High Educ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0271-0

Publish to earn incentives: how do Indonesian professors respond to the new policy? William Sandy 1 & Hong Shen 1

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract In the early 2017, Indonesian government announced a new regulation no. 20/2017 which obliges Indonesian professors to publish certain amounts of articles to earn professional incentives. This study conducted semi-structured interviews with professors from two public universities in Indonesia in the summer 2017 to gather their perceptions on the new regulation. It was found that most interviewees accepted the legitimacy of the regulation but lamented its time frame, which they deemed too sudden and too short for those who do not have any publication; another concern argued by the professors was that the research support systems in Indonesia are not ready yet to help them in conducting meaningful research, and the last opinion was that the new regulation can be improved in its writing, implementing, and matched policy reform. Keywords Publication . Incentives . University faculty . New policy . Qualitative study . Indonesia

Introduction It has always been crucial for research scientists to publish their work. Academic publication rates are used internationally as an indicator of both individual and institutional performance, and there are promotional and financial imperatives to publish (Creamer 1998). Indonesia, regardless of the improvement in research and development in recent decades, is still left The first author: William Sandy, a PhD student This project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), project number 71273101.

* Hong Shen [email protected] William Sandy [email protected]

1

School of Education, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

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behind. Data shows that Indonesia ranked 57th in total indexed publication, far behind its neighboring countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand (Scimago 2017). Indonesia’s national research fund percentage from total GDP (0, 2%) is also far lower than countries like Singapore (3, 2%), Malaysia (1, 2%), and Thailand (0, 39%) (Saroh 2017). No wonder that in Global Competitiveness Index, Indonesia’s rank was getting lower from #34 in 2014 to #37 in 2015 and #41 in 2016 (Saroh 2017). To decrease the gap, The Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia through the Directorate General of Higher Education (DGHE)1 established regulation number 29/Dikti/ Kep/2011 regarding journal accreditation to regulate and obligate all journal publishers to be accredited by the government. This regulation was applied to provide more nationally accredited journals to the academics to publish their papers. Another aspect of this regulation is providing a 3-year grant for the accredited journals to internationalize their journals so that the journals become more visible to scientists all over the world. In addition, regulation number 17/2013 juncto number 46/2013 by The Minister of Empowerment of State Apparaturs and Bureaucracy Reform regulates the functions and the credits of the lecturers and this regulation implies that lecturers have to publish scientific paper to earn specific amount of credits to earn promotion. The efforts above proved that Indonesian government has realized research productivity as the mean to compete in the modern era, although those efforts have not been translated well in boosting Indonesia’s research in general (Dhani 2016). In addition, due to poor analytical capacity and poor use of English, few academic papers by Indonesian researchers are published in international journals (Faizal 2015). Despite the challenges, in order to continuously improve the achievement, government through The Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia establishes regulation number 20/2017 about professional incentives for the lecturers and honorary incentives for the professors. To earn these incentives, eligible professors (both associate professors and professors) have to publish at least three papers in nationally accredited journals2 or one paper in internationally indexed journal3 in the last 3 years and will be evaluated every 3 years. The ministry intends to push the professors in Indonesia to be more productive in writing and publishing papers, thus bolstering the numbers of Indonesia’s scientific publication. The introduction of the new evaluation and incentive policy will surely affect the professional and personal lives of the associate professors and professors in Indonesia. The debates around this regulation, which oblige them to publish to earn incentives, and how it affect them will emerge in the near future, and since this regulation is very new, there are not any documents found discussing this topic, making this issue a very interesting one to study. Therefore, using qualitative research methods, this study will investigate a group of Indonesian professors’ perceptions towards the new regulation and how this regulation affects their professional and personal lives. Therefore, this study will try to address these problems, formulated in these two research questions: 1

At the time when the regulation was established, DGHE was still under The Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia. However, since 2014, to boost research productivity of Indonesia’s higher education, DGHE was joined by The Ministry of Research and Technology, becoming The Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia. 2 Nationally accredited journals mean journals which have been accredited by The Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia via arjuna.ristekdikti.go.id. 3 Internationally indexed journals mean the journal which are indexed in reputable international citation index such as SSCI or Scopus.

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1. What are Indonesian professors’ perceptions towards the new regulation which oblige them to publish scientific papers for incentives? 2. How do these perceptions affect professors’ professional and personal lives?

