Malaysia puts pressure on researcher’s publication choices

Previously, I organized a roundtable discussion for the tenth anniversary of DORA about institutions trying to “put a thumb on the scale” of researchers’ decisions about what journal to publish in. 

For brevity, I called these “bans.” But I know that in many cases, these were not true “bans.” Researchers could still publish in journals from particular publishers, but there was no doubt that the intention was to get researchers not to use particular venues.

Little did I know that an entire nation would use the power of the state in this way.

With some optical character recognition and Google Translate, the letter appears to say roughly this:

CHIEF DIRECTOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION
DIRECTOR GENERAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Department of Higher Education
Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia 

Date 13 July 2023

PROHIBITION OF USING GOVERNMENT FUNDS TO PUBLISH IN THREE INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS

With all due respect I refer to the matter at the base.

2. For the information of YBhg. Tan Sri/Datuk/DatolProf., Post-Cabinet Meeting of the Ministry of Higher Education No. 9/2023 discussed the issue of the involvement of academics who publish articles in predatory journals and poor quality journals. In this regard, the Ministry is very serious about the aspect of academic integrity and authority in research and publication activities. One (1) special committee has been created by the Ministry as an effort to control the publication of poor quality journals in order to improve the level of academic ethics, and to protect the good name of IPT and the country.

3. Therefore, the Ministry does not allow Public Universities to use the Public Fund allocation for any publication published by three (3) publishers namely Hindawi, Frontier and MDPI with immediate effect. The Ministry also advises that each University can play a role in monitoring issues related to the quality of publications more carefully in the future.

4. The cooperation and attention of YBhg. Tan Sri/Datuk/Dato7Prof. regarding this matter is greatly appreciated and preceded by a word of thanks.

"MALAYSIA MADAM" "SERVING THE COUNTRY"

I am the one who trusts,

PROF. DR. Azlinda Binto Azman

Needless to say, this made me think the roundtable was a good idea. And that these policies are problematic. The basis for this decision is completely opaque – at least in this letter. Maybe there are some more background on the Higher Education ministry website, but I haven’t had a chance to search and apply Google Translate to find out if it exists or not.

Hat tip to Mohammed Al-Amr for posting this.

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