Interconnectivity of Research Findings with Society

Al Mukhollis Siagian

“If scientific institutions are still sitting comfortably in their ivory towers, the public will remain isolated from the ideas that are put forward from research.” - Al Mukhollis Siagian

Reviewer of The Interdisciplinary Social Science Journal Collection

The rapid progress of the era in the globalization process has connected the knots of science and revealed behind it a research-based economy that reflects a new type of interaction between research findings and society. National neo-transformation forcefully raises critical questions about how the interconnectivity of research findings with society.

We cannot rule out the fact that researchers are not immune from greater social change. In parallel, we see the capitalization of science as a normal condition formed by factors of social, economic and cultural development. As a form of transformation; the integration of science, technology and industry into the fusion point allows research findings to lack the axial principles of post-industrial society.

There is a significant reconfiguration of institutional boundaries in terms of the production of research findings and capitalization. Many people think that the capitalization of research findings is a curse for scientific institutions. The implication is that the existential function of scientific institutions to society is increasingly distant.

What is the function of a scientific institution, such as a university, if not to create science in response to the needs of society, then the author does not know what it is for. It is clear that universities cannot pretend to be public institutions isolated from public problems. But research often has a random component and the scientific institution becomes a strange entity.

Mainstreaming and Main Issues of Research Publications

Indonesia is one of the countries that is keen to mainstream research publications. The logical consequence of the republic's stubbornness, with its large population, has made Indonesia one of the countries with the most research institutions in the world whose management composition consists of the government, universities, and non-governmental think tanks to produce science in order to build public quality in education. support the progress of the nation.

Regularly, mainstreaming research and publications to encourage researchers, lecturers, and professors can be seen from the National Research Master Plan through Presidential Regulation Number 38 of 2018 as a sequence of research priorities in Indonesia, Law Number 11 of 2019 concerning the National System of Science and Technology that underlines the need for a research ecosystem in Indonesia, Presidential Regulation Number 16 of 2018 concerning Government Procurement of Goods and Services.

Most researchers in Indonesia are academic scientists (lecturers). When referring to data from PDDIKTI in February 2022, there are 293,236 lecturers in Indonesia spread across 4,517 universities. Of course, it is inconceivable how great Indonesia is in producing science and answering society's problems through research findings. Should!

It is true that the publications of lecturers in the past 5 years have shown an increase in the quantity of publications. As data in 2019, there are 343,710 of our publications, and as many as 44,262 are indexed by Scopus. Compared to previous years, for example in 2015 we only had 205,820 publications with 8,902 of them indexed by Scopus.

This achievement is the success of the research mainstreaming policy. But on the other hand, on the other hand, we reap the quality of research that is apprehensive. A significant increase in numbers is not accompanied by an increase in citations and is often trapped in predatory journals. This does not include stripping down the research findings and ideas put forward from each article with the potential to be un-implemented.

This issue requires a kind of attention opposite ofresearchers (mostly) with stakeholder attention in mainstreaming research to help remove public stagnation. Where researchers conduct research through various motivations that seem to override the reincarnation of society.

Researchers come to the community every time they conduct research, interview or ask the community to fill out questionnaires. After the problems and data were obtained, the community was left alone. It is almost the same as the work of politicians who are bullshit activists who come when they want to.

Not a few researchers and academics behave pragmatically and opportunistically. Pursuing research publications to get more incentives, conducting research only to meet demands, and increasing publication slots to achieve higher structural positions and functional status. The cyclical implication is the insincerity and dishonesty of research, so that published findings only result in an increase in the number of publications and an increase in the burden of society with minimal value and solutions.

The number of publications is 343,710 (as in the data above), if classified based on the public dimension; government, private sector, and society. So Indonesia should be the world's reference in terms of science production and solutions to various national problems. We can assume that hundreds of thousands per dimension each year, the problems are always described and the ideas discussed per publication of research findings. There has been so much space for the vacancies of academic as well as practical investigation on every dimension that hundreds of thousands of articles have filled it.

But unfortunately, for some time that has passed, the research findings of our researchers are more likely to just stay in the journal and slowly sink into the archives. This issue once again returned to the attention of researchers who tended to be pragmatic and opportunist to trigger un-implemented research findings.

From the increase in the number of publications, Indonesia also received negative feedback, being included in the black book list as the country that produces the most predatory journals along with India, the Philippines, Egypt, and other countries. As data from Sceintomectri 2021, Indonesia is in the top 4 positions that produce predatory journals in the social science field.

In addition, the management of the publication of our research findings internally has questionable quality and substance, both research on basic science and applied science. Empirically, the author has received many complaints from researchers, both lecturers and students regarding journal management when they want to publish. More than 30 researchers stated the same thing, that journal managers prioritize payment for publication of each title.

Even some mainstream researchers, say professors, often enter this dangerous arena with quite high and varied fees, due to the demands of the role they are carrying out. Mainstream academics think that the reason for this is that incentives and facilities for research from the State are still minimal.

However, the author has previously raised this issue in an article entitled "Meaning the Impact of Research" that it is the mainstreaming of the quality of our research that should be addressed first. Then ask stakeholders to raise the level of welfare of the researchers. Let's start not to be tempted byscientific publications that are more transactional (financial). Strengthen discussions, multiply ideas, and sharpen arguments from published research findings. Relying on journal platforms for the publication of research findings of 114 journals (Sinta Kemendikbud as of February 2022) indexed by Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) should be more than enough to make Indonesia a reference for the world in science production and its interconnectivity towards public issues.