Literature review Scientific publication has been considered as one of the few measures for the scholars to demonstrate their academic talent to the world. It is the tool to disseminate results of hours of research and enable interaction among academic communities (Casati et al. 2006). Furthermore, academic institutions and university frequently use the number of publication as one of the important criteria for their faculty members to earn recognition, rewards, and research grants. They also use publication as one of the requirements to recruit new or young doctors for postdoctoral research or to become their faculty member. Seeing the importance above, scientific publication has become the main goal for the researchers because their career depends on it (Lawrence 2003). The researchers must publish frequently to receive grants, get tenure, or earn incentives (Anderson et al. 2007; Parker and Guthrie 2012). Failing to do well in academic publications will jeopardize their careers as academia (Fanelli 2009). This enormous pressure to continuously producing scientific papers to survive has become an unavoidable challenge to the academia worldwide to become more competitive in securing their jobs and grants. The growing competition and pressure to publish scientific publications brings two simultaneous effects. Competition and pressure to publish encourage the researchers to become productive and efficient researchers (Feller 1996). Moreover, more publications will help them to secure incentives and benefits as well as job security since universities continue to use articles in published journals and books as the most important criteria to measure the research productivity in reviewing promotion, tenure, and merit (Smithrim et al. 2000). Thomas (1996) argues that increased demands and competition have more beneficial than detrimental effects among researchers, and reward system based on measurable parameters like amount of publications is better than its alternatives. This system allows the researchers to measure their own achievements easily, to plan their career trajectory, and to understand what standard they should achieve to earn incentives or grants. On the flip side of the coin, however, the pressure to publish bears potential negative impacts that harm the practice of science (Alvesson & Sandberg 2013; Ioannidis 2005; Qiu 2010; Tsauo 2013; Van Van Dalen and Henkens 2012). Adler and Harzing (2009) argue that this quantitative-based assessment system has pushed researchers to focus more on getting published rather than fostering original knowledge. In addition, concerns have been expressed that researchers are under constant pressure to continuously producing Bpublishable^ results (Tijdink et al. 2013), and if the pressure to publish is too high, it will create an atmosphere and the temptation for the researchers to commit research or publication misconducts to enhance the possibility of their papers to be accepted, published, and cited such as fabricating and falsifying the data or result (De Vries et al. 2006; Fanelli 2009, 2013), and plagiarism (Anstey 2015). From the research mentioned above, over-stressing the number of publications and immense pressures to frequently producing publishable results are responsible for its increasing research misconducts and further jeopardize the practice of science. As more and more papers are written under the obligation to publish, the integrity of the papers suffer. Fang et al. (2012) argue that more papers are retracted due to scientific

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misconducts rather than other reasons. The concern about retracted published scientific papers due to scientific misconducts has been discussed deeply (Borwein 2015; Nath et al. 2006; Steen 2011; Wager and Williams 2011) and pressure to publish always comes as the main Bcontributor^ that encourages scientists to cheat so their papers become more publishable (Barbour 2015) This is due to the incentive for their dishonest actions might outweigh the potential costs, as Dr. Benson Honig in BiThenticate^ white paper (2011, p. 3) point out: Their job, their career, and their reputations could be on the line. Everything they may do for the next 30 years may be contingent on them getting one particular article into one particular journal. Worse, the quality of the paper suffers significantly due to growing numbers of retracted papers caused by research misconducts (Sarewitz 2016; van Noorden 2011). More retracted papers due to scientific misconducts are going to give cynical view towards scientific results and detrimental effects on present and the future and pressure for scientists to publish frequently has Bcrucial^ role in this case. Pressure to publish also brings negative impacts to the personal life and health of the scientists. Reports and papers have drawn strong correlation between pressure to publish and burnout symptoms and emotional exhaustion (Tijdink et al. 2013). Parker and Guthrie (2012) argue that university’s faculty members who are under pressure to publish scientific papers have their workloads heavily intensified in addition to their main job: to prepare and conduct the teaching and learning process. In addition, large amount of time have to be taken to accomplish them, and then complete the appropriate paperwork to prove that they have been done (Tight 2010), resulting in less time for personal needs or spending time with families and ruin the work/life balance. Intensified workloads have come at the expense of time spent on research. This is a case of expecting staff to do more; thus, the chance to get burnout is higher, resulting in their work of research and teaching are both affected, as Houston et al. (2006) argue: BTime for research appeared to be that remaining after teaching and administration requirements had been met, and there were instances in which it was difficult to establish clear time commitments for staff to complete quality research^ (p. 25). This pressure also affects the psychological health of the academics. As good and meaningful research need ample time think and execute and more time to write it for publication, the lack of this time increases the stress levels of many academics (Tozer and Summers 2015). Vicious combination between the lack of reflective and detailed reading time for research, the pressure for frequent publication as well as maintaining level of performance in teaching result in stress of one form or another (Tozer and Summers 2015). The worst-case scenario is selfharming behavior, which unfortunately was actually happened where an academic expressed his stressful under pressure to perform (Parr 2014). Given the increasing emphasis on research development, there is an urgent need to investigate the obligation to publish scientific papers and its impacts on Indonesia’s researchers, their writing, and researching practices empirically. This paper is presented as a contribution to meeting that need to analyze the perspectives of a group of Indonesian professors who are under pressure to publish research papers to earn professional incentives from the government. As Indonesian government soon will impose this kind of pressure to the academics, this paper may give the authorities different angle from the people whom this rule will have effect on. The implementation of this publication pressure and its effects, both positive and negative, will hopefully help the authorities to rethink about the approach on applying the new regulation to the academics and reformulating best practices

