Editorial words: In 2019, most faculties at Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) publish 40 to 70 ISI papers per faculty per year.
Vietnam Education Electronic Newspaper had an interview with Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly, Dean of Business Administration Faculty, TDTU for her sharing of a journey to success of TDTU.
The article title is chosen by the editor.
Reporter: According to the statistics of scientific articles published by the Faculty of Business Administration, in 2018 the Faculty published 4.5 times a number of publications of a long-standing and reputable university; more than a number of publications of a major economic university in the same period that everyone admires. As an Associate Professor, what do you think are the secrets of this success?
Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly: We had work for 10 years to reach this milestone. This is an expected outcome of TDTU’s policy of standardizing research with the quality output that must be published in the journals of ISI / SCOPUS list (announced by TDTU) and the efforts of lecturers of the Faculty of Business Administration.
Reporter: How can Ton Duc Thang University exploit young, talented people to contribute to the spike in the number of internationally published articles, Associate Professor?
Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly: Most of our lecturers are from a selection of bachelors and masters candidates who are sent abroad for higher education 10 years ago; and lecturers graduated from countries such as USA, UK, Switzerland, Australia, Taiwan (China). For that reason, most of them meet the requirements of TDTU.
What they only need is a supporting publishing culture and environment created by the University; especially, the reasonable, coherent and transparent governing regulations for scientific research that meets international standards.
For example, in the very first time hosting the International Conference of Finance and Economics (ICFE) in 2015, our proceedings were included in the list of publications, published by Web of Science. Indeed, we are on the right track from the beginning.
Reporter: There are many ideas that the socio-economic related field is more difficult to have scientific articles published in international journals than the science related field, do you agree with this, Associate Professor?
Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly: This situation can be divided into two groups: the national group in which English is native language and the rest.
For Asian countries (except Singapore), the publication rate between social sciences, humanities / natural sciences could be up to 1/8. This figure has shown that this is much more difficult.
Therefore, lecturers from the social sciences, humanities, economics and business sectors need to be very good at English; and graduated from developed countries with a habit of researching meeting international standards so that they can research and publish in international magazines in English.
TDTU foresaw this challenge more than 10 years ago and has invested in it very elaborately.
Reporter: Dear Associate Professor, what does it mean by having those academic articles published internationally? Does that achievement bring value to students of the Faculty?
Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly: This is extremely important in term of the quality of training and integration in the context of internationalization.
Lecturers do not only train students with contemporary knowledge and skills but also construct knowledge for humanity. The process of creating new knowledge through internationally recognized research is an indirect process of enriching the quality of lectures and teaching quality of which learners and students are the first and foremost direct beneficiaries.
At the Faculty of Business Administration - TDTU, it is imperative that students, graduate students and postgraduate students read ISI / SCOPUS research papers as reference to their graduation thesis.
In addition, some excellent students transfer research results or what they learn from international publications to business practices through internships or applied collaborations.
In particular, many students participated in the publication of research in ISI / SCOPUS journals inspired by their lecturers. The single, dual impact of research and publication on ISI / SCOPUS for education quality is obviously clear.
It is no coincidence that most prestigious university rankings consider the research results and published in SCI and SCIE journals as the top criteria because it closely defines the quality of education.
In addition, at a global scale, only international publications can contribute to the process of labor distribution in higher education; share the same vision with foreign senior universities; and integrate with them very easily; both in term of science and education.
Reporter: If there is something that you want to share with other universities that are from the same training field and aiming at joining the world university rankings, what will it be, dear Associate Professor? And why?
Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly: Each university has its own mission. I just want students to learn world-class materials like students at Harvard, MIT,...
Fortunately, in Vietnam we can do this entirely through the internet, and with the support of the global inter-library link like Ton Duc Thang University.
However, this depends greatly on how well the world-class academic culture is created by the University to share the aforementioned advanced materials and methods.
But I am fairly sure that every university can best benefit learners through basic, applied and transfer research. Without research, it is impossible to train well or keep up to date with the world knowledge.
Therefore, if you want to take care of students and drive your university to be a prestigous institution, it is impossible not to develop research regardless of training in the same or different fields with the Faculty of Business Administration – TDTU. Once you accomplish this, sooner or later you will set the first stone in joining prestigious rankings.
Sincerely thank Associate Professor Pham Thi Minh Ly for an interview.