The hidden cost of growth in Nigerian academics

Measuring your growth as an academic in a developing country is a difficult task. No metrics will do justice to our growth - not H-index, not the amount of grant won. Every success you see means going to war with epileptic power supply, erratic and expensive internet, depressing teaching and administrative schedule, lack of local grants, painful take-home pay, and socio-cultural challenges. Whichever way you look at that success, it will be a pyrrhic victory.  Behind every publication lies months of hard work, not-so pleasant experience with reviewers and editors, and personal cost.  Before every submission, you must check if the journal is subscription based or there is full waiver for your article.  To read the latest articles, you must leverage on open access articles or trade in your review bonus on Elsevier.  Without these two options, you must send emails to authors and request for articles on ResearchGate. 

Looking at my Scopus: an eye on global research profile, you might be tempted to see growth but do not be deceived. What you are seeing was built on the back of sacrifices. My fear is not "will I beat last year's record" but "will the system not drown me".  The shear number of courses you will teach, and volume of students is enough to weary your soul.  Every class is like running the marathon, your body and passion will be drained of every energy.  It is not the frequency of meetings or the length that is problematic, it is the period of notice.  Planning your week is a nightmare.  Your plan is as good as the number  of impromptu meetings you will have that week. 

 

Nigerian Public Institutions: No longer business as usual

Government owned institutions in Nigeria, including federal and state, have come under attack in recent times. These attacks have rendered the "business as usual" model redundant for these institutions and have the potential to negatively impact the higher education ecosystem in Nigeria. There is the urgent need to re-evaluate the visions of each institution vis-a-vis the establishing laws and current realities. This will help in designing adaptive solutions to create a more robust system. The relevance of government owned institutions in national discourse is being threatened in many ways. What are these attacks and how can our institutions mitigate their impacts? 

 

 

 

The bulk of the attack is focused on university financing.  University financing in public institutions is mainly from the government funding and internally generated revenues.  The internal revenue sources are from programmes such as postgraduate and remedial studies.  Nigerian institutions do not get much funding from large grants and endowments.  In recent times, the funding from these programmes is dwindling.  Due to incessant strikes, high cost, and uncertain future, students now prefer to enroll in foreign universities rather than local institutions.  Furthermore, many private universities are taking a large chunk of the postgraduate students.  The remedial programmes are not faring better.  Private institutions and non-official organizations are running the same programmes public universities are offering at a lower cost.  Most institutions are increasing components of school fees to cover these lapses.  Unfortunately, this might not provide the much needed support as students will fight it and many will drop out during the programme.

Historically, most public universities have alumni bodies which operate separately but in conjunction with university authorities.  The lack of structured and coordinated alumni policy and programme has led to the loss of funding for universities.  Universities facilitate the payment of alumni fees by graduating students to the alumni body in return for specific projects.  Both the university and alumni body hardly maintain contact with these graduates.  More over, many students graduated with deep sentiments from their respective departments.  Hence, it is difficult for the university to reach out to their products for funding.  

Rent seeking mentality has limited the level of creativity within our public universities.  The steady flow of money from government and students has made administrators docile in terms of innovations for financial independence.  Public universities in Nigeria will boast of rents from hostels, income from industrial activities such as bread and water production.  Where are the spin-offs from research ideas? Where are the commercialization of patents and solutions to national problems?  What are universities generating from tech hubs and entrepreneurship programmes.  How many industries are our universities partnering with for curriculum development, student training, commercialization.

The national financial challenges will make university funding more difficult.  The quest for better pay for academic staff will put more pressure on funds for infrastructural development.  This will get worse over the years as we produce more professors with heavy pay.  There is the urgent need for public institution to wake up from their slumber and create systems to mitigate the impact of dwindling funds for education.  Students must be seen as products not an appendage to the system.  Hence, what we teach these students should be relevant after graduation.  They should be treated in such a way that their will be no hesitation when approached after graduation for funds.  We should stay in touch with our graduates through consistent communications either on social media or newsletters.  We stand to make more money from our students after they graduate than while in school, therefore, we need to treat them right.  Our business models should evolve beyond bread and water companies.  We need to leverage on our published research to build businesses around recycling, improved agricultural systems, develop consultancy, advanced production systems, and many more. 