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to avoid the worst scenarios that already happened in other parts of the globe, resulting from the pressure to the academics to publish in frequent manner.

Methodology Research focus Based on Law number 12 year 2012, Indonesia’s higher education academics are required to conduct research because research is considered as one of the three primary tasks of Indonesian higher education institutions: teaching, research, and community services, known as BTridharma perguruan tinggi.^ Academics, who are civil servants in state universities, are required to conduct research and publish it to earn credit points for promotion and additional incentives. This study focused on the participants’ perceptions towards the newly applied regulation number 20/2017 which oblige them to publish at least three papers in nationally indexed journals or one in internationally indexed journal in the last 3 years to earn professional incentives from the government. Although the name of the incentives are different (for associate professor, professional incentives/tunjangan profesi; for professor, honorary incentives/tunjangan kehormatan), the requirements are the same. Before this regulation was published, these incentives were automatically given without any requirements, as long as they still hold professorship. As the new regulation requires them to publish scientific papers to earn these incentives, some debates and perceptions around the enactment of this regulation are expected. Therefore, this study intends to gather the participants’ perceptions who are directly impacted of this new regulation and how their professional and personal lives are affected by the perceptions. Gaining their insights is crucial to analyze how this regulation affects them professionally and personally.

Research design This study employed qualitative method to answer the research questions and to provide thick descriptions of the phenomena being studied (Lodico et al. 2006). A semi-structured interview was chosen to gather thoughts, beliefs, understanding, and opinions of the interviewees in their own terms and allow them to talk about what is crucial to them to minimize researcher’s bias (Bell 2010).

Sampling The author chose participants from two public universities: The I University (TIU), an advanced research and technology-based university, and The T University (TTU), one of the comprehensive universities in Indonesia. TIU has a national reputation for being strong in science, engineering, and technological education and research, and its vision and mission statements include development into Ban international-reputation research university.^ It is located in metropolitan city in Java Island, the most populous island in Indonesia. TIU has earned BA^ accreditation from the Indonesian government and has also been accredited internationally by ASEAN University Network–Quality Assurance (AUN–QA) and Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In addition, TIU has built international research partnerships with well-known consortium such as Erasmus Mundus and ASEAN European Academic University Network.

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TTU, a university located in Kalimantan Island, has its sight to be the center of preservation and knowledge in its region. This accredited BB^ University does not enjoy the luxury of being located in Java Island, so its development is not as fast as TIU. Since decentralization and postreformation era, TTU has been catching up by developing numerous plans, such as rejuvenating several research facilities, competing for research grants, and partnerships with national and international universities. The two universities were chosen because of their distinctive polarities. TIU is one of the leading research-based universities in Indonesia with well-recognized research and development reputation; meanwhile, TTU is a developing university trying to build its reputation to be a leading comprehensive university regionally. The statuses of the two universities are also different: TIU is one of the universities with PTN-BH4 status, compared to T University with its general PTN status. TIU is located in big city with developed access, one thing that TTU lacks of. In terms of research and development, TIU has distinct predominance over TTU. TIU has earned Bmandiri^ status in research assessment from DGHE, compared to Bmadya^ status of TTU.5 Until 2017, TIU had 2878 papers indexed in Scopus compared to TTU’s 222 documents.6 Based on the data from the university’s website, TIU has more scientific journals affiliated to its university press (35 journals, 5 with A accreditation, 8 with B accreditation), compared to TTU (4, all unaccredited). TIU has established international networking in research development, and TTU has just started to develop it. These differences reflect conflicting and competing views about the current existence and unbalance condition of higher education development in Indonesia. Furthermore, these differences present a possibly broader view among the professors on how they interpret research due to the background and the current status of each university. The broader views and assumptions are proved to be extremely valuable in qualitative study to enrich the data collected (Corbin and Strauss 2008). The process of recruiting participants from both universities for the research was not as straightforward as expected. We turned to TTU’s website which had a link to webpages of academic staff across disciplines. An invitation e-mail which carefully explained the research aim and purposes was sent to some of the professors who have to comply with the new regulation, and just five professors volunteered to participate. Meanwhile, initially, only three professors from TIU replied to our e-mail and agreed to join this study and other participants were recruited from colleagues of the first three participants, based on the principle of snowball sampling, and in total, we got seven participants from TIU. In total, 12 participants were recruited for this study. Before we met with the participants, they were invited to answer a short online questionnaire via e-mail about their general information. This close-ended questionnaire was used to gather basic information shown in Table 1. Such questions were excluded from interviews to eliminate awkwardness if they were asked to answer simple questions one by one in face-to-face interviews.

