Author: Ángel Hernando Gómez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
On several occasions, in research training consultancies that we are carrying out, we are surprised to have university professors as students who, having defended their doctoral thesis years ago, have not published any article on the research that was sustained by them. This topic that in other contexts would be unusual and surprising is too widespread in our environment, in fact, we had to regulate the need to publish one or more articles in order to defend the doctoral thesis and achieve the degree of doctor (changing one of the requirements , that it was an unpublished investigation of which nothing had been published, which was previously raised).
When we carry out an investigation and do not publish anything about it, we make several mistakes that threaten ourselves, our university and the scientific community in general.
Everyone has known that the academic and scientific progression of a researcher is directly related, every day more, with the number of articles published and the quality of these. If you want to advance in your academic career and progress in the increasingly difficult university career, you must publish in quality and high-impact scientific journals (especially those that are indexed in the most important databases: WOS -with JCR and ESCI- and SCOPUS), if you want the evaluation agencies of your country to accredit you in the different university categories.
But not only you can benefit from the publication (or damage by non-publication) of your articles, a very important part of the funds that support the budget of the university to which you belong are granted, by the different administrative and research bodies, based on the number and quality of the articles that your research professors publish in impact scientific journals, so if you want to collaborate with the entity where you work, try to publish your research in indexed journals.
An investigation that does not «see the light», not being published, subtracts from the scientific community the contributions and advances that it could have. If you have benefited from obtaining a grant for a research project, it may be, among other aspects, because it is based on the construction of a state of the art as a result of a good literature review. The construction of this theoretical framework has been possible because the researchers that have preceded you, in your thematic field of research, have fulfilled their duty to share and make public the results of their research, it is fair that you do the same and «return» part of what has been received so that their contributions benefit the scientific construction in general and, in particular, future researchers in their thematic field.
In parallel to what has already been mentioned, you can also collaborate with your publications to a better positioning of your university in the international rankings that compare them since most of them contemplate, as a very relevant indicator, the publications of the professors of a university (in quantity and quality) in scientific journals of impact.
In short, for all the mentioned reasons, it is necessary for teachers to publish the results of their research in scientific journals of impact. The fact of publishing does not entail, in our opinion, any disadvantages and will only result in advantages for you, your Center and the scientific community to which you belong.
