Lucy Guglielmino argues that carrot and stick or reward and punishment motivational strategies leads to unethical behaviour and short cuts. In fact, she believes extrinsic motivation kills intrinsic motivation. Daniel Pink (2009) postulates that extrinsic motivation is not conducive, therefore I am quite interesting in the impact of extrinsic rewards on the quality of publications, the amount of publications and the possibility that lecturers can take short cuts to earn quick bucks while their primary job is tuition. Would like to hear your ideas about this, because I believe that researchers should rather be funded to do cutting edge research, especially with regard to improving poor student success .....
Dear Christa,
Very interesting discussion point. I believe that good quality research and publications are necessary for assessment of an academician or researcher. For promotion numbers might matter, but in the long run when there is competition to chose the best candidate for example a leader or in a new position, good quality research and papers matters!
Shariful Islam
I agree with Mohammed in the sense that good quality matters in research, rather than numbers. There is perhaps a self aggrandizement that accompanies high publishing output, but it is misplaced. The reason to research and publish is to add to the knowledge base in a particular field. Guglielmino's position that extrinsic motivators reduce the efficacy of intrinsic motivators, which you include in your narrative, is a restatement of the position Deci and Ryan forwarded 3 decades ago, and which has been supported by significant research since then. Researching for the pure joy of extending knowledge evidences an intrinsic motivation, albeit a motivation that suffers when institutions demand research volume from a faculty member, IMHO, as a condition of employment, or at least of promotion.
Dear Christa, simply answer (No ) ; it is the Tax of science and rank reputation ; Thanks
Very interesting question Christa and not one which can be simplistically answered (but here's my go).
Yes, the sharing/dissemination of knowledge/evidence to the wider community is very important and should be an expectation of faculty staff whether lecturers (less so) or researchers (more so).
I think once you start remunerating lecturers then there is no doubt that their focus will shift to some extent dependent on the individual. The problem with remuneration is that it's not difficult to publish these days irrespective of the quality of work, as the various markets are saturated with journals.
Some kind of complex scoring criteria would be required (certainly within my profession as there's lots of journals one can publish in) to prevent someone publishing lots of sub-optimal research being remunerated more than someone publishing less high quality research.
Pecuniary interests always raise ethical dilemmas and are difficult to govern.
Thank you for the responses. I believe lecturers should do research, especially with regard to increasing the quality of the outputs of their students. Therefore they need to be funded to conduct research, but not for the outputs - or publications.
It would be helpful to clarify your terms. By lecturer, do you mean a non-tenured, or part-time faculty member who is only being hired to teach occasionally?
Hi Rick, I mean a person who is a full time lecturer of a module at a university. So not remunerated for doing research, but getting monetary incentives for publishing even though I believe research should be part of the job. I like the idea of providing funds for doing research that can improve teaching and learning better than getting paid for a paper published. I also believe that is the reason for the pirate journals - they saw a gap in practice.
With my colleagues, we were having a such discussion. Most of us were supporting both (being paid for research and subsequent publications as a means of disseminating the outputs). The debate ended up by agreeing that we should be financed for both, and publications should also being monitored by internal quality assurance units. That mean, before a lecturer ought to publish his/her outputs should consult the units and ask for which journal to publish rather than going aimlessly and end up on the hand of predatory journals.
Dear Haruni, thank you for the response. I agree to an extent, but would that not open the door for other types of problems, such as favouring only certain journals?
Dear Christa, I thought there is no problem of favouring if the aim is to maintain quality research and quality output that will end up solving a lot of socio-economic problem and intended outcomes.
As you can note, there are pirate journals, you pay the money, no reviewer comments anymore but the paper or research outputs got published. This has been happening.
As we monitor where to publish and the quality and scope of the paper will be of high value. Paper will be reviewed accordingly.
Always quality outputs goes with quality work; why pay for publications while we receive what we do not deserve?
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