4

Perguruan Tinggi Negeri-Badan Hukum (PTN-BH) is a status given to several top state universities in Indonesia. By having this status, the institution has bigger autonomy in running their services and bigger freedom in generating funds, including research funding. 5 Research assessment status classifies Indonesian higher education institutions into four clusters: mandiri, utama, madya, and binaan. These clusters regulate rights and responsibilities of the institutions in research, including research allocation funds. This assessment measures institution’s research resources (including research personnel, research facilities, funding), research management, research output (publications, patent), and revenue generating. 6 Retrieved from Indonesia’s online science and technology index (SINTA), web-based research information system (http://sinta2.ristekdikti.go.id/).

c

b

M M F M M F M M M M F M

Gender

45–50 50–55 50–55 45–50 45–50 55–60 45–50 50–55 55–60 55–60 60–65 50–55

Age group

Chemical engineering Mechanical engineering Physics Physics Chemical engineering Information system Information system Law Linguistic Economy TESOL Civil engineering

Discipline

Ph. D M. Sc. Ph. D M. Sc. M. Si. (English: M. Sc.) M. Kom. (English: M.CS). MT. (English: M. Eng.) MH. (English: M. L.) Ph. D MBA. MA. MT. (English: M. Eng.)

Final degree

Ass. Professor (Pembina/IVa) Ass. Professor (Pembina Tk. 1/IVb) Professor (Pembina utama madya/IVd) Ass. Professor (Pembina/IVa) Ass. Professor (Pembina/IVa) Ass. Professor (Pembina Tk. 1/IVb) Ass. Professor (Pembina/IVa) Ass. Professor (Pembina Tk. 1/IVb) Ass. Professor (Pembina utama muda/IVc) Ass. Professor (Pembina Tk. 1/IVb) Ass. Professor (Pembina Tk. 1/IVb) Ass. Professor (Pembina/IVa)

Civil servant categorya

Number of publication in internationally indexed journals in the last 3 years

Number of publications in nationally accredited journals in the last 3 years

Civil servant category regulates the rights and the workload of lecturers in Indonesian state universities

TIU TIU TIU TIU TIU TIU TIU TTU TTU TTU TTU TTU

A B C D E F G H I J K L

a

University

Code

Table 1 Participants’ basic information

2 1 0 1 2 0 1 0 1 1 0 1

Number of publicationsb

0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0

Number of publicationsc

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Data collection process and analysis A pilot study was conducted before the study to check the reliability of the interview schedule. Three interviews were conducted with three associate professors from TTU to check if the schedule could deliver the desirable outcomes: to answer the research questions. The schedules then were slightly revised in the wordings, based on the inputs of the pilot study participants, in order to make the questions easier to understand. All interviews were carried out in a quiet faculty office and all were conducted in Indonesian. Each interview lasted 40 to 70 minutes, was recorded, fully transcribed, and translated. The original analyses with the transcripts were sent to the participants for comments, which were used to inform any modifications. This process of member checking enhanced the validity of the research (Bell 2010). The transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis method (Braun and Clarke 2008), and both inductive and deductive approaches were applied to see if the themes appeared in this study resemble themes already exist from the literature, or new set of themes emerge around the topic discussed (Boyatzis 1998).

Findings From the data collecting process, there were several themes appeared to answer the two main topics of this study: professors’ perceptions on the new regulation and how these perceptions affect their professional and personal lives. The themes gathered from the interviews are presented and discussed below.

