It is common to hear in Ghana: “University of Ghana has promoted 30 senior lecturers to Associate Professors.” “KNUST appoints 15 new Professors.” “UCC promotes 42.”
We clap. We post on Facebook. We call them Prof. And we move on.
But let us ask the stupid question that nobody wants to ask: Who is reading those publications that made them professors?
THE PROMOTION FORMULA
In every public university in Ghana, the formula is known. If you want to become a professor, publish or perish.
You need at least 10 to 15 peer-reviewed journal articles for Associate Professor. You need maybe 15 to 25 for Full Professor, plus a few books or book chapters. Your papers must be in “reputable” journals – Scopus indexed, Web of Science, Clarivate.
So lecturers are under pressure. From Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor is not just title – it is salary jump, it is prestige, it is headship of department. So they publish.
But the real question is Question 6: Do we check the impact of their publications?
ARE PEOPLE READING THEM?
Let us look smarter.
Go to Google Scholar today. Type a random Ghanaian professor promoted last year. You will see 20 publications.
Title: “Effect of Biochar on Soil Moisture Retention in the Semi-Arid Zone of Tolon District Under Variable Rainfall Patterns: A Case Study of Four Farms.”
Citations: 2. One citation is by himself. The other is by his MPhil student.
Title: “A Post-Colonial Discourse Analysis of Linguistic Imperialism in Junior High School Textbooks in the Central Region: Implications for Pedagogy.”
Citations: 0. Downloads: 3.
Title: “Assessment of Awareness of Mobile Money Fraud Among Traders at Kejetia Market: A Cross-Sectional Study.”
Has Kejetia market even seen the paper? Has Bank of Ghana used it to stop MoMo fraud?
We are producing papers for promotion, not for society.
THE SOCIETY IS NOT BENEFITTING
The whole idea of a university professor is that you are a solution to society. Your research should solve Ghana’s problems.
UG, KNUST, UCC, UDS – we have over 10,000 lecturers combined. We have over 100,000 publications in the last 10 years sitting in university repositories.
Yet:
– Our gari still has stones.
– Our tomatoes still rot at Pwalugu every year.
– Our drains still choke when it rains for 30 minutes in Accra.
– Our BECE English is still failing.
– Galamsey is still destroying our rivers, but where are the research papers from Mining Engineering departments that gave us a cheap alternative to mercury?
What is the impact? Is it not waste packed unproductive paper?
I visited a university library last month. Piles of bound MPhil theses from 2012, covered with dust, eaten by termites. Nobody has opened them since viva. We spent government subvention, GETFund, supervisor’s time, student’s two years to produce a book that termites are now reading.
WE ARE REWARDING WRONG THINGS
We check number of publications, but we don’t check:
1. Readership: How many people outside your promotion committee have read it?
2. Industry uptake: Has any company, ministry, farmer, or hospital used your findings?
3. Policy impact: Did Parliament, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ministry of Health cite your work before passing policy?
4. Community impact: Can the market woman at Asafo Market explain your research in one sentence?
In advanced countries, they now check Altmetrics – how many times your work was mentioned in policy documents, in news, in patents. In Ghana, we check whether it is in a journal with Impact Factor 2.1, even if that journal is printed in India and nobody in Ghana has access to it because you have to pay $35 to download it.
So our lecturers pay $500 to publish in predatory journals in Pakistan just to get promotion. The paper is online, but to read it you need to pay. Even your own colleague in the next office cannot read it.
Is that academic benefit?
LET’S LOOK SMARTER
We are not saying don’t publish. Publish. But let us change the promotion criteria if we want to develop Ghana.
– 50% of promotion marks should be for community/industry impact. If you are an agriculture lecturer, let 20 tomato farmers from Akomadan testify that your improved seed increased their yield. That should be worth more than 5 journal papers that nobody reads.
– Make thesis open and readable. Every PhD should produce a 2-page policy brief in simple English and in Twi, Ga, Ewe. Put it on radio.
– Reward patents and products, not just papers. A lecturer who invents a simple cassava peeling machine that 100 women use in Bawku should be promoted faster than one who published 10 papers on cassava peeling theory.
– Stop counting self-citations. If your 15 citations are all from yourself and your students, you have not impacted anybody.
Ghana cannot become a developed country with professors whose work ends in promotion party and a plaque.
A professor is not someone who has many papers. A professor is someone who professes solutions.
Until we link promotion to impact, we will continue to have Associate Professors and Full Professors on paper, but empty on the ground – and Ghana will keep importing solutions for problems that our professors have already “published” about.
Alexander Afriyie, supervising editor, ghanacrimereport.com and ghanatalk.com