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by Prof. Flor Lacanilao
florlaca@gmail.com
Perhaps you are wondering why I should be speaking of R&D at a
meeting of systematic biologists. One reason is that knowing R&D is
as important to biological research as is systematic biology. If I
am only able to persuade 10 percent of you to publish your papers in
peer-reviewed international journals, I would have done my job. And
if that 10 percent is raised to 20 then 30 in your succeeding
meetings, then in a few years your organization would be one of the
leading science organizations in the country. And you can aim to be
the first with an all-published membership. This will be the clear
indication of changed research environment in the Philippines.
My second reason is to remind you that your presentation in this
meeting is not the last phase or conclusion of a research work. A
scientific meeting is a chance to present your manuscript for
comments (preliminary peer review), before it is subjected to the
formal peer review when you submit it for publication in a primary
research journal.
Thirdly, I hope my manner of presentation (e.g., how slides and
accompanying handouts were prepared) will suggest to you how to
present a paper orally. This is important because your way of
presenting a paper, like in international meetings, will determine
whether or not you get useful comments from scientists in the
audience to improve your manuscript.
My talk starts with how research should be done; then I show some
symptoms of the wrong research practice in the Philippines and their
two major causes (the lack of funds is not one of them, but it is
often made the excuse for poor performance). Finally, I give
examples of how neighbor countries, which had done better in
research, have moved ahead of the Philippines in national progress,
or are on their way to leaving us behind. I use established
objective indicators here to show the countries’ performance in
research and development. Our failure to use them has been a major
cause of the poor state of Philippine science.
1. Doing research properly
The established process of research has
undergone over 3 centuries of development, since the publication of
the first two scientific journals in London and Paris in 1665. It
requires publication in a research journal that is adequately
peer-reviewed and accessible for international verification of
results (Fig. 1). The review and verification processes back and
guard the integrity of the published paper. Examples are journals
covered in Science Citation Index of Thomson ISI. The output
is called a scientific paper or valid publication, as opposed to
gray literature (information produced without adequate peer review).
As a noted physicist says, “Just printing results doesn’t validate
them.”
Figure 1. The right (blue) and wrong (red)
ways of doing research.
Many studies end as a project report or graduate thesis. In the
Philippines, this is often the accepted completion of research or
graduate training. If published, in most cases it appears as gray
literature. Examples are papers in newsletters, institutional
reports, most conference proceedings, and nearly all local journals.
They have doubtful scientific value. Until today, only a small
fraction of research papers we produce is published properly as
scientific papers.
2. Symptoms and major causes of wrong
research practice
Most of Philippine research
publications are clear indications of wrong research practice, and
they do not count in international rating of research performance
when ranking nations, universities, or individuals; nor do they help
in national progress. They are seen in the Reference Section of
books, training manuals, bibliographies, extension publications, and
review articles. In “Bibliography of Philippine marine
invertebrates” (1994), for example, only 7 percent of the 1032
references listed is ISI-indexed or valid publication. In
“Bibliography of Philippine seaweeds” (1990), only 8 percent of the
780 listed references is such publication. And in “Biology of
milkfish” (1991), only 19 percent of the 298 cited literature is
valid publication. Since there are now over 200 such articles on
milkfish, the book is overdue for revision.
You may have seen training manuals or extension publications by
local authors without a single, valid publication in the
bibliography. I have yet to see a book by Filipino authors with a
reference list dominated by publications covered in Thomson ISI’s
major indexes (e.g., Science Citation Index and Social
Sciences Citation Index), which are used in ranking nations and
universities. We have been told, as far back as graduate training,
that the integrity or reliability of a publication, primary or not,
depends on the quality of the bibliography added to it.
The widespread practice of wrong research in the country continues
because authors get promotion, recognition, or even award for gray
literature. You see them writing science columns in newspapers.
Worse, you see them invited to speak in recognition and commencement
programs. Surely we can easily use valid publications as a minimum
requirement for such functions. A simple change like this will
guaranty a more science-literate public and properly trained
graduate students, which can be the future leaders of our academic
and science institutions.
