Indonesia: publish or no graduation

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23 februari 2012 | From August on, Indonesia will require all its students to have a paper published in a scientific magazine before they can graduate. “Graduates must possess the ability to write scientifically,” argued a government official.

The Indonesian government introduced a regulation aimed atboosting scientific output. From August on, all Bachelor studentswill be required to have a paper published in a scientificmagazine. For Master and doctoral students this rule is evenstricter stating that the magazine in question needs to beaccredited and international for the latter.

Djoko Santoso, Director General of Higher Education at theMinistry of Education at culture, argued that “graduates mustpossess the ability to write scientifically. The culture of writingshould become familiar, and university is the place to create a newculture of writing.”

Research trailing behind other Asiancompetitors

Right now, scientific research is faring poorly in Indonesiawhich is also a drag in international university rankings. Thecountry has a population of 238 million. Still, it produced only12,776 peer-reviewed papers between 1996 and 2007. Over the sametime span, Singapore (5 million) and Malaysia (28 million) had aresearch output of 105,665 and 53,979 respectively.

Despite triggering a heated debate, the regulation will be legally bindingfor both private and public institutes. “My faculty has an academicjournal that publishes every six months, and every year we graduatehundreds of students. Imagine how thick the journal would be if wepublish all undergraduate’s research papers,” commented HerlinaAgustin from Padjadjaran University.