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CommonWealth Magazine Investigation

Taiwanese Academics Undercutting the System

Taiwanese Academics Undercutting the System

Source:Kuo-Tai Liu

Taiwanese academics find themselves fatally attracted to conferences and journals offering easy and fast publication of such papers and less than rigorous peer reviews. In the second half of CommonWealth Magazine’s investigation on Taiwan’s mingling with predatory publishers, we take a look at how and why the phenomenon has taken hold.

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Taiwanese Academics Undercutting the System

By CommonWealth Magazine
web only

In the CommonWealth Magazine investigation, Tainan-based Nan Jeon University of Science and Technology (NJUST) ended up tied with National Taiwan University for most articles published by a Taiwanese institution in predatory journals from 2010 to 2017 with 20.

Perhaps more eye-opening is that all 20 articles from NJUST were written by Yu Chii-huei, a former assistant professor with the school’s Department of Management and Information, in 2013 and 2014 and published mostly in Horizon Research Publishing journals.    

Yu retired from NJUST on Jan. 31, 2019 and is said to have moved on to teach at Zhaoqing University in China.

CommonWealth tried to contact Yu through NJUST faculty, people who co-authored papers with Yu, the publisher and co-authors of Yu’s calculus textbook, and a call to Zhaoqing University, but we had not received a reply as of the time this article was published.

Taiwanese Academics under the Gun

Yanshui, where NJUST is located, is one of Taiwan’s oldest towns. The Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival dates back to the 19th century and represents a reminder of the area’s once glorious past. The university’s new red-brick building and expansive campus stand out as landmarks of the small town.

The school is less than a 10-minute drive from the Yuejin Lantern Festival, which was a hot attraction earlier this year, but Yuejin’s vitality only makes the university seem lonely in contrast, with few students populating the huge campus.

Since 2016, the school has been hit hard by allegations that its president, Huang Tsung-liang, was selling fake academic degrees and abusing the promotion system.

The situation came to a head in 2019, when Huang was convicted of the degree-selling charges in February and the Ministry of Education ordered NJUST to stop recruiting students.

The school was once a vocational college but was later promoted to become Nan Jeon Institute of Technology in 2001 and a full-fledged university in 2013.

It is one of many institutions that have suffered from an educational reform initiative in the late 1990s that rapidly increased the number of universities in Taiwan while eroding vocational education.

NJUST and Yu epitomize the dilemmas faced by schools and professors caught between Taiwan’s declining birthrate and the country’s problematic higher education system.

Whether working at public or private universities, these professors mired in academic purgatory are ideal “prey” for the predatory publishing ecosystem.

B.H. Chen, principal of Chih-Kuang Vocational High School of Business & Technology and the former dean of NJUST’s Department of Electrical Engineering, says that during Nan Jeon’s vocational college days, it had a good reputation in southern Taiwan.

Yu graduated with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from National Chiao Tung University, and joined Nan Jeon’s Center of General Education in 1997 to teach math.

When the school became a science and technology university, the Center of General Education was dissolved, and Yu was assigned to the Information Technology Department, while also teaching some courses in electrical engineering.

The current head of the department, Chen Hsi-kuan, and B.H. Chen both describe Yu as a “loner.”

Though Yu was in the Information Technology Department, his 20 papers were all related to math. When asked why Yu, who had already been with the school for 15 years, suddenly published so many papers, Chen Hsi-kuan says: “He was preparing for the school’s promotion at the time.”

In 2012, when Huang took over as the school’s president, his one overriding goal was to have the school upgraded to a university of science and technology to be able to attract much needed students.

To be able to earn the promotion, the school had to increase its lineup of people at a level above assistant professor with doctoral degrees.

Huang encouraged the school’s lecturers and assistant professors to vie for promotions, and teachers could also try to publish as many papers as possible to bolster their resumes while paying less attention to their teaching or student counseling duties.

“He might have wanted to grab this opportunity and just went for it,” Chen Hsi-kuan recalls.

But is it really possible to pump out 19 or 20 papers in a year? As we covered this story, almost every professor we interviewed said just producing two to three research papers a year was already extremely challenging.

Lu Pei-jung, National Cheng Kung University’s associate vice president for research and development, acknowledges that putting out papers in the mathematics field, which can be supported by software simulations, is easier than publishing frequently in the engineering field, which relies on evidence-based research. But pumping out 19 papers in a single year in any field is inconceivable, Lu insists.

B.H. Chen remembers asking Yu at the time how he was able to publish so many papers, without ever receiving a clear answer.

