Some Malaysian professors and lecturers are publishing their research in questionable scholarly journals that allow them to pay to be published and over time this will weaken the overall reputation of our universities, academicians say.

Malaysia was ranked as among the fifth-highest contributors in the world of countries surveyed by two Czech Republic economists Vit Machacek and Martin Srholec, who mapped the infiltration of so-called "predatory" scholarly journals into the citation database Scopus over a period of three years from 2015 to 2017.

The data was obtained from research involving 172 countries in four fields, namely health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences and indicated that some academicians who are seeking ‘shortcuts’ to be promoted to associate professor and professor.

“This is not new and we have to look at the root cause,” Dr Mohamad Hussain Habil (above) of Mahsa Universiti told Malaysiakini...