Dear Maxim, good afternoon!

I’m glad to see your feedback and glad to answer all your questions.

In majority of countries, within the framework of the Monetary Reward System, Web of Science – publications are mostly supported. I’ve mentioned the SCI – publications in my Question and they are considered to be a part of the Web of Science – publications. The priority of Web of Science – publications over the SCOPUS – publications is connected with the World University Rankings (THE, ARWU, HEEACT, Leiden, URAP) in which Web of Science – publications are the first to be taken into account.

The Iran data is very fresh. I got them from the editor-in-chief of the Iranian Journal “Webology” Alireza Noruzi, who worked in Teheran University for several years. I discovered the Turkey data in the “Week’s Mirror” Newspaper (“Zerkalo Nedeli”, Kiev, Ukraine), in the article published in 2005, written by professor-biologist Alexander Demchenko, who worked in Turkey. Unfortunately I don’t have any more up-to-date information.

The information about Monetary Reward Systems in Chinese Medical Universities is published in the article “The outflow of academic papers from China: why is it happening and can it be stemmed” by SHAO Jufang and SHEN Huiyun (Learned Publishing, 2011, Volume 24, P. 95-97).

In my country, Iran, universities give financial awards to authors for each paper they publish in a proper peer-reviewed journal. The amount varies by university, but for example some may pay up to 300 USD for a paper published in an ISI ranked journal. (I know it's not much but salary is low here). I heard some Unis in Malaysia do the same. Of course the other incentive is that you need to publish to get promoted.

In Zimbabwe, universities tie job promotions to publication activity. In the system, candidates are ranked according to the number of publication, factoring in the impact factor of the journal.

In Malaysia it vary from University to University but most of University pay if you publish article in Q1 Journal (Top 15% of specific field)-RM 3000 (USD 1000), and also low impact and scopus index article around RM 500-200. but now few universities started to close these incentives to staff.

Dear collegues,

I am grateful for all your responses.

To continue our discussion I want to get the responses from reseachers of other countries, especially from Turkey, Thai,Romania , Brasil, South Korea, Portugal and Taiwan, which are together with Iran, Malaysia and China included in top ten countries with the highest publication annual growth rate in according the article L. Waltman, R.J.W. Tijssen, N.J.van Eck (2011).

Dear Vladimir,

First of all I want to thank you for your question, but I want to become like an opponent on your phrase "... to stimulate publication activity" in my area of interest as Computer Science (CS). My opinion proceeds from the discussions on the links:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_dont_developers_use_the_best_research_on_software_development

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_opinion_on_the_current_conference-driven_publication_model_in_CS

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_researchers_be_evaluated_by_users

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_the_theories_of_computer_science_be_made_more_useful

where I expressed my opinions. In particular, please look at my answer from the discussion on the second link https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_opinion_on_the_current_conference-driven_publication_model_in_CS

Since the answer is quite long I provide only the first phrase:

"I want to understand the logic of our duscussion from the point of view of the end result. What is our aim? What we want to reach? Now I want to track the chronology of events to express clearly my thought. Once I want to observe that I will mean only experemental papers in CS ... "

A system of so-called “parametric evaluation” is performed since 1998 by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland for a score-based categorization of research institutions. In addition to grants, patents, etc, evaluation of publications always occupies the key position within the slightly evolving system.

The bibliometric approach comparing journal performance across subject categories was proposed by Pudovkin and Garfield (2004) as the Rank-normalized Impact Factor. Similar normalization procedure, but in quartile instead in percentile terms [i.e., the first set includes the top 25% of IF-ranked journals (cuts off 75th percentile) in the subject category, the second group encompasses next 25% of the journal ranking, etc.], is a starting point for the periodical rating of journals (and indirectly papers for the last 4 years) into four generalized quality classes. Read more about the bibliometric test of this evaluation system in the article from my RG profile:

Rank-normalized journal impact factor as a predictive tool. Archivum Immunologiae et Therapiae Experimentalis 2009, 57 (1), 39-43.

With reference to increasing IF critics (http://am.ascb.org/dora/), I suggest to consider the attached note of Polish scientist in "Nature":

Publications can only be stimulated by taking all financial care by sponsors or institute/research organization to publish good papers in reputed journals

None should ever be forced to write a paper. If lured with some gains especially financial gains/ promotion quality will be compromised

Best example is Medical Council of India asking 2/4 paper for promoting /exempting 1 year for promoting.

This has seen emergence of Journals that publish paper after payment and with in a day with out even adequate peer reviewing

Dear colleagues!