All hands must be on deck in this journey to build a sustainable public university system.  The political intrigues involved in selection of university administrators must be removed.  The process must produce the best among us to lead us.  University administrators must be accountable to the system they govern.  This is not the era for nepotistic employment of incompetent and unnecessary staff members, construction of edifices that have no bearing to academic productivity, or contract spiking.  The Academic Staff Union of Universities has a significant role to play in this fight.  The Union needs to hold university administrators accountable for the development funds being fought for.  What are the deliverables for the funds being requested from the government? Is the government funding publications in predatory journals or local journals languishing in local mediocrity?  ASUU must work with University administrator to deal with lazy, unproductive, and sadistic academics with archaic views of students.  We cannot allow a very few among us to cut off our young ones and their future funding because of their randy and backward behaviour.

Macroeconomics and the Nigerian academic

 Nigerian academics are not immune from the effects of macroenomic policies of the country.  We live and work in this country, hence, there is the direct and indirect effect of any economic policy on us.  Considering the role of education in the economic development of any country, pertinent issues affecting the efficiency should not be overlooked.  Let me highlight the impact of three economic factors on academics.

GDP

How does the national GDP affect academics?  The perception of Nigerian researchers internationally is tied to the wealth of the country.  Foreigners see Nigerian academics as being rich based on our oil income.  However, this is not the reality on ground.  It is difficult to explain that we still embark on industrial actions to get the attention of the national government.   The size of our GDP, after the last rebasing, disqualified us from many international initiatives.  Currently, our GDP places us in Group B , according to the World Bank.  Thus, we are only eligible for 50% article processing charge waiver.  The remaining 50% is elusive to many researchers with many resorting to taking loans.  Some conferences and organizations such as TWAS also use this to award scholarships and funding.  

Inflation

Inflation does not discriminate.  Apart from the impact of rising inflation academics face in their daily lives, there is also the effect on our professional lives.  The cost of reagents, laboratory materials, and books are rising.  Considering that most of these are usually obtained from personal funds, it puts further strain on our finances.   The rising inflation constantly pitches us against funders.  How do you explain that the cost of reagents have increased from what you budgeted a few months ago? 

Exchange rate

Nigerian academics have international interactions regularly.  We travel for conferences, attend workshops, and even organize international conferences here in Nigeria.  International conferences are not expensive, it is our exchange rate that makes it prohibitive for us.  Registration fee of $250, which will be paid by most international institutions, is equivalent to the one month salary of an Assistant Lecturer in the University (at an exchange rate of $1=N500).  How many conferences can such a young researcher attend in three years? We buy books too.  The exchange rate makes buying academic books a luxury we cannot afford.   Even our libraries are affected too.  Academics are members of international organizations where membership fees are paid.  Our exchange rate is driving the cost of membership in these organizations are higher.

Way forward

The government at all stages should stop paying lip service to the education sector.  Macroeconomic policies have a ripple effect on the educational sector, as it does to other sectors of the economy.  Inflation is driving the cost of education at all levels beyond the reach of a largely poor population.  The rising exchange rate is not the only problem but getting it also a problem.  Government needs to stop the hide and seek game, and come to the table with the academic community.  

ASUU-FG Negotiation: Matters Arising

There is no gainsaying that the Academic Staff Union of Universities is actively fighting for the soul of Nigerian education. Over the years, ASUU's struggles have yielded much-needed funding for institutions and better welfare for academics. The battle might have been won but the war continues. The last industrial action by the union has resulted in the payment of backlogs of accrued earnings, funding for the Universities, the constitution of visitation panels, and many more wins.  

However, there are some pertinent issues that ASUU must bring to the negotiation table, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. In this brief article, I present a few of those issues.

(1) Article Processing Charges

Nigerian researchers operate in a global world. There are no separate rules for Nigerian academics when it comes to publishing. The publication process is described in this three-part series (here). Globally, there is increasing agitation for the Gold Access publishing model, where authors pay and everyone gets to read freely. Publishers expect institutions to pay for article processing charges. However, a lack of such facilities in Federal and State institutions has placed Nigerian researchers at a great disadvantage. The best we can get from publishers is a 50% waiver, which is still prohibitive. ASUU must as a matter of urgency bring this issue to the negotiation table. A framework where the Federal Government, either through TETFUND or ETF, pays for published articles with selected publishers without additional burden on researchers should be developed.

