The formal ceremony for the Republica Awards of the Commission on Higher Education for 2013 was held at the CHED Auditorium, Higher Education Development Center Building on May 20 in Quezon City.
Two categories of published papers written by faculty members of Philippine higher education institutions and supported by CHED were recognized. These were natural sciences and agriculture; and mathematics, engineering and information technology.
The best papers in these two academic areas among the 70 papers submitted for the competition were given monetary awards ranging from P25,000 to P300,000. The latter amount was given to the most outstanding papers in the two categories which were considered as national awards.
This time, CHED has made it clear that only papers published in CHED-accredited journals, ISI indexed journals, and Scopus-indexed journals can qualify for the Republica Awards.
This is one of the reasons why only 16 of about 70 papers were chosen for the awards.
I hope all universities, including those that lost their accreditation, will wake up and improve the quality of their journals.
And more importantly, they will provide incentives for their faculty to engage in research, or select faculty members who are serious about conducting research activities as part of their academic responsibility.
The winning papers come from universities in six regions of the country, namely, Regions 6, 7, 8, 11, CARAGA, and National Capital Region, indicating that the Philippines has to widen the participation in research of regional universities.
One way to do this is to encourage the faculty to collaborate with other universities here and abroad.
In a number of instances, I found that this collaboration was responsible for the publication of joint papers.
NCR led in the number of papers (7) recognized. But this time, Region 6 got the national award for agriculture, a remarkable achievement, which I hope will continues in the future.
Since 2004, CHED has promoted research among the universities of the country. It has succeeded to a certain extent, but it has to continue to push the universities, especially those in the regions, to develop their specialties in the area of research and publication, including the improvement of their journals.
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Author’s email: suakcrem@yahoo.com
