Publish and be Damned: Institutional Pressure to Conduct Research and be Published in Thailand

Paper presented at: The 6th International Conference on Educational Research, Khon Kaen, Thailand.
13-14 September 2013.

Paper published in the ICER 2013 Conference Proceedings, pages 682-688.

Paper published in English Language Teacher Education and Development (ELTED), Volume 17, pages 22-26.

Abstract

Teachers and lecturers who take up positions at tertiary educational establishments in Thailand soon find that they have an obligation to conduct and publish research, even if this was not apparent from the outset. The top universities are vying for pole position in the national ratings tables in order to attract finance and prestige; and as a direct result of this, top quality students.

Teaching workloads for lecturers vary, as do the working conditions, depending on the university; however, the expectations of the production of publishable research by educational institutions are relentless. Publications in top class journals are required as this is used as the foundation for research and university evaluation. The problem facing countries like Thailand is that having not paid much attention to research in the past, preferring to concentrate on teaching; submissions to premiere international journals have increased without a subsequent rise in the amount of articles being published. This intensifies the burden on those teachers who are deemed capable of publishing their research to produce more.

This paper investigates the available literature as well as existing policies and procedures with a view to analysing the barriers to research production in Thailand. In addition, contributing factors associated with the daily pressures of work that stifle the investigative pursuit needed in order to publish research articles in top grade journals are also examined to complete the picture.

Keywords: Journals, papers, publish, research, Thailand.

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