I agree with you, specially if you've spent a couple of years working on a project where you were "requested" not to publish and then you see others who have published ahead of you because of that. Unfortunately, some of us work in some areas where confidentiality is important for different reasons.

I believe there must be many indicators for judging the output of a researcher in terms of researches conducted. . This should include publications, sharing researches, impact factor of journals, and the citations of the author.

I agree

Scientific achievement can be expressed in several other forms. The concept in the Scientific community "Publish or perish" has dominated the academic field and is causing harm even to research output.

Agree TOO

Suppose a scientist is asked to organize a number of scientific meets this year. Organizing such scientific meets would require much time. So the scientist would definitely not be in a position to afford enough time for publishing papers. Many people do not publish papers but undertake many mass awareness campaigns throughout the year. Are they not doing anything? So in my opinion publications cannot be the only measure of output.

Of course other variables are used in conjuction with paper publications for promoting the staff in my institution. Some include workshops, seminar and conferences attended, national and international assignments and so forth.

Numbers of measures are there to judge the output of a researcher like number of patents, number of books, number of manuscript in SCI journals only, feedback from his followers, etc.

By definition: It is *always* unfair to be judged by output, no matter what measure or metric.

I feel Scientific attainment can be expressed in following parameters like

1.Formative and summative attainment.

2.Teaching profile.

3.Number of publications

4.A number of nature of publications.

5.Reseach

6. A number of the conference attended as a resource person.

7. Number of conferences Chaired

8. A number of conference presentations including paper, poster etc.

Regards

Dr. Kamath Madhusudhana

I agree with you, specially if you've spent a couple of years working on a project where you were "requested" not to publish and then you see others who have published ahead of you because of that. Unfortunately, some of us work in some areas where confidentiality is important for different reasons.

Sandra is correct.

Thank you very much Sandra, the case you presented is very peculiar. Some researchers truly spend good number of years working on a robust project and they are mandated not to publish. In most cases they are forced to fill a form never to publish the project. Others in the same system have the whole time to publish. How then do we justify this...?

Thank you so much Dr. Madhusudhana Kamath. Your response is well received with great thanks.

Regards, MO.

Thank you Prof. Mahfuz Judeh and all respected researchers, I appreciate your answers.

Regards, MO.

Any judgement is unfair by principle: creating some ranking list by any finite, predefined number of criteria is always some kind of simplification that does injustice on those not exactly matching the pattern.

A rating by only the number of publications might be considered over-simplifying things, but even more elaborate criteria might fail to correctly judge on "achievements".

Welcome in this imperfect world!

Publication is still and will remain a powerful instrument for measuring academic output. This is because it is the widest means of disseminating knowledge and avenue for solving problems.

Dear. U. Dreher and Kayode Asadu,

Thank you so much for sharing such vital information. There is no doubt that publication is a powerful but not a perfect means for measuring academic output. Truly an imperfect world.

Regards,

Modestus

I do agree with this concept

Yes I also think over reliance on publications is unfair but publications still remain the best way to measure output in the field.

It is quite of unfortunate that that is what we are experiencing in the part of our world especially the developing economies. Paper publications is the major criterion for promotion and judging researchers' quality of research. It is not suppose to be. Things are changing now, some universities have started adding other criteria especially community and social services rendered among others.

RG score could be another measure of output.

There are different factors on which it can be measured.

Publication is important because it serves as a proof that you are working on this particular research and you have already accomplished it. As in the world many people might be working on the same research but the publications indicates that who has done it first.

I've seen quite a number of meaningless papers recently. These were published by renowned papers, peer-reviewed, on one of the current "hot topics" and - - - call it meaningless or "scrap".

Such papers would contribute to the publication count, are/might get cited etc. It didn't take much time to find the error(s) in the paradigm.

What I'd wish to see:

• No papers on "simulation-only" (pseudo) "results" as these all-too-often claim achievements that cannot be produced in a real-world experiment.
• Papers theorizing/speculating about achievements eventually possible in the future clearly saying so: clearly discernible as such.
• Overall: much more clarity about what has been proven by proper experiment and what is mere speculation.
• And when comparing "improved" solutions I'd expectbcomparisons to be versus the existing solutions - not vs. some crippled versions of these. Just to make the "achievements" shinier than they are. I'd expect reviewers to filter-out such ill-attempted approaches, but this doesn't seem to happen.

Thank you so much U. Dreher. I am sure you will see more of meaningless papers online. This is peculiar in higher institutions where lecturers and researchers are mandated to publish or remain at a fixed position for years. Such systems prefer quantity to quality irrespective of where the articles are published. In order to meet up, some researchers have to do cut and join research to climb to the next level. Thank you so much U. Dreher, your suggestion is laudable.

Regards, MO.

Prof. Nikisha Jariwala and other respected scholars. Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. It can always be better...

Publications should not be a mandate for judgement of output of a research professional. Instead years of experience, communication skills, contribution in upliftment of a department or sector, attitude towards peers, practical mindedness, ability to face unfavourable circumstances, co-ordination skills, and professional conduct are some of the contributing factors towards determining output of an academician.

Thank you so much R. Santra and all RG scholars who have answered the question raised, your comments and suggestions are noted and documented. I appreciate you all.

Regards,

Modestus.

Independently of what you feel, the custom of using publicatiosn for assessing people and institutions completely spoiled the system of research publications, including conferences, proceedings and journals. Instead of being a communication system, it became a performance management system. As it is known from other areas, any performance management system will be gamed by workers on whom it is imposed. All impact indexes, citation indexes, etc. creates a lot of communication noise in form of publications that satisfy predefined templates, but are void of content. There is no way to change the existing system, except of creating a new and independent one that should not be used for performance management.

I agree with you Prof. Ilia Bider. Thank you so much

Dear Modestus Okwu ,Outputs or results of activities are many and varied, except publication is the result bound by an agreement. agreement between researchers and funders. publication is a tool for disseminating information and part of world communication. Regards.

Your contribution is well noted I Putu - Artaya