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o encourage the production of original scientific research and journals, the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry recently subscribed to databases of foreign scientific e-journals, which can be accessed by Indonesian academics for free.

However, some university students have had trouble accessing the Rp 14.8 billion (US$ 1.08 million) database system.

An Nisaa Yovani, a 26-year-old student from Bandung, West Java, is one of many college students who has tried to use the ministry’s e-journal database system.

“The system oftentimes denied me access even though I used my student ID. I also often had to ask for help from my university library operators,” she said recently. “It took too much work to load the database; what a waste of the state budget.”

An Nisaa, who is pursuing a master’s degree in anthropology, said she initially pinned hopes on the system becoming a solution to the expensive subscription fees for academic journals.

“Sometimes I even had to resort to pirate book websites to get my references for free,” she said.

The ministry’s director of intellectual property, Sadjuga, announced on Aug. 14 that students, researchers and university lecturers throughout the nation could access the databases free of charge.

The system’s e-journal databases include EBSCO (agriculture plus, computers and applied sciences and engineering sources), Cengage (business and economics, education, social sciences, humanities and arts) and Scopus, the world’s largest abstract, citation database of peer-reviewed literature for academic journal articles.

The ministry also provides four subscription packages for universities.

Students can access these e-journals via their campus networks.

Researchers and lecturers can request a username and password by sending an email to the ministry’s help desk or by accessing the ministry’s Simlitabmas website.

Sadjuga said as the system would help academics gain access to primary sources for their research, it would eventually increase the number of high-quality scientific publications in the country.

According to Sadjuga, most academic papers from Indonesian authors did not make it to international scientific journal indexes due to a lack of originality.

“The lack of originality, as well as novelty, could be attributed to the lack of access to primary sources,” he said.

Indonesia is racing to beat Singapore and Malaysia in academic paper quantity, with the ministry pushing for scholars to write more research papers.

For years, the Scopus Index has shown that Indonesian scientists have published fewer papers than those from Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

However, the shortage of high-quality academic journals could not be blamed on a lack of access to databases, education expert Doni Koesoema said.

“All libraries at our universities have been providing access to journal databases for years, but that does not change the fact that we produced few scientific journals,” he said. “[The reason why the problem persists is] because we are still lacking in competencies and proper knowledge when it comes to conducting research and publishing.”