Indeed, the number of publications are a good measure of teacher's academic experience and helps keeping updated with recent trends in a field. However, overemphasizing the number of publications as eligibility criteria for academic jobs and promotions has led to chaos as every university and even some useless colleges have started publishing their own journals that are good for nothing. Even various manufacturers of dental products have started their journals that obviously add nothing to the field of knowledge, instead promoting plagiarism. Unfortunately, this trend has started a blind race of just publishing anything, anywhere. Quality of research has been sidelined and even good academicians have started submitting their low quality research to these "good for nothing" journals to stay in the competition for academic jobs and promotions. I wish academician's qualifications was judged on the basis of quality of their research. Of course, this blind race for number of publications should be discouraged by academic bodies.

I find that pursuing some serious research improves one's own performance as a teacher. This will also help to stay current with the developments in that field, another positive factor to being a better teacher. So, I dont see anything wrong in encouraging research and publications of teachers. But, I agree, that attending conferences, conducting workshops, etc also deserve some credit.

My humble guess is that there are powerful lobbies in academia/science, above all in the publishing business, as well as in and across certain academic institutions and fields. Despite the fact that there are still some quality publications, for the most part, unfortunately, an exponential number of professionals in academia have deviated from the altruistic role of education/learning.

Dentistry is a very different field to the one I teach in (so my response may be a bit off the mark) but in my area postgraduate study is generally seen as having a very strong link to current journal based evidence and associated research skills.

From the outside it seems that what you have is a requirement to meet a set minimum level of research experience to teach on postgraduate programmes, which in principle seems reasonable. Of course I don't know whether that level is realistic or desirable for the subject.

Teaching in academia

I am pleased to put some thoughts to the questions raised:

1. The point system you mention is obviously adjusted to your council. Having such a system the council should have details on the why`s and what`s on their own website or will surely reply to your demand.

2. A prerequisite for teaching in academia is a teacher with a good basic background on what he is teaching as well as a comprehensive and up to date knowledge about presently running discussions and evidence on the subjects taught published in literature.

3. I expect a good teacher to have a good understanding of how to evaluate these results published.

4. This ability is best acquired through research done by your own, resulting in publications. Therefore I agree that an academic teacher should have some experience in research (publications). I therefore do not find the fact discutable but the amount o fit.

5. Of course, having many publications on your list this does not mean a reference per se that you have the ability to light a fire on the subject to your students. Therefore I advise a documentation of teaching done together with an evaluation by the audience / students which should accompany all courses. This evaluation should be done by using a score catching all teachers of the faculty. This together with the publications list and preferentially a personal impression of lectures performed, I can very well imagine a point system for teaching eligibility.

6. In (Dental) Medicine there exist of course some subjects which are very practical similar to apprenticeship actions. I recommend to substitute or complement these teaching sessions with experienced practice personnel working together closely with academic personnel. The proportion of practical versus academic teaching depends on the subjects. These practical experts in conjunction with academic experts do not need to have published papers but should have considerabel practical expertise.

Teaching in academia

I am pleased to put some thoughts to the questions raised:

1. The point system you mention is obviously adjusted to your council. Having such a system the council should have details on the why`s and what`s on their own website or will surely reply to your demand.

2. A prerequisite for teaching in academia is a teacher with a good basic background on what he is teaching as well as a comprehensive and up to date knowledge about presently running discussions and evidence on the subjects taught published in literature.

3. I expect a good teacher to have a good understanding of how to evaluate these results published.

4. This ability is best acquired through research done by your own, resulting in publications. Therefore I agree that an academic teacher should have some experience in research (publications). I therefore do not find the fact discutable but the amount o fit.

5. Of course, having many publications on your list this does not mean a reference per se that you have the ability to light a fire on the subject to your students. Therefore I advise a documentation of teaching done together with an evaluation by the audience / students which should accompany all courses. This evaluation should be done by using a score catching all teachers of the faculty. This together with the publications list and preferentially a personal impression of lectures performed, I can very well imagine a point system for teaching eligibility.

6. In (Dental) Medicine there exist of course some subjects which are very practical similar to apprenticeship actions. I recommend to substitute or complement these teaching sessions with experienced practice personnel working together closely with academic personnel. The proportion of practical versus academic teaching depends on the subjects. These practical experts in conjunction with academic experts do not need to have published papers but should have considerabel practical expertise.

