Journal of Research Management and Governance

Impact of Social Distancing on Research Activities: An online cross-sectional survey

Jeannie Hsiu Ding Wong, Li Kuo Tan, Yew Kong Lee — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0800

During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many institutions enforced social distancing measures to limit or restrict access to offices, laboratories, and workplaces, disrupting the standard workflow of research. This survey investigates the impact of social distancing measures in universities and research institutes on research and research training. An online survey was designed for distribution to researchers and students worldwide to researchers in medical physics, engineering, science, clinical, arts and social studies. In addition to demographic questions, we surveyed the impact of social distancing in terms of research output, training activities, and mental health of the researchers and students. One hundred and thirty participants completed the survey, of which 72% of the respondents were from Malaysia, and 58% of the respondents were female. Prior to the pandemic, 59% worked in hospitals and universities. There was a variation in how strict social distancing was practised/enforced in different institutions, with 85% reporting limited or completely no access to laboratories or research facilities. A significant difference was found between genders, with female respondents reporting to be less affected by the social distancing measures. No correlation was found between age and the reported effect of social distancing research activities. The most affected research activities were research progress, presentation of results at conferences, and data collection. The pandemic also affected the respondents' mental health, reporting demotivation, feeling isolated, and losing focus on their work. Measures to alleviate the negative impact of COVID-19 suggested enhancing research and training, including improved communications, making research training more accessible, and adjusting administration, work and research goals.

Trends of Academic Publications: A Case Study of Malaysian Research Universities

Mohd Arif Mohd Sarjidan, Azrin Md Kasim — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0800

The Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia granted five universities with Research University (RU) status, which are Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). These RUs are expected to focus on research and innovation and become a model of Malaysian universities for research activities aimed at knowledge advancement. Publications are one of the performance indicators for RUs. Thus, this paper confined its scope to the publications produced from 2016 to 2020 by the five RUs. The study aimed to analyse the patterns related to the number of publications, subject areas, type of publications, international joint publications, and the language of the publications. The findings show that the number of publications increased for UPM, UKM, and USM over five years, while UTM champions four subjects: Engineering, Materials Science, Computer Science, and Environmental Science. Journal articles are the most prominent scholarly output for all RUs. All RUs actively collaborate with international scholars and use English as the primary language for publications.

The Positive Impact of University-Community Engagement Projects: A Case Study in the Context of Universiti Malaya

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0800

Collaborative partnership or engagement between university and community are essential and have become a widespread practice adopted by many universities worldwide. While university-community-engagement projects which are undertaken in a variety of ways of multidiscipline are growing rapidly, questions about its impact on communities remain largely ignored. Little empirical evidence is available exploring the impact of such partnerships for either the community partners or the university. This study presents a case study of the Universiti Malaya’s experience of evaluating the impact of such engagements through several funded community projects. These university-community engagement funding are disbursed and managed by UM’s Community Engagement Centre (UMCares). The result chain model was applied to collect data on the input, activities, output, outcomes and impact of the funded projects. Differences in nine impact areas and indicators were also identified. The results show that the funding projects are able to create an impact in different areas of community engagement. However, the development and maintenance of a dedicated database, in combination with periodic, systematic impact assessments is crucial to increase impact in community engagement.

Research Classification using the Malaysian Research and Development Classification System (MRDCS)

Lee Wei Chang, Azrin Md Kasim, Nuratiqah Mohamad Norpi, Norshahzila Idris — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0800

Classifying research projects or research publication into research areas is crucial in many statistical analyses including for example in bibliometric analysis. Research publication classification usually takes place at the level of journals, where subject categories based on available databases like the Web of Science or SciVal are some of the popular classification systems. However, journal-level classification systems have limitation especially when classifying multidisciplinary journals. To overcome this limitation, it is suggested that a classification system that can classify research be constructed based on the areas of research proposals and their related publications. Successful grant applications/research projects and their publications were clustered into research areas based on the Malaysian Research and Development Classification System (MRDCS) (6th Edition). A total of 1738 research projects managed by Universiti Malaya’s Research Cluster from year 2015 to 2017 were mapped. The strengths and the limitations of the proposed classification system are also discussed. Results indicate that out of the 20 research categories, Medical and Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Economics, Business and Management, Humanities, and Engineering and Technology emerge as the top five research categories with the highest critical mass value based on the number of projects. Classification mapping also found Engineering and Technology, Medical and Health Sciences, Material Sciences, Social Sciences, and Applied Sciences and Technologies to be the top five research categories that produced the highest number of outputs in terms of publications.