Publish to earn incentives: how do Indonesian professors respond to the new policy?

Abstract

In the early 2017, Indonesian government announced a new regulation no. 20/2017 which obliges Indonesian professors to publish certain amounts of articles to earn professional incentives. This study conducted semi-structured interviews with professors from two public universities in Indonesia in the summer 2017 to gather their perceptions on the new regulation. It was found that most interviewees accepted the legitimacy of the regulation but lamented its time frame, which they deemed too sudden and too short for those who do not have any publication; another concern argued by the professors was that the research support systems in Indonesia are not ready yet to help them in conducting meaningful research, and the last opinion was that the new regulation can be improved in its writing, implementing, and matched policy reform.