Thank you for providing information on the Measures of Monetary Reward for scientific publication activity in your countries. I don’t want neither to discuss whether these measures are defective or not, nor to support the criticism of the indicator they are based on, i.e. journal Impact Factor. There was much said and written about it. What I see is high growth rates of a country publication activity in the countries where such measures were implemented at governmental and institutional levels, what allows to consider the measures as efficient. In addition to the comparative graphics I made up for the publication activity dynamics in Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and Iran, generated on SCIMAGO platform by means “Compare”, I would like to bring your attention to the same dynamics in a number of Arabian countries in the context of publication activity growth in Israel. It’s well-known that the two most scientifically developed countries in this region are Egypt and Tunisia. Having performed further testing of Arabian countries, I obtained a totally not anticipated result – Saudi Arabia was another country showing a remarkable growth of publication activity, and the high growth rates of publications began in 2009. If the present trends don’t change, in 2012 Saudi Arabia will be ahead of Egypt, and by 2014-2015 – of Israel, too. It follows from this that Saudi Arabia managed to efficiently implement Monetary Reward Measures and, perhaps, their own journals which are included in the databases Scopus and Web of Science. I’m interested in the essence of this phenomenon. So I’m asking the researchers from Saudi Arabia and other counties where such measures were introduced to share information with scientific community.

monetary rewards in my opinion should not be directly related to publications. This in India i have experienced after Medical Council of India put forward a rule for promotion with 2 papers required for promotion with an exemption of a year.

Such things have been instrumental in the emergence of huge amounts of journals that just publish a paper after collecting APC

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for new answers from Indian researchers, but I have not heard from any university of Saudi Arabia concerning my question yet, despite the fact that it has been viewed four times by some researchers from King Saud bin Abdulaziz University of Health Science. Still on the website of King Abdulaziz University (www.kau.edu.sa), I was able to find a document (in Arabic), saying that the researchers of the University get annual rewards for the first five places in the competition held among the University researchers for the best articles published in internationally recognized journals. The first-place reward amounts to SAR 20,000, the second – SAR 15,000, the third - SAR 10,000, the fourth – SAR 5,000, as for the fifth it is not quite clear how much the reward is in this case (1 Saudi Riyal = 0.27 US Dollar ). This document is attached to this message.

In the beginning of our discussion we showed exponential growth of Iran Scopus- publication activity from the period of 1996 to 2011.But in 2012 this growth slowed down significantly, followed by a decline in publication activity (see the figure below). One may assume this is the result of the Iranian State cutting the stimulating payments to the national scientists. May Iranian scientists comment on this situation?

There are different factors involved. Most of research in Iran is done by postgraduate students. Regulations require PhD students to have published/accepted papers in order to be allowed to have their viva and also to get their certificates.  This varies among different universities. Some require two ISI papers for viva, some require papers but also accept papers in national journals (doesn't have to be ISI). Some require one, some require two..., and this might change from year to year!

Another factor is the amount of monetary reward paid to faculty members for their ISI papers; Yes, this has been reduced during the last few years. 

The other factor is the weight put on international/ISI papers by the promotion regulations. Weight used to be more in the past, but in recent years the government has put more weight on national journals in order to encourage researching local issues and so on. 

But please also note that this might be a global trend as well. I read a short paper in IPM that compares research output of USA and China and you can see a decline in the output of them I think in 2011 or 2012.

The other thing you need to note is that the decline you mention is in the growth slope and obviously a high growth rate can't be maintained for ever. It's like expecting China to have economic growth rate of 10 for the next 30 years. It's going to reach its peak soon and its grows will decline to a more reasonable rate like all other countries. 

Instiutional-level cash bonus schemes for publishing in approved journals appear to be far more common than is often realised.

The practice is not confined to the Third World, but documented for individual institutions in European countries such as Austria, Denmark, France,  Italy, Netherlands, and Norway. It is also found in elsewhere, in countries as diverse as the United States, Australia, South Korea, Egypt, Israel and the Philippines.  I have been attempting to assemble information about such institutional policies for a year or two, but it is extremely difficult to get a coherent picture.

I suspect that it will be almost impossible to demonstrate the effectiveness of institutional schemes as they rarely occur in a vacuum.  The same factor applies to national-level schemes. They seem effective enough (within narrow parameters), but correlation does not prove causation.  Countriesoften bring in such reward programs as part of a wider policy package. When such schemes are cut, the context may be a general reduction in funding for higher education.

Good luck with your research.