Yu’s frantic publishing spree earned him promotion to associate professor, but when the fake degree scandal engulfed NJUST, the Ministry of Education took another look at Yu’s credentials and revoked the promotion.

The German reporter who led the international investigation into predatory publishers, Peter Hornung, believes that academics who attend predatory conferences or publish three or more papers in predatory journals are not being duped but rather deceiving others.

Using Deception to Deal with Evaluation Pressure

Chu Chun-chang, the director general of the MOE’s Department of Higher Education, insists that, “publishing in these kinds of journals does not help in the slightest with promotions.”

Aside from Chu, National Tsing Hua University President Hocheng Hong, NCKU Vice President Chang Jang-yang, dean of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Office of Research and Development Ju Sheau-pyng, and National Taiwan University College of Medicine professor and vice director of its Office of Research and Development Teng Shu-chun have all spoken out against such practices.

They have stated categorically that publishing in journals or presenting papers at conferences that have no influence academically is not only of no help to getting a promotion but can even be career killers that are seriously damaging to resumes.

NCKU’s Chang stresses that his university does not consider papers published in predatory journals when considering promotions nor does it encourage the practice.

Some academics may believe, however, that some journals have potential and could have higher impact factors in the future, and end up submitting articles to them.

As for the dubious conferences, Chang believes some younger academics may attend simply to get the chance to present a paper abroad without fully understanding the company organizing the event.

“New teachers often don’t have a clear understanding of many situations. This is something we will work with them on in the future,” he says, pledging to remind teachers to be careful through university meetings and Office of Research and Development speeches on ethics.  

Though government officials and administrators of elite universities have taken a strong stand against publishing in questionable journals, the number of articles found published in predatory journals was almost equally distributed between public schools(which are seen as more elite) and private schools.

Of those, 21 were authored by “distinguished professors.” Distinguished professorships are positions given to outstanding teachers or researchers as a courtesy that come with a special allowance. But four of them had more than one article published in dubious journals.

These “ghost papers” cannot be used toward getting promotions or winning awards.

But in the face of constant evaluations, internal job security pressure, and unwritten rules, Taiwanese academics find themselves fatally attracted to conferences and journals offering easy and fast publication of such papers and less than rigorous peer reviews.

Chen Ping-hei, a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at NTU and a renowned figure in mechanical circles, was not on CommonWealth’s list, but he explained the evaluation pressure he faces as a distinguished professor.

Because his salary is paid by the Ministry of Science of Technology, he is required to fill out an evaluation form every year that covers the papers he has published in the past three years, the prizes or honors received, and contributions to industry. A bad evaluation means a cut in pay.

“I honestly don’t know if anybody actually looks at the form,” he says, but there still is pressure to have something to fill in. Leaving it blank is not an option.

Distinguished professors also have to pursue Ministry of Science and Technology grants and cooperation projects with the private sector, which also bring pressure from annual year-end evaluations.

“If a conference peer review is too strict, it may be hard to complete a final version of a paper by the time the conference rolls around. So if you see a conference out there that is related to your field, you might quickly submit a paper to have it seen and have something to list in a KPI,” Chen Ping-hei says.  

A distinguished professor with NCKU’s College of Engineering agreed to answer CommonWealth’s questions, but only in writing because of problems with his health. He first checked with the school to get the green light before talking about his ordeal from three years earlier.

In 2014 and 2015, three papers co-authored by this professor and his students were published in journals put out by suspected predatory publisher World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET).

At the time, the large-scale research project he was involved in required a significant amount of time, and he decided to present some of his initial findings at a WASET conference. What he did not expect was for the paper he presented to be formally published in a journal, something that would come back to haunt him.

When the project was completed in 2016, he planned to publish the final study in an elite journal. It was rejected, however, for having too much in common with the article published by WASET, leading the professor to feel victimized.

“All I did was attend a conference. I didn’t know it would turn into a journal article,” he recalls.

Hung Wen-chi, an associate researcher at the Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center (STPI), says professors at private universities have it even worse.

“The pressure on private school teachers to publish or present papers is even greater than those at public schools because it can be a matter of survival,” Hung says.

To stay in business, private schools need to do well in university rankings, whether in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, QS World University Rankings or Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities.

In those rankings, research accounts for more than half of a school’s score, which is why private universities encourage faculty to present papers at international conferences.

Fighting for Survival

Ming Chi University of Technology, which was founded by one of Taiwan’s greatest entrepreneurs Y.C. Wang, has taken pressure to a new level. Located halfway up a mountain in New Taipei City, it follows the policy of Wang’s Formosa Plastics Group in eliminating the lowest 5% of performers.

