986. [9] Fox MF. Gender, family characteristics, and publication productivity among scientists. Stud Sci 2005;35(1):131e50. [10] Gander JP. Faculty gender effects on academic research and teaching. Res High Educ 1999;40(2):171e84. [11] Garbarino S, Holland J. Quantitative and qualitative methods in impact evaluation and measuring results United Kingdom. Governance and Social Development Resource Centre; 2009. [12] Giovanni A, Ciriaco A, Caprasecca Alessandro. Gender differences in research productivity: a bibliometric analysis of the Italian academic system. Scientometrics 2008;79:517e39. [13] Giovanni A, Ciriaco A, Flavia DC. Research productivity: are higher academic ranks more productive than lower ones? Scientometrics 2011;88(3):915e28.
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