Research Universities and Research Communication

Sources

Demetrio, Felicilda, Malay, “Ang Ugnayan ng Wika, Pananaliksik at Internasyonalisasyong Akademiko” - 2015-01, Accessed 2025.01.08
Garcia, “Ang Komunikasyon ng Pananaliksik at Kahalagahan Nito” - Accessed 2025.01.08

Concept of Extension and Research University

Importance of further studying our culture and literature in the face of globalization

It allows us to compete with other countries
- Other Asian and European countries are never deluded into thinking that English is their primary language. It is taught as a foreign language, hence their primary language for learning/education is their native language (from elementary to college). Using their native language allows kids to understand their lessons without fear and confusion.
Using English promotes our predisposition to export people instead of technology, unlike competitive countries who use their native language as their primary language for education.
The issue with not using Filipino primarily for education is now the Filipino scholars struggle to communicate their research findings to the Philippine public.
Even laws should be written in Filipino, as writing them in English significantly reduces the number of Filipino citizens that can understand it.
- It is like a violation of human right to be sued with laws you do not even understand

Relationship between Language, Research, and Academic Internationalization

Authors (Source): Demetrio and Felicilda

4 topics of this research

Meaning of academic internationalization
Importance of research to the academic internationalization
the relationship between research excellence and concept of research university
research and other discussions related to the Filipino language

This paper aims to prove that using the Filipino language can help improve the scores and ranking of our country’s universities.

Academic Internationalization

Is not a simple term to define. A placeholder term can be “the assessment of university performance based on two perspectives: inside and outside of the country”
- This simplified definition is closer to the performance of the university than the collaboration between universities from different countries. This is to emphasize the importance of having a research university that performs well in their country before agreeing to collaborate with universities outside the country.
  - The paper uses the QS University Rankings and their criteria to evaluate the Philippines academic internationalization performance. It is based on the following criteria:
    1. The reputation of the university from the academic perspective, which is based on a wide and global survey asking the question, “What is the top university for your discipline?” (30%)
    2. The reputation of the university from the employer perspective, which is based on a wide and global survey asking the question, “From which universities do the most excellent employee usually hail from?” (10%)
    3. The ratio between full-time teachers and students (20%)
    4. The number of citations for each paper published by the university (15%)
    5. The number of papers published by the teachers (15%)
    6. The number of international teachers—when there are a lot of international teachers, it indicates that the university has an excellence of international (2.5%)
    7. The proportion of international students—if there are a lot, it means that it passed the standards of the international universities. (2.5%)
    8. The proportion of exchange students—indicates how dedicated the university is to promote internationalization (2.5%)
    9. The proportion of exchange students leaving—indicates how dedicated the university is to promote internationalization (2.5%)
  - It becomes easier to be recognized by other countries’ universities when one focuses on their own excellence rather than frequently forging memorandum of agreements. It is also more sustainable.

Academic Internationalization and Research

Based on the QS Rankings the university reputation from an academic perspective is the most important criteria for evaluating its academic internationalization performance
Philippine universities, in reality, are most often only discovered internationally through international conferences, teacher publications, international research collaborations. In other words, international universities can only notice Philippine ones when they actively research.
From an employer standpoint, pedagogy (or teaching method) is crucial in determining the quality of a university, as it also determines the quality of graduates.
The university is forced to increase teachers teaching full time when they use a lot of their faculty for research because simultaneously producing research through teachers and students cannot be achieved in a class where there are too much students and too less full time teachers. As a result, research universities have more full time teachers than conventional universities.
It is easier to briefly let international academics teach in the university when they are collaborating on a research with a local teacher in the university. Moreover, it is easier to get hold of the international academics when there are available researchers in the country to have discussions with and there are established research centers in the country.
The previous points support the notion that research constitutes more than 30% for determining the academic internationalization performance of a university (it influences the other factors)

Criterion	Basis
Reputation of universities from an academic viewpoint	Quality of university (determined through research output)
Reputation of universities from an employer viewpoint	Quality of graduates (determined through effectiveness of pedagogy)
Ratio of full time teachers to students	Financial issue since the university needs more money in order to accommodate more full time teachers
Proportion of international teachers	Financial since money determines if there is enough international teachers (they are paid with a higher rate)

The Relationship between Excellence in Research and the Concept of University Research

