Downloaded from Brill.Com09/26/2021 09:15:52AM Via Free Access 2 Makulilo

The African Review 48 (2021) 1–26 TARE THE AFRICAN REVIEW brill.com/tare “Where to Publish?” Avoiding Mediocrity for Academic Staff Promotion at the University of Dar es Salaam Alexander Makulilo | ORCID 0000-0001-8642-9390 Associate Professor; Department of Political Science and Public Administration, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Dodoma, Dodoma, Tanzania [email protected] Abstract Does “where to publish” affect academic staff promotion outcome? Using rational choice theory and the University of Dar es Salaam as case study, this article analyses the law and practice associated with academic staff promotion regarding “where to publish”. The article finds that the University has relatively well elaborate and adequate promotion guidelines and institutional frameworks to guide on “where to publish” in line with its vision of becoming a world-class university. Nonetheless, through series of workshops with staff and heads of department as well as interviews with the University management, it was observed that there is still little understanding of “where to publish” among staff although the situation is progressively changing. Some staff prefer predatory journals due to ignorance, frequent failures and lack of confidence to publish in credible journals. Consequently, the annual promotion rate remains low suggesting high rejection of publications by the University due to predatory nature of media of publication and failure by majority staff to publish. Keywords University of Dar es Salaam – where to publish – staff promotion – predatory journals – media of publication © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/1821889X-12340047Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 09:15:52AM via free access 2 Makulilo 1 Introduction Staff promotion in higher learning institutions serves dual purposes. To the institutions it helps to promote its international academic rankings and vis- ibility. This implies that with senior academic posts, an institution boosts its capacity on teaching, research, and consultancy. Without well qualified and committed academic staff, no academic institution can really ensure sus- tainability and quality over the long haul. Likewise, to an individual staff, promotion to a senior rank comes with additional renumeration, increased influence within the university, recognition, tenure, and leadership positions. Nevertheless, there are established modalities and procedures in universities for assessing and making recommendations on the performance of staff members in promotion exercises. These modalities and procedures are avail- able in promotion related documents such as university statutes, conditions of service for senior members, criteria for appointments and promotions, and academic board decision booklets or circulars. In effect it is expected that universities will work within the confines of these procedures and modalities to help achieve institutional goals. Although the literature on academic staff promotion in higher learning institution world-wide is abundant, in the developing world and particularly in Tanzania it is scanty. Yet, such literature tends to link promotion and reward system as part and parcel of human resource management. Therefore, a major concern of this literature is to understand how employees are recruited and retained in a work organisation (Hilary et al., 2005; Tettey, 2006; Long et al., 1993; Armstrong, 2001). While this orientation would be useful in informing organisations on how to develop succession plans, it does not explain the requirements of “where to publish” in relation to academic staff promotion. Yet, within this kind of literature, several studies simply focus on “choosing the right journals” without necessarily linking it to staff promotion (Nicholas et al., 2017). In this case, it would imply looking at issues such as open access or subscription-based journals, indexed or non-indexed journals, high impact factor, comparative or single case study journals, frequency of publications, journal policy and writing style. The frequently asked question is why do authors prefer journal “X” to “Y”. The major attention of this literature is to see conformity of authors to the scope and policy of journals so as to avoid rejection rates. Another strand of literature links “foreign journals” and promotion (Adomi and Mordi, 2003). The major shortcoming of this perspective is that it classifies journals as foreign and indigenous. The former is also considered as international. It has to be noted that for a journal to qualify as international it requires The AfricanDownloaded Review from 48 Brill.com09/26/2021 (2021) 1–26 09:15:52AM via free access Avoiding Mediocrity for Academic Staff Promotion 3 some attributes such as being reputed in international indexing databases, one-quarter (25%) of the editorial board reside or are employed outside the country of publication; one-third (33%) of the total number of papers published originate from outside the country of publication; at least half (50%) the total number of subscriptions originate from institutions or individuals outside the country of publication; wider acceptance and citation as well as being published by renowned publishers (Lakhotia, 2013; Shaik, 2017). In that case, a journal can still be international in its own locality as long as it exhibits features of an international journal. Hence, the geographical territoriality is no longer important in classifying the internationality or locality of a journal. Moreover, this perspective does not focus to understand the quality of journals on their own right as it considers all journals beyond geographical territoriality of a certain space as being of accepted quality (Ssentongo, 2020). Unlike this literature, the present article seeks to unravel the puzzle: Does “where to publish” affect academic staff promotion outcome? Using the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) as case study, it analyses the law and practice associated with academic staff promotion regarding “where to publish”. Specifically, it exam- ines four interrelated issues notably the extent to which the legal and institutional frameworks for promotion are adequate in guiding staff on “where to publish”; whether staff and heads of department are well informed of “where to publish”; why some staff publish in predatory journals; and the implications of “where to publish” in determining academic staff promotion outcome. 2 Methods The University of Dar es Salaam was selected for this study because it is the oldest and leading university in Tanzania. Initially, the University started as an affiliate college of the University of London in October 1961 and raised its status as constituent college of the University of East Africa in 1963. In 1970, the University of East Africa was dissolved, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, the University of Nairobi in Kenya and Makerere University in Uganda were constituted as independent universities in their respective countries. However, at different times, three important academic units (the Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine, the College of Health Sciences, and the College of Lands and Architectural Studies) were transformed into independent universities, that is, Sokoine University of Agriculture (1984), Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (2007) and Ardhi University (2007). The University enrols about 30,000 students at Mwalimu J. K. Nyerere Main Campus. It also has three constituent colleges, The African Review 48 (2021) 1–26 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 09:15:52AM via free access 4 Makulilo namely Mkwawa University College of Education (MUCE), Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE), University of Dar es Salaam Mbeya College of Health and Allied Sciences (UDSM MCHAS), six campus colleges, seven schools, six institutes and twelve centres. It zeroes in on a wide range of disciplines in 81 undergraduate programmes, and 126 postgraduate programmes (i.e., Master’s and Ph.D. programmes). In its Corporate Strategic Plan 2014/15–2022/23, the University targets to publish 2000 journal papers annu- ally. By 2017, the University had over 3,366 academic and administrative staff members (UDSM, 2017). Of these, 1,538 were academic staff with various ranks as indicated in Fig. 1 below. Professors A/Professors S/Lecturers Lecturers A/Lectures T/Assistant 800 683 700 665 654 649 632 600 571 500 400 359 315 300 304 300 264 240 239 226 215 211 202 202 204 200 192 189 200 184 179 105 109 109 103 92 92 64 100 60 58 53 50 51 0 2011/20122012/2013 2013/2014 2014/2015 2015/2016 2016/2017 figure 1 Academic saff by ranks (2011/2012–2016/2017) Source: UDSM Annual Reports (2011/2012–2016/2017) Therefore, studying the University of Dar es Salaam resonates well with the higher education sector. The university has for many years been ranked around the best twenty universities in Africa and consistently the first in Tanzania. This article draws data from four main sources. Firstly, data was drawn from series of six workshops conducted between 2016 and 2019 at the University of Dar es Salaam on publication and promotion of academic staff where I was engaged to facilitate on “where to publish and academic staff promotion”. Two workshops were conducted at MUCE, one at DUCE, one at the Institute of Marine Science (IMS), one with all heads of department at UDSM and its constituent colleges of MUCE, DUCE and UDSM MCHAS, and the last one with all UDSM leaders including Principals, Directors,

Load more