Professors’ perceptions on the new regulation When the interviews were conducted, only three participants had published adequate amount of papers (participants C, D, and I) to earn incentives. During interviews, participants agreed that this new regulation gives them additional task, although some considered it as their responsibility as professors while others considered it as burdensome and add unwanted pressure: I think it is the responsibility of the professors. If they focus only on teaching, then there will be no difference with the lower level lecturers. (G, TIU) There are some who reject this regulation, because it is burdensome […], the effect of this regulation is there will be additional work before they get used to it. (C, TIU) Several themes appeared on possible obstacles for the professors to not publishing enough scientific papers in the last 3 years: (1) Time to conduct research The main topic of debates and critics of this new regulation is the time frame of the new regulation, especially the evaluation, which will be implemented on November 2017. Some suggested that the evaluation should be started by counting the papers published from 2017 and then be evaluated in 2020 to give professors ample time to have good understanding of the

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regulation, to conduct meaningful research, and to write well-constructed papers, especially for those who have no publication record since 2015. The time frame for evaluation is too short for us who haven’t published anything. (K, TTU) The ones who are against this regulation complain about the time, because writing scientific paper is not as easy as writing for newspaper: write today, send tomorrow, and got published the day after. (G, TIU) Participants also lamented limited time they have to conduct research, write, and publish research papers. They argued their professional matters (teaching, supervising, or attending events held by university), and/or their personal/family matters have limited their time to conduct research and to write scientific papers. […] supervising students also takes much time, and every year I have around 4 to 5 students to supervise. I am also a mother and have to take care my family. I certainly have no time (F, TIU) I almost have no time to write, because I have to teach, to supervise, sometimes I also have to attend campus events. No time to read or write paper. (L, TTU) This is interesting because lecturers’ workload has actually been regulated by Law number 14/2005 about teacher and lecturer and Government decree number 37/2009 about lecturer, requiring them to conduct Tridharma perguruan tinggi minimum 12 credits and maximum 16 credits per semester, with at least 9 credits allocated to teaching and research. This finding from participants’ perspectives suggested that the regulations are not implemented well in practice, resulting in imbalance time in their workloads and less time to conduct research. (2) Research opportunity To date, the ministry provides various research grants, complete with the handbook explaining details on the application and evaluation procedure.7 Although the information is readily accessible and explains the grants clearly, we found that participants still lamented the lack of opportunity to conduct research, which they considered as Bvery few^ (C) and Bthe requirements are too much^ (E). These findings may be closely related to the finding before (limited time to conduct research). Because they were already busy with their workload, they did not get notifications about available research grants or they even had no time to access the information. Another possibility is that the information does not reach the professors offline in which they can access without searching on the internet, especially the lecturers outside Java Island with somewhat poor internet connection. Interestingly, participants from TTU commented that usually the opportunity to compete for research grants are mostly earned by big universities in big cities in Java Island, widening the already-wide gap among the universities. This finding shows that universities outside Java Island should get some helps in increasing their research capability, as well as improved research facilities. 7 http://simlitabmas.ristekdikti.go.id/unduh_berkas/Buku%20Panduan%20Pelaksanaan%20Penelitian%20 dan%20Pengabdian%20Kepada%20Masyarakat%20Edisi%20XI%20Tahun%202017.pdf

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Usually only big universities in Java win the research grants. We could do nothing because our support system is not as strong as theirs. [...] the chance for us to win research grants is slim. (I, TTU) We, here, are not (name of universities in Java island) which have great facilities. The grants will always go to Java and Jakarta. (L, TTU) (3) Support system from university and government Another crucial comment was about the lack of support system from university and government to help the professors to fulfill the requirements. Some concerns that emerged were a. Limited facilities, resources, and funds Several participants acknowledged the improvement made by the government and universities in bolstering Indonesia’s research and development. Despite the improvements, doing research in Indonesia is still considered as a hard thing to do due to limited facilities and funds. This finding is also closely related to the previous comment from TIU that their support system is not adequate to compete for research grants. I think there are improvements. Supports from government, university, are increasing, although are not maximum yet. Funding, tools, human resources, still many things to do. (E, TIU) Government needs to increase research funding, for example, lab upgrading, library upgrading, it will be really helpful. (A, TIU)

b. Lack of nationally accredited journals TIU has several nationally accredited journals, and participants from this university believe that those journals are helpful for them to publish their papers, although they expected that there should be more journals in various concentrations published by the university to give them adequate space to publish their papers. […] the one I wrote was published in this university’s journal. I am thankful it is nationally-accredited already, it is helpful for us. […] Hopefully there will be more nationally-accredited journal in this university to match the demand of publishing scientific papers. (D, TIU) One participant from TIU believed that more journals will be useful for them and urge the university to publish more journals targeting specific fields of knowledge: I think university has to create other journals, and be more specific to the study programs or majors. University needs to push study programs to have one accredited journal. (A, TIU) Although TTU currently does not have any nationally accredited journal, participants from TTU also agreed that it would be helpful to have nationally accredited journals published by their own university, and they hope their university to publish its own accredited journals.

