© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 15
J. Jung et al. (eds.), Researching Higher Education in Asia, Higher Education in
Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4989-7_2
Chapter 2
Higher-Education Researchers in Asia:
The Risks of Insufficient Contribution
to International Higher-Education Research
Hugo Horta
Abstract The aim of this study is to explore questions associated with the engage-
ment of Asia-affiliated researchers in higher-education research published interna-
tionally. 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 pub-
lished internationally by higher-education researchers affiliated with Asian coun-
tries, this community is still relatively small and poorly regionally connected, relies
extensively on collaboration with researchers from native English-speaking coun-
tries 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 counter-
parts 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 under-
standings of what is happening in higher education in Asia – with all the conse-
quences associated to it – or are you going to take the initiative and do it
yourselves?
H. Horta (*)
Division of Policy, Administration and Social Sciences Education, Faculty of Education,
The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China
e-mail: [email protected]