The "publish or perish" politics from north america colleges is being adopted worldwide. Of course the research is very important in teacher's formation. But the quality of research has been left aside, unfortunately...

+thank you, wolfgang..you have made many aspects clearer for me.

I feel to become a teacher and have to gain the points is rough but being a teacher has its own rewards, when the student gets it, and continues to earn their degree you see the heart warmth reward.

Here is a humble opinion from a junior faculty member ..

1. Universities are the main source of research and academic development.. One of the most important criteria of classifying a country is its contribution to the world by means of scientific achievements .. Hence, it is the second priority after teaching dental students is to add to the wide world of science .. This only can be achieved by linking promotions to publications,, in our case at KSU ,, its not only the quantity that matters as they require certain % of points in ISI journal ,, which is difficult yet motivating !

2. Teaching techniques still are mostly subjective to measure ,, it would be nice to study the teaching quality of faculty in an objective way that could add points to your promotion requirements ,, but untill then , i believe that scientific research is a legitimate requirement of promotions ..

I hope my contribution to your discussion is helpful

Thank you

This is so called illness of growth. Number of publications is a good instrument, but it is not appropriate as teachers quality index.

I'm not trying to infer any inverse ratio, but the 2 teachers of mine I remember for being totally lousy teachers are the ones how had more publications and international scientific recognition...

That may be a far too common experience Ana and can easily happen when you have enthusiastic researchers / writers who are required to teach but aren’t really interested.

On the other hand would you want be taught to drive by someone who had passed a test but had never actually driven on a public road? There are some things you can’t teach if you haven’t the experience of preparing scripts for publication and going through that process yourself and that is part of the reason why in higher education we often expect teachers to publish.

Like any good idea in principle it can go wrong when it is made into too big a part of the answer or viewed in isolation. There are other skills that good teachers absolutely require that just can’t come from a research or publication history. More publications or even better ones don’t automatically make for a better teacher.

Indeed, the number of publications are a good measure of teacher's academic experience and helps keeping updated with recent trends in a field. However, overemphasizing the number of publications as eligibility criteria for academic jobs and promotions has led to chaos as every university and even some useless colleges have started publishing their own journals that are good for nothing. Even various manufacturers of dental products have started their journals that obviously add nothing to the field of knowledge, instead promoting plagiarism. Unfortunately, this trend has started a blind race of just publishing anything, anywhere. Quality of research has been sidelined and even good academicians have started submitting their low quality research to these "good for nothing" journals to stay in the competition for academic jobs and promotions. I wish academician's qualifications was judged on the basis of quality of their research. Of course, this blind race for number of publications should be discouraged by academic bodies.

In many instances, this focus on no. of publications even if quality of journal is factored in can leads to a perverse focus on publishing for publishing sake. It would be better to look at the impact rather than just the publication no.

Publications give the University kudos. Unfortunately there is an inverse relationship with the quality of teaching because too much time is spent on publications at the expense of teaching time. It is not a good system for ranking Universities. The local dentist population are in the best position to judge the worth of a dental School. They very quickly learn which schools not to employ graduates from and so employment success may be a better indicator of the quality of teaching.

I have a strong belief that despites being a (good) universal indicator of teacher performance, this kind of evaluation is a cold, calculist metric and is cannibalizing higher education. I think the rush to more and better publications will fend off the professor from their sacred mission of teaching, and certainly the quality of the professionals trained by us will decrease in the same proportion that increases our quality and quantity of scientific production. Like everything in nature, the balance, the balance must always be sought in the primary functions of the world-class university with teaching, research and extension working together. Globalization is increasing the scientific production and undermining the quality of future graduates in Unversidades.

I don't think there is any relationship between a good researcher and a good teacher. Indeed some of the best researchers are among the best teachers, but in my experience it seems that there is more likely an inverse than direct relationship among these skills.

In other words, your "worth as a teacher" is not what is being judged by your number of publications. However, in modern academia, many (most?) of us "teachers" are actually "professors" of some sort or another and a professor is both a teacher and researcher. There is no real rhyme or reason why we artificially combine these two skills - I suppose staying current through research helps us teach, but I don't think this is generally true - a nice ideal though.

