National culture as a correlate of research performance and impact

The limitation of SCIMAGOJR data

There are a number of things that need to be stated from the beginning of this discussion, namely: Firstly, the SCIMAGOJR data (Table 2) includes both journal articles, conference proceedings papers, and does not exclude other types of documents (i.e. short survey, review) (Guerrero-Bote & Moya-Anegón, 2012). A number of countries or institutions exclude non-journal articles from evaluating their performance (e.g. Suryani et al., 2013), so the applicability of the results of this study to these countries might be limited. In this present study, data from SCIMAGOJR is used because, among others, it can be downloaded for free.

Secondly, in a number of dimensions of research performance and impact measurement (Table 3, Figure 1), Scopus, which supplies the data of SCIMAGOJR, has a number of limitations; for example (1) Scopus has poor coverage of articles, conference papers, and book chapters compared to Crossref, Dimensions, Google Scholar, and Microsoft Academic; (2) Scopus is somewhat late in indexing in-press articles compared to all four; (3) Socially, Scopus does not support open citation (Harzing, 2019). The first two limitations may affect the accuracy of research performance and impact measurements. The third limitation of Scopus is offset by its advantages, namely Scopus is still an extensive source of quality citation data (van Eck et al., 2018).

Figure 1. Component plots.

Research performance across regions

Based on comparisons between regions (Table 4), over the past 23 years (1996–2019) (1) both Eastern Europe and Middle East have better research performance than Latin America, Pacific Region, and Africa; (2) Asiatic region has better research performance than Pacific Region. However, from the aspect of research impact, Latin America outperforms the Middle East, Asiatic Region, and Eastern Europe. Those findings show that research performance and research impact (Table 5) are not always directly proportional, they can even be inversely correlated (Figure 2, Figure 3).

Table 4. Comparison of research performance and impact between regions.

Variable	Test statistic	Visualization of mean rank	Pairwise comparison
Research Performance (Component 1)	χ2 (6, N = 204) = 41.952, p = 0.000		There are significant differences (marked with yellow lines in the visualization) between: •    Pacific Region & Middle East (p = 0.000) •    Pacific Region & Eastern Europe (p = 0.000) •    Latin America & Middle East (p = 0.038) •    Latin America & Eastern Europe (p = 0.005) •    Africa & Middle East (p = 0.036) •    Africa & Eastern Europe (p = 0.004) •    Pacific Region & Asiatic Region (p = 0.01)
Research Impact (Component 2)	χ2 (6, N = 204) = 29.363, p = 0.000		There are significant differences (marked with yellow lines in the visualization) between: •    Middle East & Latin America (p = 0.020) •    Asiatic Region & Latin America (p = 0.023) •    Eastern Europe & Latin America (p = 0.001)

p-values have been adjusted by the Bonferroni correction for multiple tests; the significance level is 0.05

Figure 2. Plots of national cultures, research performance, and Log GDP per capita.

PDI = Power distance; IDV = Individualism; MAS = Masculinity; UAI = Uncertainty avoidance; LTOWVS = Long term orientation; IVR = Indulgence; Res_Perform = Research Performance; LGDP = Log GDP per capita.

Figure 3. Plots of national cultures, research impact, and Log GDP per capita.

PDI = Power distance; IDV = Individualism; MAS = Masculinity; UAI = Uncertainty avoidance; LTOWVS = Long term orientation; IVR = Indulgence; Res_Perform = Research Performance; LGDP = Log GDP per capita.

Eastern Europe’s superiority in terms of research performance may be due to the rise of democracy, the emergence of the need for research excellence standards, the promotion of international research collaboration, and cooperation with international bodies (such as the World Bank) that enable these countries to enjoy large research grants (Henderson et al., 2012; Švab, 2004).

Henderson et al. (2012) further stated a fact about research culture in Eastern Europe, as follows:

“Though not a uniform phenomenon across all disciplines or countries, some participants noted that in CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) research tends to be more dependent on political power. This can relate both to the partisan provision of financial resources and to researchers’ ambitions to convince political actors.”

It appears that political activities are melting pots of the interests of academics, politicians, and research funders, which provide work opportunities that has implication in improving research performance in the region’s countries. Those interests are given “energy” by the belief of the people that “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others.” (Kim, 2018, para. 6).

