<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Need to focus R&D spending for top impact
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->IT IS heartening and encouraging to serious researchers that the Government continues to commit to innovations, even during these economically challenging times ('R&D spending reaches record high', last Saturday).
Despite the increases in government R&D funding and the number of researchers, the scientific research culture is notable for its lack of impact focus on patents, inventions and discoveries. Most public sector researchers do not care for them, preferring the easier measure of research publications.
A local university's global ranking actually plunged 16 positions in recent years, largely because its research publications attracted low and insignificant citations, which is a usefulness measure of its published research to other international research.
Yet, despite the low and insignificant citation index of its 'top' researchers, indicating mostly poor quality research, the university actually promoted and rewarded them with 10-year tenure extensions, each worth nearly $2 million. They were also not required to commit to better research impact performance over the next 10 years.
Surely the wrong message has been sent regarding desired research impact. Many non-impact researchers are also repeat recipients of government research funds.
True research excellence is the product of passion and genuine scientific investigative efforts directed at purposeful outcomes in the form of 'discoveries that will benefit Singaporeans and humankind globally' (Dr Tony Tan, July 29, 2006). The desired research culture is 'the harnessing and capturing of value' (Dr Tan, March 29 last year).
Public research funding agencies should weed out recipients who have not made value-added impact to industry and society.
For those who claimed authorship of numerous but mostly uncited research papers and have no instance of high-level consulting to demonstrate continuous relevance and currency of their professed specialist knowledge, agencies have a fiduciary responsibility to audit their research claims and publications. No measures to authenticate research paper authorship are deployed at present.
Funds should be granted only to actual research investigators, not their supervisors or managers, who often claim 'gift' research authorship without contributing at all, or significantly, to the research.
=> aka leegalized corruption?
The unethical but common practice of multiplying the same research papers to different journals under different titles and changing author sequence also diminishes any research impact.
All research publications of fund recipients should be made available electronically for public scrutiny and audit, in order to reduce research authorship fraud and enhance the impact focus of public research dollars.
Assoc Prof Michael Heng
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->IT IS heartening and encouraging to serious researchers that the Government continues to commit to innovations, even during these economically challenging times ('R&D spending reaches record high', last Saturday).
Despite the increases in government R&D funding and the number of researchers, the scientific research culture is notable for its lack of impact focus on patents, inventions and discoveries. Most public sector researchers do not care for them, preferring the easier measure of research publications.
A local university's global ranking actually plunged 16 positions in recent years, largely because its research publications attracted low and insignificant citations, which is a usefulness measure of its published research to other international research.
Yet, despite the low and insignificant citation index of its 'top' researchers, indicating mostly poor quality research, the university actually promoted and rewarded them with 10-year tenure extensions, each worth nearly $2 million. They were also not required to commit to better research impact performance over the next 10 years.
Surely the wrong message has been sent regarding desired research impact. Many non-impact researchers are also repeat recipients of government research funds.
True research excellence is the product of passion and genuine scientific investigative efforts directed at purposeful outcomes in the form of 'discoveries that will benefit Singaporeans and humankind globally' (Dr Tony Tan, July 29, 2006). The desired research culture is 'the harnessing and capturing of value' (Dr Tan, March 29 last year).
Public research funding agencies should weed out recipients who have not made value-added impact to industry and society.
For those who claimed authorship of numerous but mostly uncited research papers and have no instance of high-level consulting to demonstrate continuous relevance and currency of their professed specialist knowledge, agencies have a fiduciary responsibility to audit their research claims and publications. No measures to authenticate research paper authorship are deployed at present.
Funds should be granted only to actual research investigators, not their supervisors or managers, who often claim 'gift' research authorship without contributing at all, or significantly, to the research.
=> aka leegalized corruption?
The unethical but common practice of multiplying the same research papers to different journals under different titles and changing author sequence also diminishes any research impact.
All research publications of fund recipients should be made available electronically for public scrutiny and audit, in order to reduce research authorship fraud and enhance the impact focus of public research dollars.
Assoc Prof Michael Heng