In the USA, this link and the need for publications is clearly based on the insatiable push for external grants. Our academic world has gotten exceptionally distorted when the main goal of a professor is to pursue external money as the end in and of itself (note that the goal is not the research, but the money 'for' the research) and being a good teacher counts for little if anything. Couple this with the wildly increasing tuition rates and it is a miracle our students haven't revolted!

I think that we have evidences that good teachers are not necessarily good writers or researchers –perhaps their innovative teaching methods are not adequately controlled at “scientific proved” research.

And also it is clear that publications denote also an updated knowledge –even if not necessarily.

The problem is that with every teacher writing to survive in our jobs, who has the time to read all this stuff?

Good teachers need to be responsive to different students' needs, in my view they don't necessarily need to publish but their teaching style needs to take account of pedagogical theory and research

Dear Juan, allsome your considerations! Congrats!

i am overwhelmed by the number and the excellent quality of all the comments i have received and thank each and every one of you.

i have always taught and taught..and become very involved with my students.

sometimes, i have students from poor areas of India, like Bihar and they are poor at English language. so i improvise, explain anatomy and histology with drawings, shapes, fruits and vegetables..like a bunch of grapes for the salivary glands.

i am more concerned about them understanding basic concepts and physiology, so that in the third year of undergraduate studies, i can progress to teach them oral pathology.

when i am teaching such difficult, theoretical subjects, i would rather spend my time finding new and better teaching methods than waste time writing articles.

that does not mean that i am not interested in research and the latest techniques or inventions in dentistry.of course i am.

but i want my students to understand fully and remember all their lives what i have taught them in college...that is certainly more valuable to me.

In india, its not about grants or funding..every college gets government grants..but it is a rule that the dental council of india has come up with..a useless, irrelevan-to-our- scenario rule.

Dear Arnavaz, despite all the difficulties that surely we all face in the art of teaching, I think we all agree on one point: there is nothing more enjoyable than producing, aggregating knowledge and shara them in the form of education for our future colleagues.

absolutely vinicius...i started teaching many years after gaining my M.D.S. degree.initially i was only into full-time practice. but at a meeting, i ran into dr.lele, a v senior oral pathologist, who was Dean of the Government Dental Coolege & Hospital Bombay.He requested me to join initially as a Part-Time Lecturer, only in the afternoons, so that my consulting would not be disturbed.and i realised that i love teaching.and im still continuing.

i just want to be one of the best teachers around and be remembered by all my students...

God blesses you and your career, Arnaz! And you see... that one who teaches, is the first to learn more! Because the easiest way to learn is to teach!

Hi Arnavaz. The choice is yours. You can continue to be one among the best teachers without bothering about publications, points and promotions. These measures are "system-driven". Ultimately the choice is that of an individual.

A book written by Braskamp and Ory (1994) throws up the entire spectrum of faculty work and begins with questioning: What counts? How to count what counts? and finally, How counting counts???

I did some exploratory research and many questions arose in my mind, such as

Is it really necessary for faculty to do research?

Or to acquire PhD degree?

Don’t we come across great teachers without Doctorate qualifications?

I remember having read a speech in which John Slaughter, the former President of Occidental College, says "Research is to Teaching, as Sin is to Confession. Unless you participate in the former, you have little say in the latter". .

Publications demonstrate your research capabilities and your willingness to share the results of your research with wider community members.

Your concern for students and their learning problems etc are one among the many desirable characteristics of effective teachers. You focus on what you like the best. At the same time, publish papers about "Effective teaching in your domain" or "How you tackled the learning difficulties of diverse class room?". Have your own blog about effective teaching.

I encourage everyone to look at this movement aimed at dismantling the abuse of impact factors for such things as teacher evaluations.

http://am.ascb.org/dora/

The American Society for Cell Biology is an international organization (despite it nationalistic name) that wants the academic community to rebel against journal impact factor statistics. Sign the petition and spread the news. People used to say that open access journals would never succeed and they have. Now publishers are saying impact factors are worth keeping. Hmmmm.

Oh, how right all of you are! A good teacher is a good teacher, whether he or she publishes papers in the IF journals or not ! Its not at all worth counting credits in terms of papers in IF journals ! Writing skills are definitely worth developing and worth credits but that can't be the only criteria for becoming a good teacher! Its now become a need of times to have a good, sound system to measure the worth of a good teacher, because promotions are going to be based on that !