Philippines has the least amount of publications published when compared to other ASEAN countries that have universities that published papers
The paper suggests that this may be because we are not aware of the concept of Humboldt’s research university, our universities are centered around teaching (teaching universities). The charters of Philippine universities and colleges did not include the Humboldt model of research university
The survey of the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities do not even mention research university

The Humboldt Model of Research University

Humboldt invented a model for research universities in the 1900s when he established a Berlin University in Germany. This model made researching the center of its teaching method, wherein instructors teach students by showing them the actual process of creating knowledge and also by collaborating with said students.
In the past, people would take minor courses like liberal arts to transform, mature, and understand their self. However, Humboldt believed that researching about the world has replaced this methodology.
- In research universities, liberal arts courses are not required unless it is the specialization of the specific student
To reach the highest level of learning through collective creation of knowledge, students should have the freedom to learn, while teachers should have the freedom to teach. Humboldt demonstrated its importance to the government by showing that respecting these freedoms will result in creating knowledge that contribute to social development.
The cost of having a research university is not cheap: smaller student population per class, more teachers than conventional university, funds for research, good library, plenty of laboratory and printing press.
- As such, he believed that the state has the responsibility to fund these research universities without interfering with their freedoms necessary in creating knowledge
Philippines didn’t discover this concept early on because we were under colonization when these concept spread throughout Europe. It was unlikely for the Colonizers to consider establishing a research university within their colonies because the freedom to create knowledge would pose as a risk to their control of the colonies.
Why we could not discover the concept of Humboldt’s research university when the American occupation ended.
- The Philippine’s government funds were mostly used to fix the damages caused by World War II.
- The private sector were primarily responsible for handling tertiary education in the country.
- Leadership of the department of education became too politicized.

Other Models of Research Universities

While the Philippines is still not aware of Humboldt’s concept of research universities, there are contemporary forms of the concept that emerged after it. These other models of research universities are the England Oxbridge Model, American Model, and Asian Model.

Model	Description
Oxbridge Model	- While also stressing the importance of research like the Humboldt’s model, it is also supported by the Socratic method in teaching, wherein teachers individually guide their students by encouraging them to ask questions. - It also has a concept of distance and hierarchy, which is not found in the traditional model. - it decided to keep the liberal arts requirement so that students can transform and mature.
American Model	- They employ the Hamboldt’s model for graduate education, while maintaining the Oxbridge model for undergraduate education. - The advantage of this model is that it solves the expensive costs of graduate education by utilizing some portion of the tuition from undergraduate education. Nonetheless, research universities are reliant on the funds from public and private endowments.
Asian Model	- Although it also focuses on intensifying research through collaboration between teachers and students, because this model was developed during a time where currently successful Asian countries are still rising, it accepts that fundamental and theoretical researches should be left to the American and European universities. - Initially, Asian universities leveraging this model only focused on research for applications and furthering past researches, thereby it was most useful for industries. However, it gradually also did basic and theoretical research as Asian countries began flourishing further.
Emerging Global Model	- Universities that succeeded in transforming into a research university ascended to a level referred to as “emerging global model” of research, and “super research universities”. - Characteristics of an emerging global model of research universities: (a) their mission transcends the confines of the state or country, (b) It heavily emphasizes research and utilizes the scientific method on fields that were previously outside of science, (c) its faculty works as teams to research on interdisciplinary subjects (focusing on real world problems), including international collaborators, (d) it has a deep financial and organization connection with the government, private corporations, and funding agencies, and it competes with commercializing produced researches, (e) it has a clear and stable internal structure for researching, and tried and tested system for integrating research and teaching method. - this model covers internationalization, research, and pedagogy

The Filipino language plays a crucial role in our academic internationalization performance because the medium (which is the language used in research) can serve as an obstacle to growth and enrichment of research in the country. Therefore, if we use the native language as the medium, we can produce better and more researches, and, as such, improve our academic internationalization score through the university research excellence.

Language and Research

Language largely affect research: if the country’s schools wastes time teaching English instead of teaching students how to think and how to think about difference subjects (like Science and Mathematics), students will struggle to produce research when they enter college.
Instead of focusing on teaching college and graduating students on how to create knowledge, universities should drive their attention to teaching their students how to think.
- ASEAN countries even have a policy in their universities about strictly using their country’s language.
The different models of research university can only succeed when there is a meaningful collaboration with students and teachers. In the Philippines, this can only happen when conversations are held in Filipino, the country’s native language, because students will struggle to understand high-level concepts when they are explained in English.