(2) Access to articles and books

Research thrives on the work of others. This makes access to already published articles and books very vital in the research cycle. One critical obstacle Nigerian researchers face is paywall when trying to access publications. For instance, in trying to download this article https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219477521500073, you are faced with a charge of £35. Even with an upgraded pay, this charge is outrageous considering there is the need for access to many articles per year. ASUU needs to negotiate with the FG about access to articles for students and researchers within the country. The cost should not be borne by academics.

Soil and air temperature - any connection?

It is generally expected that the temperature in the air will determine the temperature of the soil. Well, this is not always the case. You see, lots of things affect the temperature of the soil. This include the presence of plants and animals, type of soil, wind speed above the soil, and many more things. We can say that the relationship between air temperature and soil temperature is complex. 

 

Scientists have tried various methods to discover the exact nature of the relationship between air and soil temperature. A recently published paper (here) took a different approach to study the relationship between those two temperatures.  Their approach is called multifractal analysis.  A fractal is a picture that has contains an image of itself.   A common example is a leave.  As you zoom in closer on the leaf, you begin to see small images of the same leaf.  Yes, that is a fractal. 

Multifractality in air and soil temperature

The authors looked for fractal structures within both air and soil temperatures.  The authors found that both temperatures show multifractal nature.  However, air temperature is more multifractal than soil temperature. They also found that locations close to the ocean are more multifractal than locations far from the ocean.   The structures found within both soil and air temperatures can be used to better understand their relationships.

Reference

Ogunjo S. T., Fuwape I. A. Rabiu A. B. and Oluyamo S. S (2021) "Multifractal analysis of air and soil temperatures"  Chaos 31, 033110  https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0029658

Publish or Perish: The solution

The publish-or-perish process in Nigerian University system has been described in a previous post and the challenges with the process (here).   There is the need to re-examine the process to reward hard work, discourage mediocrity and improve the quality of research in our university system.  In this post, I describe my views on how the publish-or-perish process can be greatly enhanced for maximum impact.

(1)  All fingers must be equal:  Local journals must have the same value with international journal.  Preferences and special treatment of local journals under the guise of "developing local content"  has not actually developed any local journal.  Requiring a certain percentage of publication for promotion to be published locally encourages mediocrity, as local journals see this as a steady stream of income.  

(2)  Quality over quantity:  The work of identifying quality research has been done by indexing services.  I do not think there is a need to re-invent the wheel.  Institutions should identify quality based indexing services such as Scopus, Clarivate Analytics and others and adopt them.  Only researches indexed by the adopted services will be used for promotion.  This will remove the need for several in-house and international assessments. The number of required articles and years of experience  per level is clearly stated and maintained.

(3)  Streamline the process:  The process of promotion should not be complicated, at least the publication aspect.  Researchers will submit the usual form without printing hard copies of peer reviewed articles.  The Department validates all other components (teaching and community service) except publications.  The report is sent to a central University body who will also confirm that submitted publications are in the approved indexing services.  No reading and reporting on each published articles, no scoring, no multilevel interdepartmental meetings!

(4)  Cut the extra baggage:  By considering all journals to be equal and using global best standards of quality indexing, extra baggage in the publication assessment such as considering volume 40 and above,  rejecting journals from countries like Iran;  searching for countries of origin of journals; will be eliminated.  Publication assessment should not be a nightmare that consumes the researchers time, money, and energy.  The promotion exercise in itself should not be another research endeavour. 

The advantages of this concise and equitable process is numerous.  

(1)  reward hard work and reduce mediocrity

(2)  eliminate bias, prejudice in the promotion process

(3)  basis to demand for better funding

(4)  better representation in international rankings of institutions

(5)  save time, energy, and resources for researchers, assessors, and institution.

We cannot continue to demand quality education in line with global best practices and operate a researcher assessment policy that deviates from the global norm.  The assessment of a research should not be subject to the whims and caprices of administrators, prejudice of colleagues, and unnecessary bureaucratic processes. 

Publish or Perish: The Problems

In the first part of this series (here), the publication aspect of promotion process in Nigerian Universities was discussed.  The series continues with problems inherent in the publish or perish process as practiced in Nigeria.


Counter intuitive:  The process currently practiced defies logic.  Academic publishing depends on quality peer review.  A published paper is one that has been seen and approved by at least two of your peers, usually from around the world.  In Nigeria, this same published paper is subjected to pseudo-peer-review.  At each stage of the promotion, your published paper (already peer-reviewed) will be accessed by senior colleagues in the Department, Faculty and University (three different assessment levels!!).    This implies that a publication I had as a Graduate Assistant will be evaluated and scored about 6 different times after publication!  What forms the basis of the new scoring - quality, content or what?  Is the quality of the paper still being accessed after publication?