Makri’s finding (2018) regarding the progressive research achievement of Egypt confirmed the finding that the Middle East has been able to surpass Latin America, the Pacific Region, and Africa in terms of research performance. Different from Eastern Europe, the performance in Middle East has drivers centripetalized on the publishing business. Although some of the Middle East countries are plagued with protracted conflict (Gul et al., 2015), Habibzadeh (2019) noted that there is a “meeting point” between the career interests of faculty members in universities and the business interests of publishing in the countries. This is exacerbated by the relaxation of the promotion standard of faculty members, so that a surge in publication occurs in Scopus indexed journals—that grow rapidly quantitatively in those countries, but of which many have transformed into predatory ones. Habibzadeh (2019, p. 4) conveyed more about the phenomenon:

“Recently, some indexing systems, like Scopus, have also pursued the same strategy and delisted some of the low-quality journals published in the Middle East and Iran. Although some of the editors and publishers of the delisted journals have attributed these events to political issues, to be honest, I, for one, believe that in most instances, they, themselves, should bear the brunt of the situations they have for their poor work quality.” (p. 4)

Noteworthy is the fact mentioned by Plackett (2015), that:

“The predatory journal industry exists on a spectrum—at one end, some such journals maintain they are conducting valid peer review. At the other end of the spectrum, predatory journals sometimes blackmail academics who eventually realize they’ve published in a journal with a negative reputation.” (para. 21)

That is, the issue of predatory journals in the Middle East is not an easy problem to evaluate. This argument is reinforced by Jones’ (2015) argument, that the flourish of predatory journals is not the real problem. The fundamental problem, according to Jones, is information inequality; in which case, the prosocial role of librarians and publishers to keep potential writers away from illegitimate journals may still be difficult to expect. It is not surprising that, based on the results of this present study, even though research performance of Middle East outperforms Latin America, in terms of research impact, the opposite occurs, i.e. Latin America outperforms the Middle East, also the Asiatic Region, and Eastern Europe.

Research impact across regions

Latin America’s superiority in terms of research impact cannot be separated from the orientation of studies that aspires to decolonize the research itself (International Institute of Social Studies, 2019), even beginning from the decolonization of consciousness (Garza, 2010). Decolonization of research in the context of Latin America has the meaning of restoring the authentic identity of society, from an oppressed condition—by “capitalism, hegemony, racism, classism, sexism, etc.” (Garza, p. 110)—to an emancipated situation. There is hope for reconnection of the daily lives of people and their families, communities, and even living creatures, from those that have been being alienated by the oppression. The assumption is, “You actually cannot have meaningful, impactful research unless you engage communities” (Janes, 2017, p. 114). Studies conducted in Latin America are very directed towards liberating the fate of the society, especially from marginalized conditions in various fields of life, such as in health, agricultural, environmental, social, and other domains.

Meanwhile, the issues of (de-)colonization are studied very seriously by countries that experience a similar fate and become huge energy for doing high impact research. This is because many problems “have been attributed to the impact of ongoing colonization” (Waldram, as cited in Marsh et al., 2015, p. 2). The activities of the academic community of Latin America are increasingly supported by the AmeliCA project, namely The Latin American Initiative which focuses on developing scientific communication systems that are non-commercial, academic-led, and cooperative (Aguado-López & Becerril-Garcia, 2019), so that could improve citations per document of scientific works in Latin America.

According to SCIMAGOJR data (https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?region=Latin%20America&order=cd&ord=desc), retrieved on September 2019, the six countries with the highest combination of documents and citations are Panama, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Chile. Related to the literature in these countries, Ward (2016) stated its virtue, “Only with slow, careful, detailed analysis, concern, and empathy even can be liberated from the old ways of seeing” (p. xxiii). These qualities may attract citations repeatedly. This explanation, nevertheless, is still speculative and requires testing in subsequent empirical studies.

National culture and research performance and impact

Power distance (PDI) has a negative correlation with research impact (Table 6); this could be because PDI negatively correlates with democracy (Maleki & Hendriks, 2014). The lower level of democracy reduces the opportunity of the academic community to exchange and market (in the broad sense) scientific information, as well as debate openly. Likewise, democracy that does not flourish deters the use of research results in creating public policies. Science is co-opted or used as just a tool to achieve exclusive interests by ideologues, pundits, and political leaders; they ignore the state-of-the-art nature of the research (Branscomb & Rosenberg, 2012). In addition, PDI might manifest itself in academic writing in the form of rigid, authoritative, defensive, and dogmatic styles (Koutsantoni, 2005). All the conditions could reduce research impact.