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I don’t know about the other faculties but this faculty doesn’t have one yet. There are numerous plans. It will be very good if one day there is a journal from this faculty. (I, TTU) Limited number of accredited journals may be caused by long and complicated process to earn national accreditation, as informed by participant A, BThe accreditation is very complicated, so government needs to help us by simplifying the process.^ This comment suggested that government may reconsider the accreditation process to provide more accredited journals to publish scientific papers. c. Lack of academic English writing trainings or workshops Most participants were not confident enough to publish their paper in international journals. The biggest problem was their English proficiency in academic writing. This is understandable because English is not the national language, nor it is commonly used in daily basis. As result, they do not think that their proficiency is good enough to write scientific papers in English, BMy English is inadequate. I can’t do that^ (H) or BMy English is bad. I only target national journal^ (J). Writing papers in English and submit it to international journals also takes longer time to complete. Those factors discouraged them to write research papers and publish them internationally. […] not all professors have guts to submit their papers to international journal, mainly because the language (C, TIU) International journal takes much time, and I have to write and translate in English, it is difficult, and the process is longer. Not enough time. (L, TTU)

d. Lack of experience in research Among the participants, only three have Ph. D degree (A, C, and I), and among them, C and I have had enough publications to fulfill the regulation requirements. Although participant A have not had enough publications, but he had submitted one article and is under review process. I only need to publish the one that I did with my student in our university journal. It is under review and hopefully it will be accepted. (A, TIU) Having PhD means that they already possess research experience and training and that it is considered as a valuable experience to help them to conduct research in efficient manner, as participant I said his PhD study B… helped me to understand research process better^ and Bmade me know how to write scientific article properly.^ Furthermore, they were more likely to pass their research mindset and attitude to their students. This may be beneficial to support teaching and learning process. After I finished my PhD and returned to teach I did small-scale research for my courses, and did those with my students in our lab […] not all lecturers graduated from abroad or PhD so the experience is not that much. So I think those kinds of trainings or workshops are necessary. (A, TIU)

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e. Policy related to research Participants believed that Indonesia’s policies which have impacts to research need to be tweaked to facilitate research. This critic was described by participant E, as he recalled his colleague’s story about how complicated and stressful it was to conduct a research in Indonesia. My colleague once wanted to conduct a research and had to buy raw materials from abroad. He needed to submit ridiculous amount of paperwork. Approved by the head of department, and then the head of laboratory, and then the dean, and had to submit those to the ministry of research and technology in Jakarta to get approval, and then he had to came in person to the customs on the airport to pick the materials by himself and bring all the paperwork! And he needed almost six months to complete them all. (E, TIU)

How do these perceptions affect faculty’s professional and personal lives? Professional lives Some participants acknowledged the good intention from the government to boost the quantity and quality of Indonesia’s publications, and felt that this regulation is impossible to challenge due the increasing use of publication to evaluate academics’ performance in modern academic world. One participant (G) provided deep insight about professors’ responsibility to produce scientific papers. He also argued that the pressure Indonesian professors are facing now is much lighter, compared to professors in other countries: This regulation is a good wake up call to the professors, they should not be complacent with their positions but forget their responsibilities. (E, TIU) […] Hence you earn professorship, you bear responsibilities to develop knowledge and share it […] It is not the time to be relaxed and feel content with current condition. (I, TTU) I think it is the responsibility of the professors. If they focus only on teaching, then there will be no difference with the lower level lecturers. […]Compared to professors in other countries, we are far behind them. They have to write and publish papers for not losing their jobs… (G, TIU) Although participants pretty much accepted the legitimacy of the new regulation, the obstacles mentioned in previous subchapters may decrease their intentions to put their best efforts in conducting research, writing and publishing their papers, and even discourage them from pioneering newer or more challenging research areas and stick to the topics, methodologies, or even findings which have bigger publication chance. Because I have to publish it as quickly as possible, I will certainly choose common topics. It will make the reviewers’ job easier and the chance to be published is bigger. (A, TIU) I think will stick and focus on well-recognized topics to raise the chance of my paper to be published. If I choose a new topic and it is not known by reviewers, I will have trouble in publishing it. (E, TIU)

