A chemical engineer at a South African university has warned that research incentives are poorly-designed and encourages low-quality paper-mills.
Academic research is crucial to a well-functioning society. It drives technological development and public policy formulation, and perhaps most importantly it underpins teaching at the tertiary level.
About R2.5-billion is disbursed through this mechanism annually, and at some universities a sizeable portion of this is paid directly to researchers. Hiring and promotion criteria are also closely linked to publication count. Between them these incentives dictate the direction of much academic activity.
Over the long-term this system of incentives elevates people whose behaviour is in line with those incentives. Badly-formulated incentives don’t merely encourage negative behaviours and reinforce them, they also selectively advance people with a proclivity for those behaviours.
UNISA’s institutional decline has occurred concurrently with a boom in its research metrics. The university’s most recent research and innovation report, from 2021, reported that in the 2010s the university’s subsidy-eligible research outputs almost doubled, while its complement of National Research Foundation-rated scientists more than doubled.
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