The positive correlations between individualism (IDV) and research performance and impact could be explained using the findings of Deschacht & Maes (2017). They found that in countries with more individualistic cultures: (1) the scientists prioritize their self-development, (2) the records of scientific work are historically longer (usually Western countries), and (2) self-citations flourish more. This does not necessarily mean that there have been citation abuses, but that self-citation is used to refer to their prior works, thereby, preventing unnecessary repetitions of ideas in newer works (Deschacht, 2017). Although IDV and collaboration are often contested (e.g. Kemp, 2013), a “collaborative individualism” (Limerick & Cunnington, 1993) – stressing both working together and self-emancipation – is possible, explaining the positive correlation.

Indulgence (IVR) is positively correlated with research impact; this may be because IVR – the warranted one – facilitates academic freedom (Ohmann, 2011), as stated by Jefferson (2011) regarding psychological gratification, “Difference of opinion is advantageous … [F]ree inquiry must be indulged, and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves” (p. 26). Conversely, a restraint (as opposed to indulgence) will facilitate the destruction of goal pursuit, e.g. designing and executing impactful studies, through psychological reactance and unwarranted indulgence (Buzinski & Price, 2015).

Sabbatical leave is a representative example of warranted IVR that faculty members could increase research impact through the special time (Robert Gordon University, 2016). Through the leave, faculty members are temporarily freed from normal academic routines and intensively entering the real world where social decisions and policy makings occur. The various experiences expressed in Harvey Mudd College (2019) showed that in undergoing sabbatical leave, faculty members really enjoyed their social, recreational, and cultural adventures, supporting their research life. All the conditions could increase the research quality and, eventually, research impact.

In addition, IVR facilitates open science, because, in the perspective of open science, science is indeed an art (Fleming, 2019; Kera, 2017; Thornton, as cited in BBC News, 2010). Meanwhile, open science practices (such as research sharing through social media and even cartoons and drawings, data archiving and aggregation, team-science, crowd and shared databases, replicability and repeatability improvement efforts, very big data curation and management, engagement with research stakeholders) could enhance research impact in terms of citations per document (CPD) (e.g. De Filippo & Sanz-Casado, 2018) even in terms of the economy of research (Adams, 2015). This is because open science increases public esteem in science.

IVR may also manifest itself in a “lovely” academic writing style (Kiriakos & Tienari, 2018). This style is not dry and cold, but rather dialogical, humanistic, more reflexive, and capable of showing authors’ courage and vulnerability. Compelling insights are more easily born from the writings that embody those qualities; as mentioned, “a thin line exists between interesting insights and self-indulgence” (Nadin & Cassell, 2006, p. 214). Scientific authors who read such works would be attracted to cite them, leading to an increase in the works’ impact. In addition, “strategic indulgence” is possible and known to be a creative process that enables one to balance academic activity (such as writing) with non-academic ones (Jia et al., 2018) – fostering insight.

Uncertainty avoidance (UAI) is found negatively correlated with research impact (Table 7). This is understandable considering that impactful research requires innovation. The characteristics of UAI - which are intolerant of ideas and practices that are ambiguous and not conventional - do not support innovation (Bauer & Suerdem, 2016). Uncertainty avoidance cultural orientation is difficult to challenge and scrape unfunctional attitudes and values that are already stable. Therefore, it will also be hard to produce breakthroughs in research and publication, reducing the potential for citations per document.

One premise advocated by Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics is “Science and technology indicators are prone to conceptual ambiguity and uncertainty and require strong assumptions that are not universally accepted” (Hicks et al., 2015, para. 21). Higher UAI national culture would adhere to the invariance assumption that is detrimental to the development of science and publication real impact. Un-openness to the pluralistic approach in the impact measurement will invite citation cartels. Citations per document (CPD) will be seen reductionistically as the destination of scientific works, so that CPD will be easy to become a target of manipulation. In fact, we have been reminded that the production of knowledge and its memories must not forget the relevance of knowledge to diverse publics. What is needed is a “careful and conscientious citation ... [citation as] a form of engagement”, in which “citation as a crude measure of impact” is only the byproduct of the reflexive action (Mott & Cockayne, 2017, p. 2, 11). It will need lower UAI.

Source data

Geert Hofstede: Dimension data matrix. https://geerthofstede.com/research-and-vsm/dimension-data-matrix/ (Hofstede et al., 2010)

Scimago Journal & Country Rank: Download data. https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?out=xls (Scimago Lab, 2019)

GDP per capita, PPP (Current International $). http://api.worldbank.org/v2/en/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?downloadformat=excel (World Bank Open Data, 2018)

All source data was accessed and retrieved on the 18/8/2019

Underlying data

Figshare: National culture, research performance indicators, and log GDP Per capita. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7723211 (Abraham, 2019)

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).