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A more worrying issue was whether professors would be pressured to take shortcut. One participant told story about Bcommon practice^ in research team. It should be noted that this study generated no further evidence of truth of the following excerpt but still this provided a clue about how pressure to publish could lead to research misconduct. […] There was even one research team published their paper, and some of them did not do anything but their names were included so they were counted as the team members. This is pretty common, especially senior professors who do not have time but need to put their names to earn recognition. They push their juniors to include their names. (L, TTU)

Personal lives Compared to their view on professional lives, participants did not reveal much about the impact of this regulation to their personal lives, although some clues revealed that their feelings about conducting research and writing papers add additional burden to their working hours and less time to do other things. Personally, I think this regulation is good enough, but this regulation also adds additional burden to my workload, and that means less time to do something else. (A, TIU) Interestingly enough, all three female participants (C, F, and K) mentioned family matters, especially taking care of husband and children, as their concerns. Their view show a glimpse that balancing professional and personal lives as working mothers could be affected by this new regulation, since they have to allocate more time for their research work. Some of professors’ children are still very young and need to be looked after by their mother and it is burdensome too… (C, TIU) I don’t think I will have enough time to conduct research and publish papers. My workload is quite heavy now, and I still have to look after my children and take care of my husband. (F, TIU) I think female professors are the ones who will be more affected by this regulation, compared to the males. Besides their professional work, most female professors are also mothers and have to take care of their families. (K, TTU)

Discussion and recommendation Generally speaking, the new regulation is seen as a legitimate way to further develop Indonesia’s research culture and boost the number of Indonesia’s scientific papers. Furthermore, it was also seen as professors’ responsibility to write scientific papers and publish them in journals. The establishment of this new regulation shows that the Indonesian government has given more attention to the national research development as well as Indonesia’s research competitiveness in global market. This is a welcome effort to boost Indonesia’s scientific publications, something that had previously been overlooked. Nonetheless, this new regulation is also a hotly debated topic. The main debate is the time frame of this regulation. Participants believed that the time frame of the regulation could not

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give professors who have no publication record from 2015 ample time to have good understanding of the regulation, to conduct meaningful research, and to write well-constructed papers. A friendlier time frame is suggested because limited time, coupled with other obligations such as teaching, supervising students, and completing administrative procedures, can affect professors’ teaching, research, and even personal lives and health (Houston et al. 2006; Tight 2010; Tozer and Summers 2015). It would be much better and receive less resistance from the professors if 2017 is set as the starting year for the professors to publish their articles and later the evaluation could be conducted in 2020. Furthermore, the limited time to conduct research after dealing with teaching, supervising students, and completing administrative works also added pressure to the professors. This could affect their personal lives, for example, balancing their professional and personal matter, and especially for female professors, balancing their lives as working mothers. Although regulations about maximum workload per semester exist, in reality, the participants still lamented inadequate time for research due workloads in teaching. More consistent enforcement of the workload regulations is needed so professors could have appropriate designated time for research. Possible alternative to focus on quality can also be considered. For example, government can ask professors to submit one or two papers they consider to be their most important papers in 3 years. They also have to submit a brief report of why the papers are important. The report could include numbers of citations of the submitted papers or other evidence which can indicate the quality, significance, and impacts of the publications, such as peer comments of the papers disseminated in workshops and conferences. The submitted papers, together with the self-evaluation report, are then reviewed and assessed. This alternative is indeed less direct and time-consuming, but compared to the Bnumber-counting^ way, this can provide a more valid evaluation of research and may boost professional growth of the professors. Moreover, it enables professors to focus on writing a smaller number of papers of higher quality and motivates them to pursue a more innovative and challenging research. Furthermore, this report can be used as one of the key considerations for awarding research grants to the professors. The pressure to the professors to publish was also intensified by the availability (or the lack) of research opportunities. Participants argued that the opportunity to earn research grants from the government is slim, especially for those universities outside Java Island. More research grants should be allocated for the universities outside Java Island to increase the research opportunities, especially research targeting developments in their regions. If the opportunities are available, they may feel more infested to prepare themselves to win the grants and conduct research. This could help them to increase their research capacity and quality and gradually decrease the gap. Ultimately, this may help them grow in research, increase their exposure to research, and provide more research experience to them. Another recommendation is to allocate research grant schemes which encourage research collaboration with institutions in Java Island, or even institutions abroad. This could help the knowledge transfer and accelerate the institutions’ research capacity growth. Lack of support systems from government and universities should also be taken seriously. Limited facilities and funds are mentioned by participants as one of the obstacles in conducting research. In addition, limited numbers of nationally accredited journals in several fields, one of possible cause is complicated process of earning national accreditation, is another obstacle for professors to publish their papers. These limitations, coupled with low level of academic English writing skills which deter professors to publish in internationally indexed journals and lack of research experience, add layers of stress in conducting research and publishing research papers. In terms of journal accreditation process, if the government argues that the process is

