INDONESIA: Call for more research papers

The Indonesian Institute of Sciences has issued a siren call to the country's universities to produce more scientific and technological research papers. Indonesia currently lags well behind neighbours Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines in this regard.

The institute's Science and Technology Research Development Centre claims that a total of 2,874 articles, written by 34,216 Indonesian researchers, appeared in international journals from 2004 to 2008. In 2007, only some 59 of these emanated from the top state university, the University of Indonesia or UI.

The centre's survey coordinator Siti Meiningsih told the media: "This is a very small number compared with the top universities in Singapore and Malaysia."

The survey took in South-east Asia's top five THES-rated universities, UI coming in at number five. Top of the list was the National University of Singapore with 2,955 such research papers published in 2007 while second place went to Thailand's Mahidol University, third to the University of Malaya and fourth to the University of the Philippines.

Meiningsih, echoing Fasli Jalal, Director-General for Higher Education at Indonesia's Ministry of National Education, says, "Indonesian universities must work harder if they want to be known as research universities."

UI, for one, falls far short of the two prime criteria required to meet the Shanghai Jiao Tong academic ranking's definition of a research university. This stipulates that 75% of its lecturers must have doctoral degrees and publish two research papers a year in international journals. Currently, only 31% of UI's lecturers hold doctorates.

As previously reported in University World News, Indonesia struggles with low levels of English-language literacy and many scientific researchers lack the confidence to tackle the demands of expressing themselves in scientific English. One solution to this, but not proposed by the centre, is to increase funding for quality Indonesian to English translations.

The survey, meanwhile, identifies the employment of unqualified lecturers and poorly equipped laboratories as significant obstacles to improvement. The national education ministry has in fact allocated considerably more funds for research in 2009 while Jalal continues to urge, as a primary concern, greater development of university science and technology programmes.

Curiously perhaps, the UI has announced plans to extend research cooperation with BATAN. This is the Indonesian Nuclear Energy Research Institute, a generally low profile body central to the somewhat controversial plans to develop nuclear power stations in a country world-famous for its Ring of Fire volcanic and seismic activity.

Meantime, LIPI last month launched a new journal dedicated to the social sciences and humanities. But Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an editorial board member, told media there was a serious problem of a dearth of qualified academic contributors.