The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science, and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University conducted a study on the quality of South Africa’s research publications, which includes predatory publishing. 4,246 South African papers published in 48 journals were found to be predatory. Several studies suggest that some academics are falling into predatory publication traps due to the pressure to publish, get more grants and boost their academic reputation.

A survey of British institutions reveals that few have taken concrete steps to stop the much-criticized misuse of research metrics in the evaluation of academics’ work. The results offer an early insight into global efforts to clamp down on such practices.
DORA calls for panels responsible for academic promotion and hiring to stop misusing metrics such as the journal impact factor — which measures the average number of citations accumulated by papers in a given journal over two years — as a way to assess individual researchers. It urges panels to assess the content of papers and quality of research instead.

Kenya’s Commission for University Education has issued stringent new guidelines for the appointment and promotion of academic staff in a system that gives heavy emphasis to publication in reputable, peer-reviewed journals and discourages publication in so-called predatory journals. While the move is intended to raise academic standards, it has also raised concerns about the hurdles to publication facing many Kenyan academics.

In order to improve the quality of published research and to crack down on so-called ‘predatory’ academic publishers – who charge fees to authors but fail to provide adequate quality control, or make misleading claims about their quality – India’s University Grants Commission (UGC) has published lists of approved journals for publishing research papers. The UGC, a statutory body that oversees university education in India, has now linked academic promotions and recruitment to its system of Academic Performance Indicators which will only recognise papers published in journals that are on the approved lists.

The academic spectrum across several Pakistani universities has become infected with the deadly plague of plagiarism. Academic integrity seems to have melted in the heat of churning out research papers to receive more grants, promotions and other benefits.

When professors need to author research papers to get promoted, many turn to Ghost Writers, writes Gillian Wong for Associated Press.