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not complicated, then they should organize workshops to inform and train the universities about journal accreditation and explain the requirements and the steps needed to earn the accreditation. In addition, government should review the accreditation process regularly, and if they find out that they could simplify the accreditation process, then there is no reason to complicate things, of course without sacrificing strict quality control and periodical assessment, so more journals could earn accreditation. More journals are accredited means that more media are available for the professors to publish their papers. Government and universities should also work together to provide adequate research facilities to ensure that professors can conduct their research. Furthermore, workshops and help centers in academic English writing skills should be provided to assist the professors in writing their articles in English. This is not only to help them to publish their articles in international journals but also could help the articles to be more visible internationally. Providing more PhD scholarship opportunities would be a welcome policy addition. This may not only boost the number of PhD lecturers in Indonesia but also provide valuable chance to experience robust research training and exposure. Based on this finding, workshops and trainings in research and research writing were also considered necessary, in addition to English academic training workshop. Sending more lecturers to pursue doctoral degree could be beneficial in long term as well. The scholarships specially designed for lecturers to earn doctoral degree, such as LPDP’s Beasiswa Unggulan Dosen Indonesia, should be supported and managed well to provide high-standard scholarship. The scholarships will enable them to earn much-needed qualified research experience and give them proper training in conducting and publishing their research. Finally, long and complicated process in getting research material, as stated by one participant, should not happen anymore. This kind of hurdle could discourage professors to conduct meaningful research and publish them. Therefore, government should consider tweaking related policies to help the researchers get their much-needed, research-related materials seamlessly. Other policies which may impact the convenience of conducting research should also be tweaked based on the reviews and inputs from the professors to help them. This also shows that government supports them in fostering research productivity. Specific findings in Indonesian context such as complicated process of conducting research, earning accreditation for a journal, unequal opportunities to compete for research grants, or long and complicated process in getting research material depict Indonesia’s current situation with its imminent limitations as a country which is still trying to catch up in scientific publication race. Pushing professors to write scientific paper to earn incentives is not enough. Without adequate support systems, very few can fulfill the requirements. To support this regulation, the support systems should be revamped. Otherwise, this regulation will only add pressure to the professors. As the pressure increases, professors focus more on getting published rather than fostering original knowledge and may attempt to deliberately misconduct the research to increase the chance of their papers to be published (Adler and Harzing 2009; Wesel 2016). This study confirms the notion as participants believed preferentially choosing common research topics to improve the chance of their papers to be published. Worse, the professors may be tempted to take shortcuts or play in Bgray area^ as long as they got their paper published, or get their names in the research team paper and earn credit without contributing anything. As the pressure to publish gets higher, the possibility to cheat or deliberately misconduct the research gets higher (Bouchikhi and Kimberley 2001; Fanelli 2012), and may harm the credibility of research in Indonesia in the future. These negative consequences of the pressure to publish observed in this study replicate previous research findings (Adler and Harzing 2009; Alvesson & Sandberg 2013; Ioannidis 2005; Qiu 2010; Tsauo 2013; Van Van Dalen and Henkens 2012). The negative consequences of

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pressure to publish certain number of publication as found in this study suggest that the use of other approaches and recommendations provided above may be used as considerations to revamp the regulation as well as the research policies and support systems in Indonesia to help the regulation to be implemented smoother.

Limitations and further studies Since the regulation is relatively new, numerous possible research can be conducted to analyze this issue deeper. Further research exploring perspectives of the people with real power to implement policies such as the rectors, deans, or head of departments may provide deeper insights on this policy’s practice. Furthermore, a large-scale survey targeting bigger audiences from various provinces in Indonesia could bring wider description on this study. In addition, since this study hinted pressure on female professors in balancing their work and personal lives as working mothers, study highlighting this topic could provide interesting results.

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