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t the highest level of academic work, success is measured by published research. The most respected articles are published in a select group of scholarly journals, which are internationally recognized as “top tier” in each field of study. Many of those journals are in English or other Western languages.

In many Western universities, publication in those journals is a requirement of employment. Having a PhD is not sufficient. To become a university professor, one must publish in those journals.

According to a memorandum from the directorate general of higher education (Dikti), released on Jan. 27 (No. 152/E/T/2012), all graduates of Indonesian universities must publish in a scholarly journal (jurnal ilmiah) as a condition of graduation. The requirement applies to all S1, S2 and S3 graduates after August 2012.

Most interesting is the reason given in the memorandum: The number of scholarly articles from Indonesia is only about one-seventh the number of Malaysia.

That leads me to wonder about the motivation for the new requirement. Is the underlying purpose to improve higher education in Indonesia? Is it to improve the quality of the graduates? Or is the primary goal only to improve a number on a page of statistics?

The new S3 requirement is not practical. I will address that first, and then discuss the new requirements for S1 and S2 graduates.

It is very difficult to achieve publication in an international scholarly journal. To understand how difficult it is, please consider three facts: (1) Many of the journals are published only four times a year, so the number of articles published is small — perhaps 40 articles per journal per year. (2) The authors include the best scholars in the field from almost every country in the world; they number in the tens of thousands. (3) In the United States, many assistant professors are required to publish in these journals; if not, they will lose their jobs after the sixth year of employment. Therefore, they are highly motivated to produce original research.

I would like to mention a fourth consideration: language. To publish in an international scholarly journal, the writer must be able to write very well in a language other than Bahasa Indonesia.

This quality of writing can be attained by Indonesian scholars who complete their doctoral degree (S3) at a foreign university, where they must read, write and study in another language. However, it is quite difficult to reach this level without residence in a foreign country.

Now the S3 students must put their research articles into competition with the articles written by foreign professors, who have greater resources, strong research programs and publication experience.

In the sciences especially, foreign professors have well-equipped laboratories and numerous well-trained assistants.

The chances of achieving publication will be quite small for most of the Indonesian S3 students.

The publication requirement for S3 graduates will have only one result: Far fewer students will finish the S3, and the number of doctoral graduates from Indonesian universities will decrease.

The publication requirement for S2, as defined by Dikti, is not so severe. It says the S2 students must publish articles in one of the accredited national scholarly journals. Many articles in those journals are written in Bahasa Indonesia, and the competition for publication will be far less than the competition in the international journals.

In an article published in Kompas on Feb. 9, Franz Magnis-Suseno suggested one way to implement the new S2 requirement: The students can pay a fee for their articles to be published. This would make it possible to produce enough printed journals to contain all the articles from all the S2 graduates in Indonesia.

However, if the students simply pay an extra fee to publish their articles, it does not improve higher education in Indonesia. Also, it does not improve the quality of the graduates. The only result is that Dikti can proclaim that a large number of articles were published in the national scholarly journals.

Quantity will be there, but not quality.

In a proper scholarly journal, the articles are peer-reviewed. Typically three reviewers read each article. Many articles are rejected because the reviewers have judged them to be unsuitable. The reason might be poor writing, unclear arguments, lack of important findings in the research, and so on.

If the journal will print every article that is submitted, then it is not a useful journal, because there is no standard of quality.

The consequence of the publication requirement for S2 graduates is this: The quality of publications in Indonesia’s accredited national journals will decrease.

The requirement for S1 is the least onerous of the three new requirements from Dikti. It says only that the S1 students must publish in a scholarly journal.

Because there is no qualification regarding the type of journal, it would be a simple matter for each university to set up its own website for an online journal of undergraduate (S1) research. Students could write an article based on their thesis (skripsi). Of course, this would require a lot of extra help from their lecturers.

This leads me to an observation based on my four-and-a-half-month teaching at an Indonesian university: My colleagues here spend an inordinate amount of time reading and mentoring to enable all S1 students to complete the skripsi. In most US universities, for most fields of study at the bachelor’s (S1) level, we do not require a thesis. It is usually required at the master’s (S2) level.

Professors in the US are required to publish their research in international scholarly journals, but it would not be possible for them to do so if they had to help the bachelor’s students to complete a thesis.

We spend a lot of time working with our master’s and doctoral students, reading and mentoring to enable them to complete their thesis or dissertation. If we also did that for the undergraduates, certainly our own research would decrease.

When professors work closely with their post-graduate (S2 and S3) students, they can develop original research together. Professors need a lot of time to produce articles of good quality, which can be published in international scholarly journals.

If the quality of the articles is high, then they can be published. If the quality of an article is not good enough, then that article has little value to other scholars. There is no reason to publish such articles.