Strategic Approaches to High Impact Research Publication among Young Academic Staff

At public universities in Malaysia, research and innovation are imperative in complementing Key Result Area (KRA) which is to produce research that are significant to economic and social development through ecosystem that can nurture intellect discovery, innovation, disseminate of knowledge and knowledge application. One of the key shifts toward research and innovation is by generating new knowledge as well as being referred among the academicians, industries, community and others. Consequently, academic staff at public universities are required to publish research at high impact journal such as indexed by Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) /SCOPUS. Nevertheless, at the public university in Selangor, much effort and consideration need to be taken in encouraging the academic staff to publish especially among the junior and those who are new in the service. Thus, the objectives of this study are to understand young academic staff’ challenges in publishing journal paper and to obtain their opinion on steps to be taken in increasing publication. Qualitative research design was employed in this study. Focus group session was conducted with young academic staff of the public university in Selangor, Malaysia. The focus group information was used to identify strategic approaches that could be implemented. This paper discusses those strategic approaches and presents the implications at the administration level.