Researchers Churn Out Studies by the Ton. Quality Checks are Causality

May 17 , 2025.

Ethiopia pours more than three billion Birr a year into academic research, yet too much of that money is vanishing into a sinkhole of low-quality work.

Since 2001, when the country contributed a mere 261 Scopus-indexed (the world’s largest database where 23,000 peer-reviewed academic works are stored since 2004) papers to global scholarship, output has surged nearly 23-fold, reaching 6,352 papers by 2020. That exceptional rise put Ethiopia among Africa’s fastest rising research hubs, in line with the African Union’s STISA2024 agenda, which casts knowledge production as the engine of development.

Ironically, the returns on that engine remain meagre, and in some respects damaging.

By one measure of quality control, Ethiopia now ranks worst in the world. Roughly 0.35pc of its published papers are retracted, representing more than 12pc of the work produced in the two years beginning in 2022.

Retractions of academic and intellectual works chip away at public trust and donor confidence alike. Each withdrawal should serve as a warning that the rush to publish has often come at the expense of rigour. A study at a public university found that 37.7pc of academics confessed to some form of misconduct. Plagiarism, data fabrication, or improper authorship, driven largely by the pressure to publish, are pervasive.

At some point, Bahir Dar University annulled more than 25 promotions after uncovering fraudulent articles in predatory journals. The drive for numbers is baked into the promotion rules. A harmonised policy introduced in 2013 rewards raw publication counts, with hardly any regards for impact or integrity.

Smaller campuses, lacking modern laboratories, fast internet, or even basic journal subscriptions, feel that pressure acutely. They are as bound by the ‘‘publish or perish’’ ethos as Addis Abeba University, the undisputed leader in research output, and its more endowed brethren in Jimma and Gondar.

However, investment in research remains modest. Ethiopia commits an estimated 0.27pc of GDP to research and development, less than half of South Africa’s 0.60pc and well below the African Union’s one percent target. Research typically accounts for a mere four percent of spending within university budgets, with the balance devoted to teaching and administration.

That imbalance leaves academics dependent on foreign grants, mostly from health sector donors such as the Bill Gates Foundation and USAID. Not surprisingly, biomedical and life sciences dominate the publication world, while social sciences and humanities struggle to attract funding.

International cooperations have provided a lifeline. Partnerships with foreign coauthors and peer reviewers open doors to higher-ranked outlets and English-language publication, but they cannot mask severe limitations on the home front. In 2019, the Ministry of Science & Higher Education mandated open access for publicly funded work and tightened accreditation for local journals in a bid to weed out predatory titles.

Implementation has been spotty, however, and cultural change is slow to materialise.

The consequences stretch far beyond academia. Retractions have dented the government’s ambition to ground policy in local evidence.

When the Addis Abeba Education Bureau imported a Scandinavian-style continuous assessment system, it did so without robust domestic studies. Class sizes are vast and teaching aids scarce, yet officials pressed on, only to find the model unworkable in the classrooms. Health authorities, too, borrowed a blueprint for primary healthcare with limited adaptation to the country’s patchwork of rural clinics, leading to fitful results.

Industry can feel the gap acutely. Only in agriculture has the research apparatus yielded a clear win. Scientists developed the Quncho variety of teff, a hardy grain that boosted farmers’ yields and was swiftly embraced.

Nonetheless, outside this sector, the handshake between campus and factory floor—what the economics pundit likens to “academia-industry linkages”—remains weak. Manufacturers and software firms often bypass local universities, buying foreign blueprints instead of homegrown solutions.

As a result, successive governments' economic policy goals, from export growth to job creation and value-added production, are held hostage by a disconnect between research and application.

Pundits argue that the first step is fixing incentives. Promotion criteria should reward research impact and citation strength rather than raw output. Policymakers desire to establish a council for national research integrity, but this has yet to materialise.

Improving infrastructure could be yet another priority. The relatively better-equipped universities, already setting the pace, are not the ones most at risk of cutting corners. However, they may not be immune to the practice, although not to the extent that their younger peers have. Extending resources, such as plagiarism detection software, data validation systems, and reliable internet, to smaller campuses could reduce errors and temptations alike.

Lighter teaching loads for faculty, rather than heavier ones, would give researchers time to pursue thoughtful and high-quality work.

In a country where agriculture thrives on a virtuous cycle of donor support, government backing, and commercial partnerships, funding source matters, too. Other fields lack the bounty accorded to those in the agricultural sector. Raising research and development (R&D) spending to one percent of GDP, as the African Union recommends, would enlarge the domestic funding pool and reduce dependence on foreign grants tethered to external priorities.

A broader base of support would let Ethiopia diversify into underfunded fields, from mental health and governance to digital finance. Smaller and targeted reforms could also tighten the chain between knowledge and action.

Ministries might require pilot studies before importing foreign programmes, ensuring policies rest on local evidence. Universities could pair graduate students with industry mentors, a practice commonplace in several parts of the world. Journals could adopt open peer review, giving readers a window into the vetting process and deterring misconduct.

Judging by past records, academia has demonstrated the capacity to scale up production of research papers, but without reforms, that expansion risks deepening credibility gaps.

The choice is to continue chasing publication counts and squander public money, or invest time, resources, and energy to ensure integrity, inclusivity, and impact, converting universities from paper mills into engines of applied change. Each retraction today should be seen as a missed opportunity, and each unchecked shortcut a breach of trust. The time for course correction could be fast closing.

PUBLISHED ON May 17,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1307]

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