Under Decision 37, candidates for the title of associate professor must be the first author of at least three scientific articles, while candidates for the professor title must be the first author of five articles published in prestigious international journals.

The State Professorship Council released a list of international prestigious publishing houses such as Springer, Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell and the publishing houses belonging to top 100 universities in the world in accordance with the annual Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE) ranked by Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters.

Universities also released warnings about low-quality journals called “predators”.

The State Professorship Council has received letters of denunciation about some candidates who published scientific articles in low-quality journals in order to have enough articles to become candidates for professor and associate professor.

A group of scientists has sent a letter of denunciation to the State Professorship Council, naming some candidates who published articles in so-called predators, and claiming that the candidates cannot satisfy the requirements to for the professorship title.

A candidate for the associate professor title has five internationally published articles, but one of them was published in the Academy of Accounting and Financial Studies Journal, a journal of Allied Academies, or Allied Business Academies, a predator.

Another article was published in the Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education, a journal with very low quality. The third article was published in a journal excluded from the Scopus list in 2018. The remaining two articles were published on Open Access (it does not collect a fee from readers and only collects fees from publishers, and articles can be downloaded for free).

One of the two was published in the Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education belonging to Scopus Q4 with H Index of 3. The other was published on Open Access which has just entered ESCI (emerging sources citation index).

The group of scientists pointed out that the articles of the candidate must not be taken into account as articles published in prestigious journals. Without the articles, the candidate cannot satisfy the requirements to become professor or associate professor.

In another case, a candidate for the title of associate professor was the first author of five articles, including one published in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship, which is a journal with very low quality, one in Decision Science Letters belonging to Growing Science Publishing House, and one in Open Access (Q4), and once in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship of Allied Academies Publishing House. The remaining were published on Open Access.

The candidate also has an article published in the Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business. This journal has been put on a warning list by some universities. The National Economics University doesn’t support the publication of articles in this journal because of the low quality of the journal.

Another candidate is the author of six articles, including one published in Accounting of Growing Science, one in Academy of Strategic Management Journal of Allied Academies, and four others in the Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business.

The group of scientists also mentioned a candidate for associate professor title who is the author of 10 articles. Of these, four articles were published in Uncertain Supply Chain Management (Growing Science), International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, Decision Science Letters (Growing Science), Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences (Allied Academies).

The candidate also has three articles published in the Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business.

Another candidate for the title of professor is the author of eight articles. However, the candidate has two articles in Management Science Letters belonging to Growing Science. The other two articles were published in the Academy of Accounting and Financial Studies Journal belonging to Allied Academies. He also has one article in the Journal of Asian Finance, Economic and Business.

According to the group of scientists, the five mentioned candidates still appear on the list submitted by the Professorship Council in Economics to the State Professorship Council for granting professor and associate professor titles.

People in other fields have also been found not satisfying the requirements of having articles published in prestigious journals.

A candidate for professor title in politics had eight articles published in international journals. However, one of the articles was published in the Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education – TURCOMAT, one in PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, three in Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government (ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) 2204 1990), and two in Psychology and Education (ISSN: 0033 - 3077).

Tran Anh Tuan, Chief Secretariat of the State Professorship Council, said the council has received information related to the profiles of candidates for the professorship title and has sent documents to local professorship councils for clarification. 

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