Breeds mediocrity:  Many academic institutions in Nigeria do not consider the most important thing in academic publishing - quality peer review.  This is currently a global issue.  There are organizations around the world who will accept your paper for publication within 2 - 5 days provided you can pay the price.  India and Nigeria leads in the number of such organizations per country.  Desperate for promotion, after playing politics for many years, i can approach a local journal run by my friend or a foreign fake journal and get my article published.  There are indeed organizations that hosts reputable journals and ensure they conform to the highest standards.  They include: Clarivate Analytics and Scopus.   Recently, African Journals Online (AJOL) started a rating system for African Journals.  Nigerian Universities will not rank among the global best not because we do not do quality research but because we publish more in fake journals.  Most local journals thrive on the local content policy in our promotion exercise.  Many have not improved in quality as there is no pressure. 

Waste of resources and time:  For each stage of the evaluation (Department, Faculty, and University), there is the unavoidable printing of copies of credentials and publications due to corrections and formatting.   For the senior cadres (Senior Lecturers, Readers and Professor), the same materials are usually sent to foreign researchers to evaluate!  These are the same people who reviewed the works in the first place.  We add the burden of our inefficiency to their already bloated workload of teaching, research, grantsmanship, peer-reviewing and editorship.  How many foreign evaluations do Nigerian researchers receive in a year?


Deviation from global best practices:  The publication aspect of our promotion in Nigerian Universities  does not usually align with global best practices.    For instance, it is generally accepted that advisors take the last authorship positions in a publication.  However, our policies that first author get more marks has led to advisors fighting their students over authorship positions.  Some institutions sets minimum number of volume in a journal your publication must be in to be acceptable for publication.  A State institution only accepts your publication if it is in Volume 40 and above of a journal.  If the whole world accepts this as the standard, will there be any new journal?   Articles having more than four authors generally score less mark.  These has reduced collaborations (which is what we actually need) among researchers and removal of qualified authors.


While the quality and quantify of publication is not the only criteria for promotion in Nigerian Universities, it remains the most significant.  The other aspects which are teaching and community services are most often mandatory activities.  We must improve on our current processes to accommodate only the best brains.  It is understandable if we have developed these processes to cater for our local peculiarities, however, it is pertinent to reevaluate these processes in light of new information.  Our institutions cannot be taken seriously with the way we promote mediocrity.  This reflects in the various global rankings of academic institutions.  Quality publication is not necessarily about funding; it is mainly about stretching the mind for excellent output.

My proposed solutions are presented here

Publish or Perish: The Process

"Publish or perish" in the academics originates from the fact that without publishing, researchers will not get promoted.   Nigerian researchers have three core duties: research, teaching and community service.  Publishing entails creating a novel idea, investigating the idea through analysis, getting the results accepted by your peers in the field.

What are the processes involved in publishing and how does it translate to promotion for researchers?  Let's start with the publishing process.

The Publishing Process

 After a researcher has conceived an idea, investigated the concept through "research" and reached a conclusion, a report of the entire process is written as a manuscript. This manuscript is sent to a Journal .  A journal can be part of a large publishing enterprise, an independent body, owned by a national or international association or an academic institution or unit within it.  The Editor, who oversees the affairs of the Journal (sometimes with the help of associate editors), decide whether the manuscript conforms to the journal template, fit into the journal's objective and focus, and of significant standards to merit publishing.  If he is satisfied, the manuscript is sent to reviewers, whose duties include scrutinizing the manuscript and proffering suggestions and corrections.  The reviewing process can be single blind, double blind, or open peer-review.   This process can take between one month to a few years, depending on several factors.  The manuscript can be rejected or sent back for minor/major corrections.  When the reviewers are satisfied with the revisions done on the manuscript, it will be accepted for publication.  Sometimes, we refer to this final product as paper.  A conference paper is based on presentations at a conference.  Academics also publish monographs, book chapters, books, and technical reports.

