The Impact of SSCI & SCI on Taiwan’s Academy:

Petition for A Fair Play

Chuing Prudence CHOU 周祝瑛Professor, Department of Education

National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan

E-mail: iaezcpc2007@gmail.comWebsite:

http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~iaezcpc/English%20index.htm

Apple VS. Banana

Social Contextualization

• The neo-liberal ideology in the era of education reform since 1994: Market-driven , deregulation, and efficiency/productivity in a quantifiable way

• The pressure for resources after the massification of higher education since the mid-1990s

• The impact the world-class universities competition since late 1990s

• With the expansion of Taiwan’s higher education system since 1990s, the maintenance of quality has become a key concern.

• In 2005, the Ministry of Education initiated (1) Program for Promoting Academic Excellence in Universities (PPAE)

• (2) Aiming for the Top University and Elite Research Center Development Plan (ATU )

• and also established a formal university evaluation policy regulated in the University Law which will decide public funding based on university evaluation outcome

• All these policies aim to improving the competitiveness and raising international visibility of Taiwan’s top universities.

• University evaluation depended very much on Research performance in terms of the number

of articles published in SCI, SSCI and A&HCI indexed journals, as well as citation rates and associated impact factors.

• Evaluation has thus taken on a highly quantitative dimension since 2005.

• Despite the efforts of all concerned to encourage academic excellence, the above-mentioned quantitative evaluation indicators have resulted in bitterness and complaints from humanities and social sciences nation-wide whose research accomplishment were de-valued and ignored under current quantitative indicators.

• This SSCI-preference also highlights “Essential Science Indicators” (ESI) as one of the four key standards to evaluate, rank , and fund the academic programs across all disciplines.

• The traditionally renowned dimensions, such as book publications and international recognitions, were cast aside with an even lower/zero point value.

• It is found that the introduction of a new system rewarding SSCI and SCI publication as sole performance criteria has crippled the status of faculty in Humanities and Social Sciences in Taiwan.

• Junior faculty in social sciences and humanity encounter even more barriers in promotion and publication.

The great experiment of the SCI/SSCI Competition

• The rule of games• Publish or perish• Dilemma between research and teaching• Who was caught in-between?• Who benefits?• Who is in great dispair

No Way Out?

• Quantity VS. Quality• Social Sciences/Humanities VS. Natural

Sciences• Top ranking universities VS. General

Universities • Public VS. Private • Researchers VS. Lecturers• Flexible Salary vs. Institutional fixed salary

• Since last November, more than 2000 academic and students endorsed the petition by calling government /universities for setting up alternative approaches to evaluation that are beneficial to both researchers and funding agencies

• and find ways to properly tap into faculty academic productive capacity according to discipline and specialty.

反對獨尊 SCI SSCI找回大學求實精神

The petition includes the following issues:• Stop using SSCI as the best practice for

evaluation and funding purposes. • Recognize the rich variety of academic

research practices in social sciences and the humanities.

• Establish institutional profiles that recognize the local visions and development of academic disciplines.

• Foster a culture of social responsibility and academic professionalism.

• Create culturally-responsive evaluation criteria for social sciences and humanities.

• It is hoped that more studies can be done based on endorsers’ comments

• More discussions and protests can arouse more pressure and social consensus to stop the over-value of SCI/SSCI syndrome

• A genuine, fair and effective evaluation system will be available for humanities and social sciences in Taiwan.

The on-line petition against the over-emphasis of SCI/SSCI

• What?• Who?• When?• Where?• How?

• Thirty-three indicators are proposed for social sciences and humanities

An overall review of the SCI/SSCI in Taiwan

• What will be next?• Some progress but still a long battle to go