I think teachers should not only be judged just based on publications but also should get feed back from the students using scientific methods

In my opinion the quality of the scientific level of an educator has to be judged by the ratio between the number of cited works and the number of positive citations. One may right only one article but of a great impact in the development of knowledge in a scientific field.

Publications raise the visibility and esteem of our institutions and thereby raise the value of the degrees our students earn. I have always believed that university/college faculty be able to follow two basically separate tracks: (1) primarily teaching, which brings a higher teaching load as well as high quality teaching expectations, but very low expectations (not zero) for refereed publication; OR (2) a light teaching load, MAX. two per semester (with at least B- teaching evaluations), but with commensurately high publication expectations (2-4 per year in refereed, zero-publication fee journals. People in track 1 should be considered different but equal in value to those in track 2. At major research universities, the ratio of track 2 to track 1 teachers will be higher than at primarily teaching institutions.

I am not in favor of publications by the teachers unless the course load is less. If the regular load is 2 courses per semester then for researchers it shall be single course so that they get enough time to write and publish.

Well it can be as one of teachers evaluation items!

The real worth of a teacher should be measured by the number of students s/he has taught to appreciate their own ignorance. Of course this will be difficult to measure. In a university however, a teacher is also expected to engage in research and extension. In the absence of an alternative, I think that participation in peer review through publication is a good measure of research and extension output albeit it is getting over flagged these days.

I think one dimension to the research/publications issue, especially for people whose primary role and preferences are teaching, has been somewhat overlooked. Namely, if one were a good teacher/professor in the classroom, she/he arguably would or at least in theory could be even better if she/he also were at least somewhat active as a researcher. Doing research is more than just asking questions, coming up with theories, and then writing and publishing papers (an often arduous process); it involves reading current research papers we otherwise would likely not read and gaining knowledge through such readings and from the pursuit and gathering of data, It has been my experience over my career that being a very active researcher has made me much better informed for my students and better able to equip them for the real world. That said, I often think that the research expectations of many universities is truly excessive, sometimes even delusional; hence, while I think requiring at least some research of really effective teachers is not only defensible but wise, I also believe the system can break down when delusions are stronger than reason and those in power in the system are equipped with publications expectations that give them excessive power to rule over the lives of untenured, and often un-mentored, faculty.

In my opinion publications do have importance in academics and it is one of the gateway to get noticed professionally and the work you have done in your field/specialization. But it should be not mandatory for teachers to get the points just to be eligible as a post-graduate teacher or fulfill the norms of any system like Dental Council of India. Due to the mandatory publications, the quality is getting affected.

V true yadavalli..

And thats what i am trying to say..just being judged by the number of publications???is that right??

A teacher contributes in so many ways..live teaching, mentoring, guiding a student thru difficult times, thru obstacles in learning.and what about commitment? A teacher who is principled, has integrity, is honest to his/her craft...does that not count for anything?

Giving talks on topics relevant to daily life..e.g. Pre-cancer awareness, cancer screening, oral hygiene...traini9ng your students to do so...all this is important to me.

I want to make things better for my patients and my students..thats the bottom line for me..and maybe for many other teachers.

So why does that not make a better teacher?

Its a sad situation that the quality of publications has gone down to below floor level just b'z of credit points. How many teachers r making publications based on their genuine work?

In fact PG's should get credit for most of them.

My opinion is that there is a positive case of publication activity so that the theories that will be presented to the students not only limited knowledge of concepts that do not change from age to age. But added with new knowledge (at least 5 to 10 years). The challenge is to share “time with a variety of activities”. As an educator with the aim of producing graduates who are competent should still be optimistic to do so, and beat the challenges. (From Indonesia)

Simply, let's try to get best support, sponsoring. Let's try to write in best journal, but let's remeber normal journals to share knowledge.

It is sad, but the fact in many places, not just in India. Many teachers abandon teaching and concentrate on publications; they get promoted. These that concentrate on teaching and somehow did not have enough time for publication get stagnated. When will this system of grading change?