The Promotion Process

Nigerian Universities have similar promotion criteria and process.  The promotion process begins at the Department with the distribution of the Annual Performance Evaluation Form (APER FORM).  It is on this form you list your teaching, research and other activities for the period under consideration.  All your papers or publications, with the recent ones marked, are listed on this form.  An internal reviewer is appointed to consider your submission against a set of benchmarks.  Points are awarded for each of your publications which are then used in deciding whether you qualify for promotion or not.  The benchmarks vary from institution to institutions.  Some institutions require that the Journal volume must not be less than 40.  There is a limited number of articles you can publish in a volume of a journal and the journal itself.  There is a minimum number of articles for which you must be the first or sole author. Furthermore, there is a limit to the number of articles you published in the year of promotion.  A few institutions have blacklisted journal articles published in selected countries or even publishers.  Almost all institutions require that you have at least three publication since your last promotion. After the internal review, your application will be considered at the faculty and university level.  This process requires making lots of copies of your applications and publications. All the forms of publication have different points assigned to them.

For junior staff (Assistant Lecturer to Lecturer I), the University Appointments and Promotion Committees forward their recommendations to the Vice Chancellor.  However, for senior cadres (Senior Lecturers to Professors), copies of their publications are sent to three national and international reviewers.  Your promotion at this point depends on the report of these reviewers.

The challenges with these process is discussed in the article Publish or Perish: The Problems

Stoves, health and environment

How do we achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7 of affordable and clean energy?  Currently, majority of rural dwellers use firewood, which is cheap and readily available around them.  The use of coal is still prevalent in many households. These approaches poses a threat to the environment and life.  Users are exposed to poisonous gas and use of firewood degrades the environment.  Many of this cooking takes place in confined environments which increases the health risk.  Cooking gas, although subsidized is still beyond the reach of many families.  

Prof. Adedayo and his team at the Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology Akure considered this problem and came up with a plausible solution.  This work focuses on the design, development and construction of a forced-air, top-lit, updraft biomass gasifier stove.  To provide draft for the stove, the group incorporated an electronic fan which can be driven from the mains or solar powered.  The biomass fuel for the present design is palm kernel shell. A picture of the final constructed stove is shown below.

The research group compared the finished product with a kerosene and gas stove.  From the result (shown above), the constructed stove compares well with a gas stove in performance.  The stove was also found to emit less fumes than the conventional firewood stove.  This innovation can go a long way to combat diseases and deaths inhalation of dangerous gases during cooking.   There is the need to improve on this and involve policy makers in this development.

References

1.  Adedayo, K., Owoola, E. & Ogunjo, S. "The development of an enhanced biomass gasifier stove" Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. A Phys. Sci. (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40010-018-0570-y

Ozone, vegetation and our health

Ozone is a gas that is closely related to oxygen - yes, the gas we breathe in.  Is Ozone good or bad for us?  Well, it is both good and bad.  Ozone is a very bad gas to our health when it exist close to the ground.   However, beyond this region it is very good as it protects us from the harmful effect of the sun.    So, we want ozone in the upper atmosphere but not in the lower atmosphere.

There are a lot of things that remove ozone from the upper atmosphere.  One of them is the amount of trees or vegetation we have on the ground.  This is one of the reason people concerned about the environment ask that we plant trees around us.  How exactly does the amount of trees affect the total ozone in the atmosphere?  This was the focus of the research by Ogunjo and other researchers [1].

To do this, there is the need to assign numbers to trees.  Impossible? Using satellite data, regions with very high amount of trees and vegetation are given the number 1 while places with no trees or vegetation get the number 0.  This method constitute the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).   From a similar satellite, the amount of ozone in the atmosphere was also gotten.  The authors now conducted an analysis over West Africa.  Their result can be seen in the figure below.

Figure 1:  Linear relationship between NDVI and total ozone column [1]

The authors found out that as we cut and burn trees in West Africa we reduce the amount of ozone available to protect us.  It could be seen from their figure that if the amount of vegetation increases, the total ozone column also increases and vice versa.   They discovered that regions with high amount of vegetation also have high amount of ozone.    The rapid population growth in West Africa (especially Nigeria) is increasing the demand for housing, clothing, feeding, and other necessities.  All these place demand on our vegetation.    The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is NOW!  There is the urgent need to protect our future by increasing our vegetation.  This is not a job for one but for all.

References

[1]  Ogunjo, S., Fuwape, I., Rabiu, B., Oluyamo, S., & Owoola, E. (2019). Assessing the Impact of Vegetation Cover on Total Column Ozone Over West Africa. In Advances in Remote Sensing and Geo Informatics Applications (pp. 231-233). Springer, Cham.