“Differential Salary System increased scientific rivalry among the teachers”
A scientific seminar on “Publications taken as a basis of the appraisal system of academic staff’s scientific performances” has taken place at UNEC.
A moderator of the seminar, Director of UNEC’s Science Department, Professor Zahid Mammadov spoke about the importance of the topic. He said the development of science is always rendered attention and care by the state. However, councils of defense do not treat with special exactingness to unimportant researches, writing of theses in different ways, their defense and submitting scientific titles, turn a blind eye to shortcomings. There are not weighty scientific capacity in a large part of defended dissertations and no scientific conclusions. This is a complete violation of academic ethic. Z.Mammadov talked about his scientific activity in the direction of defining “predatory” scientific publications and made proposals to prevent the use of UNEC’s name in such scientific articles. He emphasized that a Regulation on Academic Ethics has been developed at UNEC.
An American Professor Bulent Aybar who starts pedagogical activity at UNEC has spoken about the main criteria in the assessment of scientific activity at American Universities. He said the assessment is carried out in 3 areas in the United States: scientific, teaching and social activities. B.Aybar brought to attention that the appraisal is done in world universities differently: “The evaluation can vary according to the university. The indicators of student satisfaction, teaching facilities prepared by, the ability of using new technologies and innovations, services rendered to the development of the university and personal and social activity are brought to the fore in some universities.
Advisor to UNEC Rector, Elshan Baghirzade spoke about the achievements brought to university by the Differential Salary System in terms of scientific publications last year. He highlighted that the scientific rivalry among the academic staff increased and the number of scientific articles in the world famous journals also increased after the application of the system. He noted that the competition is evident in the number of scientific publications included in the “Web of Science” which is the global scientific database of the leading information agency “Thomson Reuters” for higher education institutions: “35% of scientific works written by UNEC employees within the years of 2000-2016 were produced in the last three years (2014-2016). In general, 864 scientific articles and 16 monographs, 27 textbooks and 48 teaching facilities, 246 programs and methodological facilities have been written by UNEC employees during 2016. In addition, 253 scientific articles were published by UNEC employees in the world’s leading journals”. E.Baghirzade drew to participants’ attention that these indicators play significant role for UNEC to take the position in the international rankings within the last 3 years.
Proposals on conducting assessment in different directions of the Differential Salary System in the future were sounded in the end. It was recommended to take into account the image of the journals when the academic staff publishes their scientific articles. The workshop went on with debates.