For a developing country, which is short of adequately published
researchers, an objective evaluation of performance is more
reliable. The indicators often used are the number of valid
publications (quantity) and the number of times these publications
are cited (quality) (Table 1). Both can be obtained in the widely
used Science Citation Index or any of Thomson ISI’s major
indexes. See, for example, “The scientific impact of nations” (Nature,
430:311-316, 2004) at,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n6997/full/430311a.html
Table 1. Relations between the quantity and quality of
publications in performance evaluation
The rare use of such objective indicators, and the prevalent use of
personal judgment by nonscientists (who lack valid publications),
are the two major causes of the poor state of Philippine science and
higher education. Personal judgment is the common way we evaluate
research proposals and output when giving grants, appointments,
promotions, and awards. While some reforms have been ongoing at the
University of the Philippines, especially in the use of journals
covered in Thomson ISI’s major indexes, elsewhere, attempts to
practice peer review by nonscientists are widespread.
3. How research leads to development
R&D and S&T are commonly used
acronyms. But many hardly know their relation with each other --
research to science to technology to development. These relations
can explain how the two kinds of research output (gray literature
and scientific paper or international journal article) are
responsible for underdevelopment or development (Fig. 2). Depending
on the quality of the information disseminated (through extension
materials, books, or review articles), it will harm or help
development programs, education, and policy-making. And these in
turn determine a country’s state of development. For more
discussion, see “Essentials of development” at,
http://www.ovcrd.upd.edu.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=462&Itemid=81
Figure 2. The R&D process showing how
research output affects development and its relation with science
and technology.
Using Science Citation Index Expanded, Katherine Bagarinao
reviewed the publication performance (number of indexed articles) of
five ASEAN countries from 1980 to 2006. She has shown with graphs
that Thailand and Malaysia were ahead of the Philippines from 1980
(Fig. 3A), but the Philippines was ahead of Indonesia and Vietnam.
The Philippines, however, was overtaken by Indonesia in the mid
1990s and by Vietnam in mid 2000s in number of publications (Fig.
3B). The Philippines is not only behind in publications, but it has
also shown the slowest growth rate among the five countries
throughout the covered period.
 
Figure 3. Publications of five ASEAN countries (A) and close up
of the last three, Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam (B). Note
that the Philippines was ahead of Indonesia and Vietnam from 1980,
but was last in 2006. (Figures by courtesy of Katherine Bagarinao.)
In assessing national progress, UNDP employs economic and social
indicators -- the Human Development Index (HDI). Using the data from
the UNDP’s Human Development Index Trends for 1980-2008 (http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/data/motionchart/),
I plotted the HDI trends of the five countries above to visualize
their growth trends (Figure 4.) The performance of the five
countries in research (Fig. 3) matches or corresponds with their
performance in development (as measured by HDI). The Philippines,
with its lowest scientific productivity, has also the lowest growth
rate in development.
Figure 4. National progress of five ASEAN
countries as measured by their Human Development Index. Note the
slower growth rate of the Philippines compared with the other four
countries.
From 1980, only Malaysia was ahead of the Philippines (Its continued
lead may be explained by its being an oil country). Then Thailand
followed and surpassed the Philippines in 1992 and has been moving
faster since. Although Indonesia and Vietnam are still behind the
Philippines, the trend of their HDI growth rates has been increasing
faster and, as shown by their growth curves and that of the
Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are headed to overtake the
Philippines in a few years. Note that Indonesia and Vietnam had left
us behind in science in mid 1990s and mid 2000s (Fig. 3B).
Further, UNDP’s Human Development Reports show a nation’s
development compared with those of other countries -- ranking. Among
177 countries and territories, the Philippines’ ranking has been
going down in the last 10 years. In 1997 and 1998, the Philippines
ranked 77, but this dropped to 83-85 in 2000-2004, and to 102 in
2006.
As the director Peter Meyer of graduate studies in physics at
Princeton says, "You need to know how to do research properly before
you can begin to think about commercializing discoveries."
I am glad (sad for our country) to see that poorer Africa has been,
in recent years, establishing research universities and developing
strong science academies to solve poverty. Note that Africa is
getting to the bottom of poverty (a symptom) by attending to the
basic cause of underdevelopment -- poor S&T.
For more,
http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/africa-needs-research-universities-to-fight-povert.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7171/full/450762a.html
4. Conclusion
Development depends on the quality of
the research output, which in turn relies on correct research
practice. Two ways to improve research: (a) by leaving to scientists
the job of performance evaluation or (b) by using the established
and objective indicators (e.g., journals and publication citations
in Science Citation Index or Social Sciences Citation
Index).
_______________________
Keynote address at the 27th Meeting of the Association of Systematic
Biologists of the Philippines, National Museum, Manila, 29-30 May
2009
Article first appeared on the following
websites:
http://www.philippinestoday.net/index.php?module=article&view=1679
and
http://www.bahaykuboresearch.net/index.php?module=article&view=89 |