I would suggest that we need a balanced view. As educators in the domain of higher education, it is important that our teaching is informed by our research. It is obviously important that we are effective teachers, and there are measures available in universities to ascertain our effectiveness. Whilst a raw total of publications is not an appropriate measure of the quality of research, it is important that we maintain currency of knowledge if we are to educate the next generation of educators. This is a reasonable expectation of all academics involved in higher education.

I do not agree with such evaluation of a teacher just based on the number of publications: sine many teachers are excellent academically, but have not been exposed to the process of publication: at least in this fast paced era of open access publication

Any system evaluates an employee based on multiple critieria. Teachers are also evaluated based on their contribution to teaching, research, consultancy and community activities. There are different weightages given to each of these dimensions. Based on the position occupied by a teacher in the Institute, the weightages differ.

Yes, there are star teachers, star researchers and star teacher-cum-researcher. It is a blend of teacher and researcher, who can create chemistry between teacher-and-the taught and there will be dance of ideas.

Publications are not an accurate indicator of the worth of a teacher ... Sir Harold Gillies who pioneered Plastic Surgery and specially head and neck surgeries ... has himself very little in terms of his publications. He has written texts but compared to the amount of work that he did, the things that came to be published is less ... very less!

MIllard (who was a student of Sir Harold Gillies) has mentioned that Sir Gillies' work was about 2 decades ahead of others working in the same field but his work is not so popular because Sir Gillies never found the time to publish / publicize his work! And Millared took it upon himself to highlight lots of Sir Gliies' works/cases.

The same can be said about Tessier. A man who revolutionalized and founded the new branch of Cranio Facial Surgery, worked towards perfection. His works were published only after a significant amount of cases were done so that he was doubly sure of his work's credibility and success.

Though publications alone will not be a reliable indicator of the 'worth' of a teacher, for practical reasons and purposes, Universities and Governing Bodies have made these rules .. for the greater good of the specialty. The point about Conferences is a valid one and I believe, atleast in Maharashtra, the University collects yearly update report on the 'activities' of the teaching staff, especially the PG guides! It's a good step in the process.

The mandate and requirements need to be updated to reflect on the overall participation of the teacher in academic activities than just publications alone.

All conferences now include a 'feedback' for the speeches and session / workshops / training programmes. The DCI should mandate that these information should also be taken in account while assessing the teacher's eligibility requirements and such. Also, the organizers should try to forward these remarks to the respected Governing Bodies.

Regards,

Dr. Akilesh. R

The act is as a result of a political decision but not a scientific one. How about Guest lectures. As a result of this decision journals (pubmed indexed) ones are in great demand. They are also charging huge sums unofficially for publications. Publications are also being considered because of recommendation.

Good comments, Chris. Summed up very well.

Thanks akhilesh and chriss., for your inputs are excellent.

And yes. What makes a good teacher is exactly the main question.

In a country where the intelligent student is often bypassed fr the one who learns by rote, this is to be expected. Sad...isn't it? We have such brilliant minds in India.

I think that one way to potentially use publishing as a more meaningful measure of a professor's productivity, is to look at citations. When a person publishes in a questionable journal or starts his/her own journal and publishes therein, the value added of such papers is very dubious. However, Google Scholar provides a reasonably sound accounting of citations of people's research. Clearly, the more cited a paper is, the greater its value tends to be [on average]. Thus, those universities adopting strong rules regarding publishing might do well to add this dimension to their "research assessment tool kit." Of course, journal rankings also are hlepful to the assessment process.

That said, I still think too much emphasis or misguided emphasis can be placed on research. Really good teachers who teach more courses should be given appropriate credit and have much more odest publishing expected of them.

Of course, at the very strongest research institutions, research productivity is very important for reputaion, grants, and the like. Nevertheless, the citations measure of publication quality must not be ignored, along with journal rankings and numbers of publications.

When you pressurize a person to have a minimum of say X no. of publication , you are forcing malpractice in science as not all the colleges (Govt./Pvt) will give you all the facilities needed to carry out your work and you can't devote yourself totally to the research as you have to teach as well.

