Research and development is the prerequisite for not only continuous development but also the sustainability of progress.
Developed nations invest huge money for this purpose and attract the scientific community to invent and innovate new ideas.
The area for research covers quite vast necessarily pertinent to the social, economic, cultural and environmental development that progressively leads to the national development.
As countries push researchers, it positively motivates them to engage in doing research on new things or to support the ongoing development process.
Researchers are likewise intrinsically motivated to carry out research to contribute to body knowledge.
Moreover, research works are also contingent on the fulfillment of organizational goals where they are working in.
Tridimensional demands i.e. country’s priority, organization’s mandate, and researchers’ interest in professional development create an enabling environment and synchronize research and development priorities.
The fundamental way of letting others know the research findings is the publication of those in widely accepted and greatly known journals.
‘Publish or perish’ is the popular notion among the academic community which is frequently pronounced and emphasized.
It is more or less compulsory to publish thoughts and ideas and research findings for continuity of professional aggrandizement and acquiring excellence.
The publication is the platform for exhibiting scholarly writings of academics. Data also prove that highly economically developed nations are the technologically developed and the claimants of quality research and development progress.
It does not generally happen in developing countries like Bangladesh. It is reportedly found that nepotism, favoritism, hierarchical influence, and networking get preference over quality in terms of selection of articles and subsequent publication.
The research they conduct is published in journals to let the world know and be validated by the scientific community.
As such, a number of high-quality journals are being published. Academics and researchers use these platforms for the wider circulation of their works.
A number of high indexed journals seems to be one of the acceptable and important criteria for development.
And the present world sees knowledge imperialism which means the world is reined by a higher level of knowledge (both technological or nontechnical) enhanced continuously based on research and development.
Researchers from developing countries prefer publishing their scholarly works in international journals to national ones for a number of reasons.
The preference for another country’s product over own country’s one is called xenocentrism.
It is the concept where a person expresses a preeminent aversion to a country’s government strategies and political activities.
In this concept, a person likes a society different from their society and evaluates everything better than their own country’s context.
Since xenocentrism refers to the choosing of other countries’ options than own country’s one, academics from developing countries have the tendency to publish their research works in indexed journals of other countries.
It is a trend among the people of developing countries to adopt xenocentrsim, particularly among the middle-class people to flaunt their status.
The academic community is also influenced by this notion. The reasons are obvious and significant. The wide scope of quality journals is a primary cause.
Secondly own country lacks quality and limited number of publishing platforms. Moreover, academic institutes and research organizations provide more value to international publications.
Even articles published in an international peer-reviewed journal are preferred in promotion over nationally published ones and give more points.
Organizational bias not only forces authors to choose foreign journals but also stymies the development of publication discipline in the home country.
The irony is that developing country people need to buy published articles of their country people in order to use them for their purpose.
Moreover, researchers done by the researchers sitting in their home country suffer from a scarcity of quality articles, and their papers lack rigorous literature reviews and theoretical underpinning.
On the other hand, developed countries enrich their research and development sector on a variety of issues and disciplines not necessarily by doing research on their own.
Just publishing good academic write-ups gives them a wider opportunity. Papers on diverse issues, various disciplines, and multiple sectors from different parts of the world are not only maintaining a wide range of areas of research but also widening the area of knowledge.
Academics from developing countries usually pursue their postgraduate research degrees in developed countries on scholarship.
As they offer scholarships, they sometimes set mandatory provisions to do research on their expected issue that might not be possible in developing countries. This situation also emboldens scholars to accept xenocentrism.
Journals published from developed nations maintain higher standards following a rigorous process that signifies the quality.
University grants commission must take the key role in establishing this opportunity and align with the accreditation of the teaching profession and university qualification.
It does not generally happen in developing countries like Bangladesh. It is reportedly found that nepotism, favoritism, hierarchical influence, and networking get preference over quality in terms of selection of articles and subsequent publication.
Although sometimes the editorial team is formed of nationally and internationally renowned academics, the formal meeting with them for maintaining the process is hardly held.
Moreover, the editor is not always selected on the basis of academic and research credit rather designation matters.
Data from Scimago explain that there are 432, 45, 7, 15, and 7 indexed journals published by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal respectively and none by Bhutan, Maldives & Afghanistan.
Although India has a diversity of disciplines while for others these journals are mostly related to medical science and very limited to social science.
However, in terms of country-wise cited documents published elsewhere are a huge number.
It is evident in Scimago data that India ranked 7th with 194630, Pakistan 46th with 197242, Bangladesh 60th with 62394, Sri Lanka 8th with 23979, Nepal 91st with 17969, Afghanistan 149th with 48590, Bhutan 162nd with 1160 citable documents which means these developing (SAARC) countries produce quite a significant number of published articles on diversified disciplines.
The number of cited documents likewise signifies the influence of scholars from these countries. It can easily be panned out that academic scholars from these developing countries can do a lot and establish a strong network of the publication platform.
The question is why academic scholars from developing countries prefer publication on foreign platforms.
Both pull factors of the quality journal from outside and push factors of negative issues from inside force scholars to choose xenocentrisim.
However, scholars have also the role of maintaining ethnocentrism by taking the key role of establishing quality journals and producing publications regularly.
The culture of research and publication in a rich academic atmosphere can accelerate the quality of education that can serve as the foundation for the sustainable development of a country.
This will give the young scholars of the country to flourish and the country will also be benefited from the findings.
Moreover, emerging researchers and academics will be able to get access to a rich body of knowledge.
Scholars have the responsibility to work for the country and pay back by making a remarkable contribution.
They can create publication platforms and regularly produce journal issues by maintaining quality. Universities and research organizations may provide full support to them to enjoy academic freedom.
University grants commission must take the key role in establishing this opportunity and align with the accreditation of the teaching profession and university qualification.
Again, a Masters students’ thesis with first-hand research and subsequent publication can be mandatory provisions for getting a degree.
Moreover, a Ph.D. degree should be awarded with at least two publications excerpted from the dissertation.
Additionally, all post-graduate students and teaching staff can be encouraged to attend international conferences both at home and abroad. In that case, universities can play a pivotal role by organizing international conferences on a regular basis followed by publications.
The culture of research and publication in a rich academic atmosphere can accelerate the quality of education that can serve as the foundation for the sustainable development of a country.
When nationally circulated publishing platforms will be quite noticeable and will be valued equally, xenocentrism will be reduced to minimal significantly less.
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