Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Of academic quality, integrity and predatory journals By Ranjit Singh Malhi
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Malaysiakini : Jardin further alleged that the model in question is not displayed in
the Bahari Museum in Jakarta, Indonesia as stated by the authors in
their article, but rather, is in the Royal Museums Greenwich, London
(ID: AAE0200).
At the same time, Jardin went on to question
whether the journal in which the article was published was credible and
peer-reviewed.
Jardin’s comments are very serious and disturbing.
They go to the heart of academic rigour and integrity which is central
to maintaining the quality of academic research and reputation.
In
addition, he has shone the spotlight on the increasing prevalence of
academic journals of questionable quality, particularly open-access
“predatory journals” which prioritise profit over academic integrity.
Predatory journals
Reputable academic journals
uphold high editorial standards, and diligently screen articles
submitted for publication for factual accuracy of content, including
images by in-house editors as well as external peer reviewers.
In
contrast, “predatory journals” are those that require authors to pay a
fee for publishing their articles, and hence expose themselves to the
risk of accepting submissions which could be of inferior quality. About
IJARBSS, authors have to pay a publication fee of US$82 per article to
get them published in the journal.
Predatory
journals have been criticised for lacking robust peer review, poor
quality editorial services, and choosing rapid publication turnaround.
Nonetheless,
they have mushroomed in recent years due to the “publish or perish”
reality of academic life - academics are under tremendous pressure to
produce journal publications to move up the academic ladder.
As
can be expected, the article’s publication has drawn flak from several
renowned scholars. For example, Syed Farid Alatas, a professor of
Sociology at the National University of Singapore, has commented: “It’s
high time that something is done about the standards of higher education
in Malaysia.
“It is not at all surprising that there are
problems with published papers and books, such as those found in the by
now infamous UPM paper on Malay maritime history.”
Syed Farid also
questioned the credibility of the journal in which it was published: “I
can say with much confidence that no publication in the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences would be taken seriously in any academic institution that has a decent standard.”
Whereas, James Chin of the University of Tasmania’s Asia Institute
has questioned the ulterior motive of the UPM academics in claiming the
Chinese junk to be Malay in origin. He has suggested that the UPM
academics might be biased (influenced by the ideology of ketuanan Melayu
or Malay dominance) and “so desperate to rewrite history”.
He
has also stated that he was “completely dumbfounded” because the facts
in dispute could have been easily checked. Additionally, James has
bluntly labelled the IJARBSS as a “fake academic journal”.
In a
similar vein, published Malaysian author Preeta Samarasan has referred
to it as a “backyard journal” that “can count as a publication record
for Malay(sian) academics ...”
It is also noteworthy to mention
the views of Syukry Kamarudin, an independent researcher, who concurs
with Jardin that the junk in question is “certainly Chinese” because
“the oculus eyes on the bow” are “part of Chinese superstition”, and
that the hull and the transom bow are typically found in Chinese
vessels.
The
Royal Museums Greenwich in London said the photograph of a ship model
in its collection is correctly attributed as ‘Foochow junk’, as per its
catalogue.
UPM, understandably but not convincingly, has put out a press statement, defending
the article written by its two academics. The university has asserted
that the article had been subjected to a blind peer review process and
blithely argued that “the field of social sciences and humanities
studies is open to interpretation from various parties”.
How confident is UPM that the article was indeed reviewed by independent experts in Malay maritime history?
Facts and interpretations
To
quote Jardin: “Are we speaking of a peer blind review or are the
so-called experts blind? How is it possible for an expert not to see the
difference between a Chinese junk and a Malay jong?”
Let us also
not forget that the main issue at hand is factual accuracy and not
interpretation which are distinctly different. Factual accuracy is
factually accurate information.
Facts are indisputable; they can
be objectively verified and proven through evidence. For example, the
image used in the controversial article is that of a Foochow pole junk
and not a Malay jong.
Interpretation, on the other hand, places
facts in a context and seeks to explain their significance or to provide
a conclusion based on them. We can have the same facts but different
interpretations.