One concern that I have about research expectations principally involves universities and colleges that traditionally have been teaching oriented. If a university has a history of strongly emphasizing teaching, then it is very unfair to expect the existing faculty to dramatically [a relative term] increase their scholarly output from either 0 per year or once in a while to say 2 per year. If a teaching university chooses to become research oriented, it would make more sense and be far fairer to change the culture slowly and, indeed, to count as acceptable for existing faculty to publish in Conference Proceedings or even count conference presentations. Faculty facing such challenges are well advised to become increasingly familiar, e.g., via the internet, with associations in their fields that publish papers presented at annual or semi-annual meetings. There exist many such opportunities; use them when the pressure is on. This whole issue is especially important because a good number of teaching-oriented universities have four course teaching loads each semester.

As for new faculty to such universities, even they must be dealt with compassionately, unless their teaching load is much lower than the norm. Indeed, even then this issue is complex because most of their new colleagues do not have a history of publishing; hence, few colleagues to work with on their new position.

It would also seem reasonable that those traditionally teaching universities that choose to go down the research path morally owe their existing faculty seminars on how to publish, including how to engage professors from other universities. There should also be no penalty if one has multiple co-authors [within reason: 7 or 8 co-authors cannot become the norm, although in medical schools such events are not altogether uncommon].

Hi, our worth as teachers is mainly decided by the change we can bring about to our students. Our core business is TEACHING.

But if our teaching requires us to come up with procedures for innovative T&L, then we should document and publish. AND If our teaching requires us to do further research on how to improve the quality of learning and how to transform the learning environment, we should publish it. Because these things add to the change and improvement that we can bring to our students.

But the main core business is still to impart and share knowledge and facilitate learning of our students. Do you all agree?

one thing we must accept that doing research, writing paper and publishing is a very laborious process that personally i have experienced. though i have many papers published than my seniors, i still respect them and do not compare myself with them

Teachers in many ways cannot publish regularly for many reasons and in my opinion should be judged based on all other characters and not only based on paper publications

To the extent that professors ARE required to publish more than in the past, institutions in my view have an obligation to help those who have not published or who have not published in a long time. Universities can provide seminars (and IT assistance) that focus on how to choose a research topic, how to approach addressing that topic, and provide software and software training where applicable for undertaking formal statistical analysis. In addition, teaching how to organize a paper, including how to make the topic or theory being proffered compelling to readers and referees, Moreover, those faculty who do not have English as their primary language might be offered appropriately structured courses in composition.

I agree with all your good points with due regards to all the good thoughts .i would like to put forward one point which could be useful with this compulsion . As part of masters curriculum we have to train the students also in research methodology by way of thesis presentations i suppose this exercise of 40 points atleast makes you little bit experienced in what is going on around the world in research and publications especially the art of publications.which can be passed on to the student folks.

I agree with Miranda...we teachers have to teach...thats priority no. 1...absolutely.

Having said that, i do feel that all colleges must give time to those teachers who wish to pursue research, to do so.

but that does bot mean that teachers who focus more on teaching and improving teaching methods, work on their teacher-skills and do not sit in a laboratory or any facility to do research, are not as good as those who do.

also, some weightage must be given to lectures/presentations at conferences, or workshops, or continuing education pragrams too..isnt this part of the teaching process?

isnt this also part of a learning curve for our young students?

And dr daya, i do totally support you in what you say...but i would, as a guide, do brainstorming and giving of innovative ideas/topics for research.

Research methodology is important, no doubt, but there are many at the level of readers and lecturers who can teach the same, and do a wonderful job of the same.

The important thing about being a teacher or a lecturer is to be able to pass his or her knowledge and wisdom to the students (or future generation).

A professor who published a lot does not meant that he can pass his or her good knowledge to his or her students. It may only demonstrate that he or she is a keen learner and can upgrade his or herself with time...:)

This kind of "40 points" system may also encourage more self-centered, selfish and competitive lecturers and many cunning professors.who work his or her fellow colleagues to the bones..:)

This may defeat the purpose of grooming a caring and helpful teacher.

Thats right, sing ang, we have to pass our knowledge to our students..our expertise, our wisdom and teach them to be as good as, if not better than, us.

And a teacher who is concentrating on getting "points" will spawn more selfish teachers who will use their students' work and research for their own publications...

and yes,richard, i agree that since we professors "ARE required to publish more than in the past, institutions have an obligation to help those who have not published or who have not published in a long time. Universities can provide seminars (and IT assistance) that focus on how to choose a research topic, how to approach addressing that topic, and provide software and software training where applicable for undertaking formal statistical analysis."

thanks ramana...i am so glad that you do think along the same lines as i do.

i quote--" though i have many papers published than my seniors, i still respect them and do not compare myself with them.Teachers in many ways cannot publish regularly for many reasons and in my opinion should be judged based on all other characters and not only based on paper publications"

so a teacher has much more important tasks to perform that writing papers.