Professors can be dismissed after three to four competence assessments a year, and they must do well in every one of the four performance criteria: teaching, service, research and student counseling.

University professors are people students first emulate when entering the real world. But local academic circles’ use of predatory conferences and journals has lowered the ethical standing and quality of research of the academic community over the long run. (Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

In its investigation of predatory publishers, CommonWealth Magazine found Ming Chi University of Technology had eight articles published in suspected predatory journals.

Liang Jin-wei, the dean of the school’s Department of Engineering, said he and members of the Office of Research and Development are often contacted by reporters but that this was the first time he had heard of suspected predatory journals.

It then came to him with a bit of a shock that an article he had co-authored with a colleague had actually been published in a WASET journal.

Liang, who also teaches mechanical engineering, did not deny he was under heavy pressure to publish. But beyond his research and administrative duties, there were other pressures, he said.

One example: He has to head south twice a week, once to Mailiao in Yunlin County and once to Renwu District in Kaohsiung, to provide progress reports to Formosa Plastics on the school’s academia-industry collaboration initiatives.

Private school professors also have to cope with a lower caliber of graduate student than their public school counterparts.

When public school professors are commissioned by the government for a project or get a project to work with the private sector, they can come up with a plan and have their students execute it. Private school professors, however, are forced to do pretty much everything themselves.

One idea discussed for a long time as a way to address the problem is dividing Taiwanese universities into “teaching” and “research” schools, but the idea has yet to come to fruition.

Chan Sheng-ju, an education professor at National Chung Cheng University who has studied higher education systems, says the biggest obstacle is the sense most people have that universities are strong research institutions.

“The issue of dividing responsibilities is a powder keg. Schools will feel they are being labeled and will fight back, sensing they have been disparaged as being unable to do something,” Chan says.

“If private schools want to climb higher, they have to go all out on research.”

Because of that, resource-strapped private schools still encourage professors to participate in international conferences and publish in international journals.

Under such circumstances, invitations by predatory publishers to serve as journal editors, keynote speakers, and conference chairs can be too tempting to pass up.

Da Yeh University, for example, offers a travel subsidy of NT$40,000 for professors to attend conferences in Europe and the United States.

I-Shou University provides NT$10,000 in travel subsidies to attend approved international conferences, defined as conferences that draw scholars and experts from at least three different countries not including China, Hong Kong and Macau.

Everybody’s Doing It, So Why Not Us?

Hospitals face similar dilemmas.

“When a hospital sees a researcher with titles such as ‘Chair’ or ‘Speaker,’ you think, ‘Wow. This person is really skilled,’ and you’re more likely to make them a director or superintendent,” says STPI Director-General Joung Yuh-jzer.

That’s why many doctors who do not have time for research still find time to present papers at international meetings or serve as conference chairs.

“We actually go to WASET events because we see many people from NTU and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology going. Also, when students apply for reimbursement of their expenses to the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education, their applications are approved,” says an associate professor at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) sitting in the College of Engineering conference room.

“So I don’t really think about this too much. I feel that if our research can be seen internationally, we’re doing OK.”  

This simply dressed professor, now near retirement age, heads a laboratory that gives master’s students the chance to go overseas to take part in conferences before they graduate.

Beyond the three papers discovered by CommonWealth, the professor acknowledges that the lab has put out another 40 papers through dubious publishers, 20 of which were put together by another professor in the lab.

The NTHU professor is fully aware of the hodgepodge nature of WASET conferences, in which 10 to 20 different academic disciplines are brought together and cobbled into a two-day agenda depending on what kind of papers have been solicited.

The speakers, who may come from completely different fields, often address empty rooms or audiences that are generally not knowledgeable about the topic being discussed.   

“My attitude when I go to those conferences is that I’m engaging with laymen rather than experts,” he explains.

The NTHU professor also does not see the lack of questions as necessarily a bad thing.

“Many students are speaking at an overseas event for the first time, and there’s less pressure at these conferences. The questions asked won’t be very pointed, so the speakers only have to understand what’s being asked and give a simple answer,” the professor says.

“If there were many experts present, the students could be treated as laughingstocks from the time they go on stage and people might wonder why speakers from Taiwan are so bad. We would also be very worried about the people we select,” he says.

Have you read? More CommonWealth Magazine investigative reporting:
♦ The Undiscovered Asian Offshore Tax Haven
♦ Taiwan: The Water-starved Island
♦ Where Does Our Fish Come From?

Nothing More than Leisure Trips?