Language, Dissemination of Research and the Best Research

One of the point of research is to share the created knowledge outside of the country and the world. In the Humboldt model, the teachers, students, and the university are obligated to give back to the state by using their research for the development of said state. However, this is not possible if the research cannot be communicated to the public, highlighting the importance of using Filipino instead of English in research.
One of the authors of the paper reported that acceptance of their paper was different depending on whether they used English or Filipino in writing the paper: the Filipino paper gets an monthly average of 739.5 readers, while the English written paper gets an monthly average of only 61.2 readers.
The most effective way of connecting the created knowledge (through research) and its application is by using Filipino (or native language) in the research process, and in the acceptance of using the researched knowledge
Hierarchy of research obligations for sustainable research development
1. For the nation
2. For the world
3. For Scopus-Elsevier, QS Asian University Ranking, and Academic Internationalization

Language and the Scopus-Elsevier Metric as for Measuring the Academic Excellence in the QS Asian University Ranking

Advocates of the Filipino language for research should notice the contradiction of using Filipino while using the QS University Rankings for assessing the excellence of a university: the Scopus-Elsevier database only has one journal that accepts articles written in Filipino—Humanities Diliman by the University of the Philippines Diliman
The writers of this paper believes that advocates of Filipino language in research, advocates of Philippine academic internationalization, and Filipino writers should take issue with Scopus-Elsevier not accepting articles written in Filipino.
- Lacanilao, a marine biologist, believes in the quality and qualification process of the Scopus-Elsevier, stating that articles outside their list are “grey literature”. Whereas, Guillermo, an linguistic and humanities expert, contends that their certification is mostly valuable in the field of science and technology, but is less reliable in the field of social science and humanities (they barely have any, especially when considering the Filipino written ones).
- Guillermo suggests that Philippines should do what the Thailand journal did, wherein they created their own citation index to publish their articles instead of relying on Scopus-Elsevier and ISI.
  - Challenges of Guillermo’s PJCID (Philippine Journal citation index database) suggestion
    - who will head the project?
    - requirement for a strict system for quality papers, and also no stakeholders
    - who will fund it? considering that Filipinos are not even aware of what the importance of Humboldt’s research university is
    - Will the QS University Ranking even consider its validity?
- Guillermo deepens his criticisms of Elsevier-Scopus and ISI and argues that Filipinos who continue to publish in foreign journals of the two international databases will be forced to adhere to the agendas of the journals from other countries. As a result, we write for other countries instead of our own people.

The Importance of Communicating Research

Basic Terminologies

Plenty of people often conflate the three terms: research communication, communication in research, and communication research.

Term	Definition
Research Communication	The process of explaining complicated findings in research to the general public or non-experts.
Communication in Research	The method used in communicating the contents of the research.
Communication Research	Research that focuses on communication

Why We Need to Effectively Communicate Research

The main goal of communicating research is to respond to the needs of beneficiaries by simplifying it in a form that they can understand and gain from. It is a vehicle to social development for developing countries because it informs those who did not have the privilege to study or become experts in a particular field. It also empowers citizens because it informs their decisions and, therefore, give them greater control over their lives.

In entire history of humankind, people were not given equal opportunities to learn due to various factors including to access to technology, race, economic status, and etc.

Although researches are made as solutions to existing problems, many fail to serve as solutions because it is not communicated properly. For example, studies aimed to assist fishermen cannot assist them because it is written in a way that is only understandable to experts/academics (written in English, and contains many complicated charts, statistics, etc. that need to be interpreted first by experts), ignoring their beneficiaries.

Successfully communicating research to the ones who need it will allow them to respond to current day challenges. It can also benefit people if it reaches policymakers (it can have a positive influence on laws and government initiatives). For this reason, effective communication is essential in giving research a meaningful purpose and use.

Challenges and Limitations

As a new field, research communication still have countless mysteries arising from the limited basis to draw from, and, as such, there have been a number of limitations and challenges that were identified:

The constant change in media will also entail the evolution of how its used and consumed.
Effective partnership and networking with regards to people responsible for propagating the research. A good research can be wasted when people in charge of it does not accept or notice it.
The rapid evolution of information communication technologies that can let older generations fall behind and be victims of that said evolution.
Social barriers
Supporting research and incentivizing them to communicate their findings to a broader audience (instead of just other experts).

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