Ranking of Legal Periodicals and Prerequisites for Academic Promotion in Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian Law

Scholars need to obtain a certain level of international recognition for academic progression. This is usually achieved by publishing articles in internationally recognized journals, books, and conference papers. The question is which journals should be considered of international relevance and how they should be ranked. For this purpose, a ranking system based on the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), combined with the leading research engine, the Web of Science (WoS), is used. While a ranking system based on the JCR is considered most suitable for natural and technical sciences, it has many shortcomings when considering social sciences and humanities, including legal science. This is observed when such a system is applied in countries that cannot claim to have a profound impact on the global development of legal thought and where scholarly legal production is almost exclusively conducted in the national language, such as in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. This study analyzes the general laws and rules regarding the qualification of journals in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, and special laws pertaining to social sciences, especially legal science. Although there are many points of interest regarding different situations in which the national laws on the qualification of journals gain importance, this study focuses on the relevance of these laws in terms of the promotion of legal scholars to positions of university lecturers. It analyzes the requirements for the promotion to a full professor of law. It concludes that the laws of the three countries, through different forms, managed to find a delicate balance between the requirement of publishing articles in internationally recognized journals and the characteristics of legal science as it is predominantly conducted in the national language and addressed to a domestic audience.

Women Representation and Gender Equality in Different Academic Levels in Veterinary Science

Women’s participation and completion at veterinary schools has increased globally for the past few decades. However, increased female graduates have not translated into similar patterns of academic staffing. The gender distribution within each academic level at eight accredited veterinary faculties in Australia and New Zealand, 38 accredited faculties in the USA and Canada and 98 accredited faculties in Europe were analyzed. Women occupied 47.9%, 45.5% and 47.5% of the academic positions in Australia/New Zealand, the USA/Canada and Europe, respectively. Compared to their male counterparts, female academics were more likely to hold the lower ranked positions. The gender distribution is skewed toward men in the senior positions at or above associate professor level in all analyzed regions. The findings of this study confirm gender inequality in academic progression meaning there is a continued need to develop strategies to eliminate inequity in veterinary science faculties worldwide.

Institutional reform and change management: The conversion of polytechnics to technical universities

This research paper sought to review the way and manner the conversion of polytechnics in Ghana to technical universities were done to ascertain whether the process conformed to standard best practice. The inequality in terms of placement of polytechnic graduates in the public sector as compared to the traditional university graduates, lack of direct academic progression for polytechnic graduates with Higher National Diploma, low enrollment and the departure of experienced staff from the polytechnics to the traditional universities due to poor conditions of service leaving the polytechnics with less staff compelled the government to initiate the reform. Institutional reform has been a long-standing practice in the educational sector; however, the implementation of new policies remains a challenge to many public institutions in Ghana. The one-size-fits-all approach to managing change must give way to a multi-faceted approach that takes into consideration the diversity of the various stakeholders affected by the change. The adoption of an appropriate change model and proper engagement of stakeholders as well as handling the transition as a project rather than treating it like the usual work of the ministry of education would have eased the tension and agitations which characterized the conversion process. Despite the conversion period spanning almost four years, the stakeholders are yet to reap the full benefits of the reform.

Dental Education in an Era of COVID-19: Kuwait’s Experience

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on dental education worldwide. Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 across Kuwait, it was essential for the Faculty of Dentistry (FoD) at Kuwait University to make appropriate modifications to the functioning of the dental school. The FoD’s goal was not only to ensure a safe environment for its staff, students, and patients but also to sustain the students’ academic progression. The FoD adopted several measures including the establishment of a COVID-19 response team, adoption of a blended-learning model, and phase-wise re-opening of the dental center. This paper discusses on the strategies that the FoD adopted, in response to the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Suggested format for university assessment in undergraduate competency based curriculum in otorhinolaryngology

<p>The competency based medical education emphasizes role of formative and summative assessments in academic progression of learners. The university examination represents summative assessment in which distribution of marks becomes important for overall evaluation of students’ performance in examinations. The competency based curriculum (CBC) began with 2019-20 batch that has already completed phase-I training and is studying in phase-II presently. The phase-III, part-1 training for this batch would begin in February 2022. The details of otorhinolaryngology (ORL) curriculum have already been published by erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI). There shall be formative and summative assessment examinations during the 12 months period (duration of phase-III, part-1 has been reduced from 13 months to 12 months as per the advisory from National Medical Commission). The suggested break-up of the internal assessment (IA) marks in ORL is published earlier. Here, we further suggest scheme of theory paper and clinical examination, and division of university assessment (UA) marks in ORL. The CBC document has assigned total 200 marks in ORL i.e. 100 marks for theory and 100 marks for practical/clinical examination including viva. The IA marks will not contribute to the university marks, but will be displayed as a separate head in the marksheet.</p>

Gender Inequity and Academic Progression: How Much of Our Silence Is Chosen?

In late 2019, I was invited by Societies Journal to establish a Special Issue on a topic of my choosing [...]

Women in Otorhinolaryngolgy in Nigeria

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Surgery has a predominantly male-dominated population, especially in Otolaryngology. Efforts have been made worldwide to improve gender equality in medicine, including Otolaryngology. Knowing the experience will help the curriculum develop.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> An anonymous web-based survey was distributed via the WhatsApp group of the Otorhinolaryngological Society of Nigeria (ORLSON) platform using the survey monkey. A questionnaire-based study using a 10 stem questions, assessing demographics, academic progression, work life balance and factors affecting women in Otolaryngology in Nigeria was carried out in April 2020 for four weeks. All information gathered from the study was entered into Statistical Package and Service Solution (SPSS) version 20 and analyzed.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 37 women responded out of 48 women in Otolaryngology practice. Twenty-nine (78%) had complete responses to all the ten stem questions. Mean age of responders is 39±7.28 years ±7.27 S.D. Thirty-eight percent are consultant cadre, 86% are married. The average duration of residency is 7 years. A quarter of responders are interested in Head and Neck as a subspecialty. Thirteen-point eight percent experienced some form of sexual harassment during the course of residency training, 62% believe women lack mentorship in Otolaryngology while 59.46% did not feel disadvantaged as females in otolaryngology compared to their male counterparts.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Despite increase in women in surgical practice and a growing number of women joining residency programs, the number of female Otolaryngologists remains just a fraction of what it should be. The curriculum has many problems affected by gender.</p>