KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Mustapha Sakmud announced the establishment of a special committee to oversee research papers before publication in journals, with the goal of upholding quality and credibility. The Deputy Higher Education Minister stated that the committee, comprised of experts from public universities, aimed to study publication trends in “predatory journals” that prioritize profit over quality.
He pointed out that the government has spent millions of ringgit on such publishers that lack emphasis on quality and have weak evaluation criteria. Mustapha mentioned that the committee would propose various measures to improve paper publications and prevent them from being published in predatory journals, such as sharing a list of such journals and adhering to criteria outlined in the Malaysia Research Assessment (MyRA).
During Ministers’ Questions Time at the Dewan Rakyat, Mustapha responded to a query by Tan Hong Pin (PH-Bakri) regarding the government’s actions to address high paper withdrawal rates in academic journals. He revealed that the Higher Education Department had issued a circular prohibiting the use of government grants for publications at certain publishers.
Furthermore, Mustapha emphasized the importance of universities focusing on their specific areas of expertise to ensure the quality of education. He acknowledged Malaysia’s ranking as the sixth country with the highest article retraction rates, with 17.2 retractions per 10,000 publications. However, he noted that this figure was relatively small compared to the total number of publications.
Mustapha reassured that efforts were being made to scrutinize researchers and their studies thoroughly, starting from the university level to before publication. He stated that any issues with papers would lead to their return for further review instead of being published. He highlighted that only 17.2 articles out of 10,000 in Malaysia were retracted, addressing Tan’s supplemental question.
Last year, an analysis by Nature on research papers revealed that Malaysia was among the top eight countries with the highest retractions. The data showed that Saudi Arabia topped the chart with 30.6 retractions per 10,000 publications, followed by Pakistan (28.1 retractions) and Russia (24.9 retractions).