Dear all, There is no clarity in the DCI guidelines. There is no qualitative assessment and they just need numbers. There is no rational on what the point system is based and its entirely messed. You will understand if you see the attached files downloaded from google, These both circulars are contradictory and ambiguous. 

Before discussing about publishing an article for points does anyone in the Dental council realize that even CONFERENCE PAPER PRESENTATION (FREE/GUEST LECTURES) are also academic. Why only paper publications should be a criteria. Importance should be given to PRESENTATIONS followed by PUBLICATIONS the reason being PRESENTATIONS are also a form of academic work. Its a little bit more than preparing for a routing lecture class and more informative with the latest literature. Also PRESENTATIONS are more expressive as it is easy to grasp by listening than learning. 

Does the Dental Council ever realize how much journals ask for PUBLICATIONS CHARGES. If PUBLICATIONS are mandatory then they should also make it clear that THE INSTITUTIONS SHOULD SPONSOR. 

POLITICS is the only answer why such confusions exist in our country. 

Dear friends. After all I listened an old professor about 10 years ago and that tooked deeply my heart. Within his 93 years old he told to the listeners during the scientific meeting: "Nowadays when I reach the higher post of my career as full professor, nothing touch more my heart than when someone call me with this sweet words: master how are you?. Because the very most important degree in our holly career is the mastership that gives to us the right to teach ours similars." So I full agree with that old professor with his young and strong heart and believes that a peofessor or a teacher must not be valored by his publication or presentation datas but by the large numbers of followers that have full respect and gratefull to their mentors. It is like the motion picture with that lovelly sound: "To Sir with love".

That is

m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTapoA5RQyo

From my perspective, asking the question: "Why should our worth as teachers be judged by the number of publications?" is, for a large proportion of cases, a bit overstated or even misstated or misleading.

It is no doubt true that at some institutions and/or in certain departments at various institutions, the question can apply.

However, in my experience, at MANY institutions, what constitutes a list of "publications" is misleading. The internet has brought with it a huge number of journals that claim to be scholarly and peer-reviewed, but which are in fact little more than journals that will have referees (often 2) look though an article and issue referee reports, but which--with modest to trivial revisions--publish the paper SO LONG AS ONE PAYS THE "PUBLICATION FEE," often in the range of $400. These journals exist across all disciplines and are typically little more than publishing machines that generate articles that faculty members (and students) who are not strong researchers to publish and even generate a long list of what, without careful scrutiny, appear to be boa fide, hard-core (serious) research.

Since this phenomenon occurs at the majority of universities, the question being asked is a bit of a "straw man" because with only VERY SMALL effort one can become, at least on the surface, quite well "published."

On the other hand, at schools with a stronger reputation, especially research universities, require serious research efforts, although the quality of journal and research is often as important or more so than the mere number of publications.

Publications, especially those involving serious work, serve teaching goals. They help to keep the teacher in us up to data, current, and therefore better able to teach our students what they need to know. Those same publications enhance the reputation of out respective departments and universities, thereby serving to elevate the value of their degrees and make our students more marketable. Thet are able to receive better jobs.

In turn, that added student success often leads to contributions, contributions that support the university and therefore to increase the resources available to our students.

The research can enable us to be better and more productive, relevant teachers for our students.

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As we see, that's how it is in many countries around the world.

"Don't count the things you do, do the things that count."- Zig Ziglar

hi all

thanks for your inputs.

I have been teaching for more than 20 years..in various capacities.

I am professor..oral pathology and microbiology since 2005

I have always bonded with my students..encouraged them to discuss and argue with me.

Since I practice too...I try to put a practical perspective on the learning my subjects.

I teach two distinct subjects..oral anatomy and histology as well as oral pathology and microbiology.

I also give lectures at meetings..conferences..seminars.

What I don't do a lot of...is publishing articles.

That does not reduce my worth..or value as a teacher..a guide.. A mentor of young minds.