Okay now. Please let us not move from the status of one Departmental Journal to how full professors are appointed. I was at UniLag Faculty of Social Sciences and Professors are not made as you describe it here. I have also participated in assessing Professorial portfolios for some of our universities and though there might be issues with the submissions, quality and publications outlets, decisions are often based on the assessments, the scoring and the recommendation. While we are at it, we need a sober sense of comparison about the state and quality of scholarly production on the continent, the resilience, courage and sacrifice of those on the ground and of course the integrity( if at times breached) of peer review in African universities.
Finally, apart from the often crazy industrial relations situation, the overall political and governance problems( check out Middle East and North Africa and parts of South Asia too), African universities are recovering and being revitalized. They need all our support( scholars, parents, governments, business) and of course the re-engagement and sacrifice of Diaspora scholars and university administrators. African universities will not and can not buy the full time equivalent of Diaspora Faculty input but those of us African expatriates and Diaspora should be ready to sacrifice and "satisfice"! Let us all contribute to such efforts. A few of these are on the way. Please respond when the RFPs come.
-taa.
Sent from my iPad
--Prof Iheduru,You said it as it is. Your observation is very correct. Persons are made professors as compensation for loyalty and other considerations rather than academics. But I believe that somewhere along the line, the system will be forced to correct itself.NkolikaFrom: okey iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; Browne Onuoha <browneonuoha@yahoo.com>; obi iheduru <ihed101@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 7:57 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - UNILAG Journal of Politics: CALL FOR PAPERS
Okey Iheduru.I just completed a 2-year sabbatical/Fulbright Fellowship LEADS Fellowship at the National Defense College, Abuja in Nigeria during which I participated in six (6) National Universities Commission (NUC) program accreditation visits to one federal, two state and three private universities for Political Science and International Relations, Economics and Sociology.Regards,
I learned a lot about the opportunities and challenges of university education in Nigeria. I'll never forget many of the exceptionally brilliant students my panels and i interacted with as part of our assignment. Some economics departments have advanced electronic labs for their formal modelling/econometrics courses, while some programs have easily accessible subscriptions to various research databases for their electronic libraries. When time permits, I'll do a proper write-up on my experiences, more broadly.
I would like here to respond to the "Call for Papers" from Unilag that asked prospective authors to also send money. During the accreditation visits (which are really meticulous and rigorous--I hope Oga Ikide is reading this!), I found that while quite a number of colleagues are doing serious scholarship, the overwhelming percentage is engaged in what you call "Vanity" journal (and book) publishing. Every department--100 PERCENT--that we evaluated had its own "journal" which is "edited" in-house. Thereafter the authors literally put a gun on the head of administrators to count those "publications" as part of the percentage of scholarship that can be locally published. Even Colleges of Education and Polytechnics have departmental journals in Nigeria--there was a CFP from one of them on this list recently.
None of these "journals" is indexed, either locally or internationally; so, colleagues who live/work five kilometres away from the institutions may not even know that such publications exist. Some institutions have been posting some of their publications online to give them visibility and possibly generate citation counts. There are claims (I have no proof; it wasn't my charge) that some of the articles are plagiarized or may even be exact copies of papers published elsewhere with a new author and institutional affiliation.
Sadly, there is no nation-wide outlet to present, publish and/or professionally review recent work in the fields I evaluated since, for instance, the once-famous Nigerian Political Science Association and its journal died following the zoning of its leadership to the North who must have their "turn" at leading the association. A similar fate has befallen many scholarly groups--the Historical Society of Nigeria seems to be one of the few exceptions. Asked why these colleagues shouldn't be reading and/or publishing in outlets put out by older institutions with seasoned academics with more credible track record, I was hushed down with: "Why should we be reading their own? Why can't they read our own [journals]?" A PhD is a PhD, I was told, even if it's awarded by a two-year old caricature of what others know as a university!
It's worth noting that in one state university we visited, of the nine (9) lecturers on the Sociology faculty, six (6) obtained their PhDs (as well as their BSc and MSc degrees) from the same department! Not only do you smell "in-breeding",you can assume they were also taught and mentored by senior colleagues who rose through the ranks based on publications in departmental journals. Indeed, many colleagues on the Deans and VC ranks today cut their academic teeth in the "Volume 1, Number 1" syndrome of the 1990s and early 2000s. It's worth noting, though, that no more than 68 percent of faculty in all Nigerian Universities have doctorates; not easy to produce one, really.
It was amusing to find senior lecturers, associate professors/readers and even full professors with 50-100 "scholarly papers" almost 9/10 of which appear in these in-house and other publications. I'm not making any judgement regarding the quality of these publications since I have not read them. Yet, I find the culture very worrisome. Sometimes "books" (especially edited volumes) are published without a clear reason why such a "scholarly book" should be published. I earned some reputation as a snub whenever I explained my inability to honor "Prof, can you please contribute a chapter for my book" requests.
Many of these colleagues with very long list of "scholarly papers" have fewer than five (5) citation counts on Google Scholar, if at all they do. Of course, many of us Diaspora academics have relatively very little citation counts, never mind the amount of noise we make all the time on this list. It must be stated that, as at this point, the NUC has not taken up the responsibility to regulate this aspect of academic quality--not sure it should. What are department heads, deans, Senate and vice chancellors supposed to do?
From our Diaspora stand point, many of these publications are clearly "Vanity" journals and books, but the reality is that it costs a lot of money to publish them. Cash-trapped departments, faculties and/or universities have more weighty priorities. Perhaps, a much better write-up could have been on ideas/strategies to help these colleagues to get out of these morass--many of them teach 3-4 courses of 200-500 students a semester without TAs and get as small as N10,000 a year for academic conference presentations. Any ideas?
--On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 8:56 AM, D Foreal <forealng@yahoo.com> wrote:
This is a cash and carry journal. Any right thinking academic should avoid this journal. It is a vanity journal as in vanity press.From: franklyne ogbunwezeh <ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - UNILAG Journal of Politics: CALL FOR PAPERS
You guys are funny! I should send money alongside my paper. This si really crazy.
Thanks no thanks.
Franklyne Ogbunwezeh
* ************** *************** ****************** *************** ***********
What constitutes a disservice to our faculty of judgment, however, is to place obstacles in the way of assembling truth's fragments, remaining content with a mere one- or two-dimensional projection where a multidimensional and multifaceted apprehension remains open, accessible and instructive.Wole Soyinka, Between Truth and Indulgences
From: Dele Ashiru <ashirudele@yahoo.co.uk>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 7:34 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - UNILAG Journal of Politics: CALL FOR PAPERS
--Dear All,Please respond appropriately.Best wishes'Dele Ashiru.
Department of Political Science,
University of Lagos,
Lagos,Nigeria.
+234-8026274712, +234-8019119573.
http//:http://www.politicalscienceunilag.org/
http//:http://www.unilag.edu.ng/
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--
Okey Iheduru, PhD
Visiting Professor of Strategic Studies
National Defence College
Herbert Macaulay Way (North)
P.M.B. 323, Central Business District
Abuja, N I G E R I A
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