Misplaced rejoinder lacks support

IN HIS commentary “Strange phenomenon: A response to Lacanilao” (Inquirer, 4/11/11), Dr. Ramon Guillermo refutes several points in my own commentary “Democratic governance impedes academic reform.” (Inquirer, 3/14/11) He opposed my use of objective international criteria, such as ISI-indexed journals, in evaluating research performance. He favored instead personal judgment and group decision, justifying these by citing historical events of nationalist struggle for democracy and academic freedom. But he failed to show how these would enhance academic growth. My commentary was supported by hard data.
Guillermo made many errors about the issues I raised. Let me cite a few.

1. ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) is also known as Thomson ISI, a leading provider of information (e.g., citation indexes that cover the leading academic journals in all fields) for researchers. The commonly used ISI indexes are the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. The number of journals covered in each of these indexes reflects the research output from each field group: sciences (3,786), social sciences (2,876), arts and humanities (1,603). This corrects Guillermo’s claim that ISI indexes are unfair to social sciences and humanities.

2. His claim that the US and UK dominance of ISI indexes is disadvantageous to non-English speaking countries is wrong. The top six countries in number of ISI-indexed publications are the United States, China, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany and France— with China increasing its publication number twofold every five years in the last two decades, and predicted to overtake the United States soon (Thomson ISI report).

3. There is no question that the quality, rather than the number, of publications is a better indicator of research performance. Again, reminding Guillermo, we can only rely on the ISI citation indexes for valid citations because we lack experts to judge quality. For example, how can the quality of work done by a Filipino bio-geographer be evaluated by his peers in the Philippines if he is the only well-published bio-geographer in the country?

4. The stature of the world’s top scientists in various fields is reflected by their scores in ISI indexes, for quantity and quality (citations) of published work. However, most of our prominent academics and scientists—selected by peer judgment—lack the number and citations.

5. Fred Grinnell says in his book “Everyday Practice of Science” that the easiest way to assess if one has made any major contributions to one’s field is with the ISI data base called Web of Knowledge (showing authors, published titles, and citations). You can get the same information, though not as complete, from Google Scholar, he added.

Finally, my call for visionary leadership in my commentary should not be confused with preference or support for fascist rule. Guillermo’s appeal to Philippine nationalism is misplaced. Mediocrity has never been a UP tradition.

—FLOR LACANILAO,
Retired Professor of Marine Science,
UP Diliman, [email protected]