Higher-education researchers in Asia: the risks of insufficient contribution to international higher-education research

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore questions associated with the engagement of Asia-affiliated researchers in higher-education research published internationally. The contribution of Asia-affiliated researchers to the international higher-education research community is measured by analysing articles published in Scopus-indexed journals between 1980 and 2015. The results show that despite the somewhat accelerated growth since the 2000s in the number of articles published internationally by higher-education researchers affiliated with Asian countries, this community is still relatively small and poorly regionally connected, relies extensively on collaboration with researchers from native English-speaking countries and predominantly comprises researchers who began publishing international higher-education research in the last 15 years. Currently, Asian-based researchers contribute less to the global pool of higher-education research than their counterparts in most other regions of the world. These findings lead to the argument that efforts must be made to increase the participation of Asian-based researchers in international higher-education research in the short term. The failure to do so, in a globalised world in which English is the lingua franca of research, will significantly limit the world’s understanding of the characteristics and development of higher education in Asia. In the absence of native Asian accounts and analyses, non-Asian-based researchers may be solely responsible for contributing insights into Asian education to the international higher-education literature. The key and somewhat provocative question asked here of higher-education researchers based in Asia is as follows: are you going to allow others to research and share to the world their understandings of what is happening in higher education in Asia – with all the consequences associated to it – or are you going to take the initiative and do it yourselves?