Every country sets some parameters for the promotion of academician for different caters. These parameters reflect the policies and procedures they follow to promote and appreciate their intellectuals.
Higher education guidelines in different countries reflect the basic policies of each university and graduate program. This post summarises and contrasts some policies in different countries, like Canada, the United States of America, Australia, France, and Pakistan.
Australia
The Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE) [1] is an association of the departments of computer science of the universities in Australia and New Zealand. CORE provides guidelines for equity and diversity, respecting all people irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, age or other protected attributes. Higher education in Australia provides clear guidelines for
- International Conference Ranking (ICORE)
- Journal ranking.
These rankings are based on h-index and citation scores. CORE ranks each conference and journal as ‘A*’,’ A’,’ B’ and ‘C’ along with the field of research. There is no restriction on the total number of publications for the hiring and promotion of tenure-track faculty. Similarly, graduate student's evaluation is also based on the quality of the publication that counts both journal and conference papers.
Canada
The constitutional responsibility of higher education [2] is normally handled by the provinces of Canada as per the Constitution Act, of 1867 [3]. Every province has its distinctive system of education. The federal government is not directly involved in higher education. Moreover, each of the three territories in Canada (i.e., Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon) has separate higher education systems that show territorial history, organisation, and goals in the context of geographical challenges. There are no hard and fast policies set by higher education for the completion of graduate degrees as well as the recruitment of academic staff. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) [4] has represented Canadian public and private non-profit universities and university-degree-level colleges. The primary responsibility is to facilitate the development of public policy on higher education that promotes cooperation among universities and government based on the policy of equity, diversity and inclusion.
Universities are also advised to encourage everyone to apply for jobs along with the criteria that ‘priority is given to Candian and permanent resident’. Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) [5] announced different research chairs based on the current needs of the industry and faculty are engaged with the industry to propose new approaches and test their theories with different industry partners. The faculty working as a tenure track gets some initial funding and can use this funding for their research lab, hire students and attend conferences. This is the most significant policy that helps teachers to engage with current market trends. This policy is the same for all tenure track faculty and is also followed in the USA.
France
Agence d'évaluation de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur (AERS) [6] , is a French academic research evaluation agency established in 2006. The major task of AERS is to evaluate research and higher education institutions, research organisations, research units, higher education programmes and degrees. French universities follow the guidelines provided by AERES. AERES provide six criteria for the evaluation of research institutions. These criteria are
- Scientific production and quality
- Academic reputation and appeal
- Interactions with the social, economic and cultural environment
- Organisation and life of the institution
- Involvement in training through research
- Strategy and research perspectives for the next contract.
The most important factor is the scientific production and quality that is based on observable facts like publications, lectures and tool development along with the quality indicators based on the originality and scope of research, reputation and selectivity of the editorial vehicles chosen for their publication etc. AERS counts each contribution by their faculty which can be a poster presentation, journal or conference paper or even a technical report. The same criteria are followed for graduate programs. Higher education in France is centralized due to its size and governmental organisation.
Pakistan
Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan designed the policies for Pakistani universities as well as for graduate programs. Student must publish at least one publication that must have an impact factor to complete their doctorate in the engineering field. The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that shows the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years for a specific journal, as per the indexed reported by Web of Science.HEC Pakistan follows the JIF and also ranked each journal in three categories named W, X, and Y.
The W-category includes journals that must have an impact factor along with their name available in the Higher Education Journal Recognition System (HJRS). HJRS [7] considers several factors while ranking journals based on their availability in different databases and the measures to compute some values. These factors are
- Web of Science.
- Scopus.
- Journal Prestige Index [8].
- Category.
- Medallion.
- Subject area position.
The category factor is the most important for the assessment of the quality of a publication. The assessment grouped each journal as W if they have a JIF listed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR).
The X category includes journals that may or may not have a JIF but whose articles are reviewed by at least one expert from an industry or academically advanced country of the discipline. The list of X categories is provided by HEC Pakistan and available online.
The Y category journals have no JIF and the articles must be reviewed by at least one expert from an industrially/academically advanced country in the respective discipline. The list of Y category is also provided by HEC Pakistan and available online.
HEC Pakistan designed these criteria by considering several considerations that help universities in the evaluation of their PhD program based on the number of papers produced in a year in W, X, and Y categories journals as well as the promotion of their academic staff on different caters.
United States of America
United States of AmericaThe Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act were passed in 1965, providing the basis of education policy in the United States. The state government runs universities, and federal involvement is limited. As per the Computing Research Association (CRA) [9] United States of America, best practices for hiring the faculty at the university level must clearly state the departmental policy regarding workload, provisions for job security, anticipated subject area needs, expectations for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) along with related experience. CRA not only describe the clear guidelines about policy to hire candidates but also provides clear guidelines about advertising policy for teaching and research jobs as well as interview guidelines. It is also apparent that no information about journal category, number of publications or graduation policy for PhD students. National Science Foundation (NSF) [10] announced different research programs and grants that help faculty get some funding to promote research at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Discussion
Several issues must be considered for designing an academic policy to promote the quality of education and improve the PhD program.
The doctorate is not only for producing an impact factor paper in the ‘W’ category but also produce new knowledge that may improve the world. The contribution of doctoral students is to add new outcomes to existing knowledge. This is only possible when students are encouraged to publish in good conferences from their respective fields and the weight of a good conference paper is also considered for the evaluation of their final doctoral thesis.
This is also important to consider the importance of a good journal paper i.e., non-paid as compared to one that requires a publication fee or paid no matter what comes into the ‘W’ category. The world is changing daily, so PhD program should also encourage students to participate in poster presentations, workshop papers, and seminars.
Similarly, the promotion of different academic posts may also consider the effort of participating in different research programs, part of the reputed research team as well as publishing conference and workshop papers in top venues. There is a need to encourage publication that can be in good conferences or journals. The number game should be discouraged and need to appreciate a good quality that may not only improve academics but also improve the whole working environment of academia.
References
[3]https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/30---31-vict-c-3/97547/30---31-vict-c-3.html
[5] https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/index_eng.asp
[6] https://aeres-evaluation.com/about/