What has not been highlighted so far in this
worrying issue is that the article published by the two academics in
IJARBSS is essentially a translation of a paper (available online), “Teknologi perkapalan Melayu tradisional: Jong dan Ghali meredah tujuh lautan”, which was presented by Hashim in “Persidangan Antarabangsa Manuskrip Melayu” from Oct 15 to 17, 2019.
Interestingly, in the paper presented by Hashim, no source was given for the controversial model of the Malay jong.
It
is especially troubling to note that both academics did not disclose
the fact to the journal’s readers that the article was not original when
publishing it in IJARBSS.
Arguably, both of them may have to
explain if they had committed a transgression in academic publishing
called self-plagiarism - reusing a substantial part of one’s previous
work without citing the original text.
Self-plagiarism misleads
readers by presenting previously published work as completely new and
original. Furthermore, if an academic paper is reproduced or translated
into another language, it has not contributed to new knowledge and is
thus not worthy of publication.
Incidentally, IJARBSS claims that
it publishes original research articles. If the article was indeed
peer-reviewed, as claimed by HRMARS’ Journal Publications director Sunil
Noel, one wonders why the reviewers did not discover that it was not an
original article.
For the record, the opening sentence in the
abstracts for both the published article and the paper presented at the
2019 conference is 100 percent similar, including the usage of
punctuation such as commas: “The Malay civilisation in the past, located
in the Malay Archipelago, was a maritime civilisation, being
strategically situated midway between the trade sea routes of the
western and eastern trading nations.”
Let us now focus on the
Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (HRMARS) which
publishes the IJARBSS. It has been labelled as a “predatory publisher”
by Predatory Reports - an organisation comprising volunteer researchers
who have been harmed by predatory publishers and desire to help
researchers identify legitimate journals and trusted publishers for
their research.
One also wonders how a “human resource management”
society such as HRMARS considers it within its area of expertise to
reportedly publish the following journals spanning various disciplines: International
Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences;
International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and
Management Sciences; International Journal of Academic Research in
Economics and Management Sciences; International Journal of Academic
Research in Progressive Education and Development; and Multilingual Academic Journal of Education and Social Sciences.
On
top of that, I almost jumped out of my chair when I shockingly
discovered that Vol 13, Issue 11, November 2023 of the IJARBSS, in which
the controversial article was published, had a total of over 200
articles amounting to 8,132 pages.
In contrast, most scholarly
and genuine journals have on average only about 10‒12 articles per
issue. Additionally, articles in IJARBSS are published rapidly unlike
those of reputable journals, on average within a month of submission.
Grammatical errors
I
am also not impressed by the editorial standards of IJARBSS. Several
articles, including “Political Islam in Islamism and Post Islamism: A
Study on Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF)” by two academics from
Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (published on Feb 4, 2018) are
littered with grammatical errors.
Some examples of atrocious
grammatical errors are: “Although, the AKP’ direction is still be a big
questioned”; “In this situation, the AKP came to power on Turkey”; and
“Therefore, Islam principles and Western values are not in similar and
contrary stand.”
Incredibly, there are even fundamental language
errors in the titles of published articles. Some examples are:
“Development Micro-Credentials Overview Social Security” and “The Issues
of Safety and Health Items Provided in Construction Industry Standard
(CIS 27: 2019): The Level of Safety Items Importance toward Contractors”
(both in IJARBSS, Vol 13, Issue 11, November 2023).
To conclude, I
trust that the Higher Education Ministry and the top management of our
local universities will do the needful to ensure high-quality journal
articles are published by Malaysian academics.
Ultimately, of
course, as writers, the onus is on Malaysian academics to uphold the
quality of their published works and adhere to the highest standards of
academic integrity.
They should painstakingly fact-check and
scrupulously edit their written output, besides refraining from
publishing their articles in sub-standard and “predatory journals”.
These are the sole prerequisites by which our academics can garner respect and credibility among their peers and the public.
