It is very unfortunate that in South Asian countries you may find huge open access journals rendering quick services for their clients. They are blind to whether the research papers are plagiarized or deviated from research paradigm
।। Alaul Alam ।।
It is obvious that every research work is held expecting to create new knowledge. That’s why we say that research brings innovations to society and enlighten people. Not only that, research makes the impossible possible and shows the path to move smoothly. Research findings help the planners and experts to take important decision in the country.
But the research with no new findings hardly contributes to generating new knowledge. On top of that, it fails to address the expectation of the society and nation. Research is considered as an ongoing contribution and ethics of every researcher to find out the limitations of the previous studies, then proceed their journey to create a new facet to the existing knowledge.
It is a common question raised by many: why do we need to conduct research? Is it merely for getting incentives for a researcher? It is true that every study is the intellectual property of the researcher but it aims at contributing society and people at large. But how far the researchers contribute if they are involved in unethical research practice?
In the technology-dependent era, people have wide access to the global arena of research. Creating new knowledge and sharing it to the global world have accelerated research contribution to benefit the humanity. At the same time, the tendency of the researchers to do plagiarism has increased due to the wide access of digitization.
There is a wrong notion stated by many that in case of the studies in the social science sector, the researchers hardly have scopes to create new knowledge as knowledge has already been created. So, they are found to make shortcut to conduct their studies going through many previous studies. They try to make a cocktail which has nothing new to further benefit society.
It is very unfortunate that in South Asian countries you may find huge open access journals rendering quick services for their clients. They are blind to whether the research papers are plagiarized or deviated from research paradigm, rather their only aim is to get them published in their journals and for this they take huge charge from the clients.
In this deal two parties are benefitted. The clients are benefitted as their articles get published thus serving their purpose. The owners of journals have scopes for unethical education business. It is one kind of fraud with education. The motto of education and research has been completely business-centric having hardly any scopes to contribute to the nation.
The causes may be many for which many are conducting cliché researches. In most cases, self-incentives get the priority. Many opine that they need to publish articles for promotion. Teachers at the tertiary level of education are considered to be upgraded to the next position on condition that they have a requisite number of published articles. To get promotion many find a shortcut way to publish their articles and they have hardly any intention whether their papers can benefit the society and people. Rather these are written only to serve the promotional purposes with no innovations and new knowledge.
In these days being PhD holders has been a fashion for many to hunt prestige. So, the number of PhD seekers has increased many times. It is good to see that people are showing their interest on conducting researches. If they intend to conduct typical research with the same findings other studies found in the previous period, undoubtedly these are insignificant researches. But they are being awarded and promoted despite such researches. In this way the system encourages the bad practice.
But what will we do with so many PhD holders who exploit the country’s education and tarnish our image before the global community by adopting deceptive way in conducting studies.
Things get a bit tougher when we see a number of anonymous ghost writers remain constant online to write academic papers for students and academics. Many fake individual researchers and their associates are related with this corrupt deals and the aspiring PhD degree seekers order by mail to the fraudulent writers to get their prepared thesis.
This business-centric research can only fill the purpose of the hybrid researchers and the fraudulent business profiteers. The scenario is really frustrating when degree holding is more desirous than accomplishing the research following the accepted norms and values.
According to many scholars, there may be two causes for which the research ethics are grossly violated. One is poor knowledge of scholarly paradigm and the other is to search for shortcut way to conduct research. Again language difficulties may be the reason of violating research ethics for many. Can the reviewers and research supervisors deny their responsibilities in this regards? Obviously, they have little scopes to do so.
To compete in the global world of research and education and to contribute to boosting the country’s development through innovations there is no alternatives to conducting research in a significant way. It is very imperative for the individuals to be motivated with the essence of genuine research practice avoiding cliché in their studies for the benefit of people and country with new knowledge.
The writer teaches at Prime University. He is also a research scholar at the IBS. Email: malaulalam@gmail.com