But how does one claim expenses for attending a conference that offers nothing in the way of valuable exchanges? The professor says WASET provides an attendance certificate that lists an academic discipline, making it look like a professional, specialized conference.

He also said he deliberately chooses conferences in the West, explaining that Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia are no longer attractive destinations because students often pay their own way to go to those places.

For meetings in the U.S. and Europe, the school subsidizes students’ plane tickets, living expenses during the conference period and registration fees, the professor says.

His view is shared in Taiwan’s academic community. A Da Yeh University professor who received NT$80,000 in subsidies to attend conferences in Switzerland and Spain during his summer vacation described this as “no big deal.”

This professor says that when he chooses conferences, “the most important factor is to attend a seminar and leave a few days to catch the sights.”    

When asked if it is right to apply for subsidies and spend taxpayer money this way, the soon-to-retire NTUH professor, who consistently stressed he worked hard training students, got a little agitated. “I really can’t stand the constant talk of taxpayer money over and over; is taxpayer money the only important principle?”

But predatory conferences and journals, in fact, target taxpayer funds. Almost all of the people interviewed by CommonWealth admitted that without special project funding or school subsidies, professors would be reluctant to attend these dubious meetings.  

South Korea has already looked into the situation. South Korean media News Tapa was part of the international consortium preparing the “Fake Science Factory” report that exposed these predatory practices.

After it unveiled the report in July 2018, the Korean government ordered a thorough investigation of 238 universities and state-run think tanks that used taxpayer funds to attend OMICS and WASET conferences.

The investigation found that over the past five years nearly 400 researchers spent 1.45 billion Korean won (about NT$39.2 million at current exchange rates) on such meetings, and more than 250 academics at state-run think tanks were fined. The investigation is still ongoing.

A conservative estimate of Taiwan’s overseas travel expenses for academic purposes would be NT$140 million a year, but how much of that is spent on attending dubious gatherings still has to be investigated.      

“Leading schools are very clear about what kind of conferences and journals these are. This indicates that internal discipline in academia has run into trouble. But when it comes to weaker schools, I don’t demand as much of them ethically because they have to survive,” says National Chung Cheng University’s Chan. 

Chan believes the problems with predatory conferences and publishing are nothing more than quality control issues and that they do not represent breaches of academic ethics.

The international community does not agree. OMICS has been taken to court by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for practices that deceived the academic community and researchers.

A growing number of examples have emerged showing that suspected predatory journals are being used by people with agendas to deliberately disrupt commercial norms, mislead public policy-makers and corrupt the academic environment.

Society the Biggest Loser

Hornung gave the example of the blood-testing startup Theranos, which is now at the center of the biggest case of fraud in Silicon Valley in recent years.

Theranos published articles in dubious journals to buttress the academic basis for the blood-testing method being touted by the company that turned out to be a mirage.

Climate change deniers have latched on to similarly questionable studies as evidence of their position.

“In this game, the commercial publishers are winners, and schools and academics may also be winners, but society is the biggest loser,” Hornung says angrily.

All of these studies are easily accessible on Google, enabling fake scientific knowledge to be disseminated on the internet and used by people with specific agendas.

I-Shou University’s Peng Tai-kuang worries that if Ph.D. students and assistant professors fall to the temptation of these predatory publishers and are then promoted to full professor and become department heads, they will not curb this malevolent trend, leading to long-term erosion of Taiwan’s academic reputation.

Taiwan once had a rigorous case-by-case application process for approving the participation of academics at overseas conferences. Then, in the name of “academic freedom” and a belief in academic self-governance, the government changed to a pre-approval system, which some academics abused.

What was disappointing in covering this story was that many university presidents and researchers interviewed only voiced concern that Taiwan would return to the old management system without offering any ideas on how to strengthen management of the existing system.        

Students watch and emulate teachers as they grow up, but with 114 universities and 15 hospitals hunted down for collaborating with publishers suspected of unethical practices, the time has come for the problem to be addressed and restore integrity in academia for future students.


Predatory Journal/Conference

Refers to a publisher that publishes low-quality journals or holds conferences solely to make a profit; these journals and conferences attract submissions by promising authors professional editors, peer reviews and high impact factors and charge high fees for the publication of material. Predatory journals not only cost individual academics money and time but also hurt the integrity of academia through the “fake science” they peddle. (Sources: Academia Sinica, National Cheng Kung University Hospital)

Impact Factor

Refers to the frequency with which an article published in a specific journal is cited within a specific period; it is an important indicator in gauging the influence of a scholarly publication. Impact factors are released annually in the publication Journal Citation Reports.


Translated by Luke Sabatier
Edited by Tomas Lin

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