Exploring the Research Culture in an Educational Faculty in Malaysia

Globally, journal publication index is used as a key indicator to measure university performance. At the macro level, it contributes to the university ranking. At the micro level, it reflects academicians’ scholarship values and credentials. Over the last decade, tertiary education has rapidly grown in the Asia Pacific region. Tertiary institutions are competing among themselves nationally and regionally for university ranking, student intake and research funding. These three elements have numerical figures that are inter-related and powerful enough to dictate the fate and survival of an institution. Journal publication output plays a big role in this numerical game. For that reason, it is the topmost interest of many institutions and faculties to boost research writing output of their members. Paradoxically, minimal efforts have been made in the majority of instances to understand the needs and obstacles for such an aim to be realised. In this study, a preliminary attempt was made to gather the views and perceptions of academicians from an educational faculty in Malaysia. The data were collected via an online survey. The findings informed that academicians were facing different sets of challenges in different stages of their careers. Beginners reported the lack of technical support as the major hindering factor faced by them in producing academic output while the more senior members identified personal factors such as paradigm shift and motivation as the major hindering factors faced by them. Thus, the differential needs of academicians need to be acknowledged and to be supported with suitable mechanisms and catalysts.