63Scholarly Publications
My colleague and friend Rui Yang says, “Scholarly publication is a significant instance
of the way in which academic knowledge is ‘mobilized’ in the global network” (Yang
2011 , p. 185). I think this is plausible but an incomplete picture. “Mobility” is a heav-
ily politicized and sociologically loaded term. It often categorizes a person or groups
on Marxian assumptions of promotion or demotion from a social class. Of late, a
technology-mediated social network and its horizontal mobility have been discussed.
Any versions of mobility imply that somebody or something bridges a gap between a
local and distant place and the power to act—agency. An agent is capable of either
agere, Latin for “to do mentally,” which differs from facere, Latin for “to do physi-
cally.” I have never accepted this Medieval Aristotelian- Thomistic distinction because,
in my view, human facere cannot be performed without the corresponding nous and
agere. Anyhow, academic scholars are heirs of schoolmen, and they are agents of
knowledge production. But scholars do not only produce knowledge, but they also
deliver and communicate knowledge to other agents. These recipients are both imme-
diate and distant peers, who play an important role in the advancement of science,
namely, Polanyi’s principle of mutual control, a “simple fact that scientists keep watch
over each other. Each scientist is both subject to criticism by all others and encouraged
by their appreciation of him” (Polanyi 1983 , p. 72).
Within academic circles, Asian HE knowledge production faces another critical
problem—academic corruption. Research is inextricably a moral act insofar as free
actors are involved in it (Park 2011 ). Therefore, it is little surprising that knowledge
production is the kernel of academic corruption in Asia (Macfarlane et al. 2012 ; Ren
2012 ; Yang 2005 ). Ethical issues affect scholarly publications (Yang 2011 ), public
feeling and public understanding (Kim 2009 ), politicization of higher education
(Yang 2010 ), and higher education’s “research muscle,” public instruction, and
social projection that can turn HE institutions into ideological state apparatuses
(Althusser 2006 ), for example, the case of Chinese Confucius Institutes (Park 2013 ).
Asian academic corruption often occur in the interplay between HE structure and
agents of HE research under imported Western audit cultures and the pressures on
performativity in educational research (Somekh and Schwandt 2007 ) (also see the
Asian methodology section).
Community-Bound Knowledge Transfer
From the two usual destinations of produced knowledge, I now refer to the com-
munity at large. I examine the distance and linkage between the two key missions of
HE, namely, research and community projection, also known as “knowledge trans-
fer” (KT) or “knowledge exchange” in various HE institutions.
Apart from teaching and research, KT is usually regarded as the third mission of
HE (Lockett et al. 2008 ) (Nelles and Vorley 2010 ). It emerged in the 1990s Europe
4 Higher Education Knowledge Production in Postcolonial-Neoliberal Asia