Lecturers’ Understanding on Indexing Databases of SINTA, DOAJ, Google Scholar, SCOPUS, and Web of Science: A Study of Indonesians

The Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of Indonesia has introduced several national and international indexers of scientific works. This policy becomes a guideline for lecturers and researchers in choosing the reputable publications. This study aimed to describe the understanding level of Indonesian lecturers related to indexing databases, i.e. SINTA, DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. This research used descriptive design and survey method. The populations in this study were Indonesian lecturers and researchers. The primary data were obtained from a questionnaire filled by 316 lecturers and researchers from 33 Provinces in Indonesia recruited with convenience sampling technique on October-November 2017. The data analysis was performed using frequency distribution tables, cross tabulation and descriptive analysis. The results of this study showed that the understanding of Indonesian lecturers and researchers regarding publications in indexing databases SINTA, DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar is that, on average, 66,5% have known about SINTA, DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. However, based on empirical frequency 76% of them have never published with journals or proceedings indexed in Scopus.


Introduction
The tight competition in the globalization era has penetrated to all aspects of life, including at the aspect of science and technology development. In accordance with Indonesian Law No. 12 of 2013 on Higher Education, lecturers have the duty and the responsibility to develop science and technology through scientific research and dissemination. The Indonesian Government through the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Kemenristekdikti) encourages Indonesian academics to compete with academics of other countries, especially in the scope of ASEAN. There are currently 277.564 lecturers in Indonesia. The number of lecturers and researchers in Indonesia is far more than other countries in ASEAN such as Singapore. However, the number does not correspond with The low of publications number in reputable journals or proceedings has raised some important policies for the scientific publications development of lecturers and researchers in Indonesia such as the advices for publishing in journal or reputable proceedings, national journals accreditation, the consideration of impacts of journals, attention to number of citations, and H-Index of authors. Publications in the digital age have the consequences on the impact of a publication through digital media, so the impact of an article is no longer only seen from the number of citations, but can also be seen from how much of a scientific work is clicked, shared, saved or downloaded, discussed, adapted and reviewed in an online forum [1]. Figure 1 shows the development of Scopus-indexed Indonesian publications from year to year.
One of the references of Kemenristekdikti in determining the reputation of a journal or proceedings is the national and international accreditation and indexing bodies.  The large numbers of lecturers who have position both the Associate Professor and Professor would be a great potential to increase the number of Indonesian publications at reputable international journals. Publication in international journals would be an achievement to increase the impact and lecturer's competitiveness in Indonesia. The capacity building and the lecturer competence need to be continuously encouraged. In addition, the journal publication is also a contribution of knowledge from a lecturer to be known by the public. Therefore, the results of research can be used in appropriate way in line with the original purpose of the research. By the existence of the publication bodies in Indonesia, inventions from abroad would be a complementary thing because the use of direct findings of Indonesian Scientists are so rich that could be found in the journals published in the country itself. Moreover, the development and competence of lecturers should continue to be encouraged and also full supported by the universities where the lecturers are serving.
Amidst the publication incentive situation, lecturers are challenged to think strategically in producing scientific papers in order to get career paths ranging from faculty to professors, and in assessing their selves compared with the criteria included in the policies developed by the Government in the scientific field. This present study aimed at investigating the level of lecturers' understanding in Indonesia about indexing databases, i.e. SINTA, DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Lecturers need to increase their literacy on the knowledge of various types of indexing databases of scientific works.

Research Methods
This research used survey research method. The population in this study is lecturers and researchers of Indonesia. Primary data were obtained from a questionnaire filled by 316 lecturers and researchers from 33 Provinces in Indonesia taken with convenience sampling technique during October until November 2017. Data analysis was performed using frequency distribution tables, cross tabulation and descriptive analysis.

Result
In this section will explained about the level of understanding of Indonesian lecturers related to the publications in indexed by SINTA, DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.

Publication of Indonesian Lectures and Researchers
The lack of lectures' understanding toward indexed journal is caused by several things, e.g. lecturers are not familiar with publication metrics. For example, not all lecturers have known the citation counting technology. The function of indexed journal is not socialized massively. Only a few of lecturers have participated in the training on indexed journals. There is also a biased paradigm that the publication is only for filing work requirements, to get academic credit point, to meet the obligations of Lecturer Performance Indicator. When one finds his/her point "sufficient" in terms of ongoing credit point saving, the desire to continue the contribution of their publication to the globe is decreasing; local journal is then enough for them. This "comfort" feeling is what makes many lecturers lag in searching for the information and shocked by the development of indexed journals. It is not only about the lecturers' ability to understand and to follow the journal guideline but also the deficient writing culture. This is further exacerbated by the minimal research support facilities and low research funding at some of the new born universities. All of those factors influence make the research output is not of the best so that researchers are not confident to enter the article on indexed journals. A good understanding of published and indexed journal publications will spark the lectures spirit to conduct the quality research and to improve publishing capabilities. Table 1 presents data on the publication experience of lecturer in a scientific journal. It shows that the experience of journal publication can quantitatively be said good although the quality of the papers could still be questioned and requires more examination. Almost all Indonesian lecturers surveyed in this research have published a scientific work in a scientific journal indicating that Indonesian lecturers know about scientific writing techniques the publication technique.
The interesting points from the data in Table 1 are that 4,23% of Tutor and 1,11% of Assistant Professor have never published their scientific work in a journal. Meanwhile, research activity is one of the elements assessed by the credit score assessors team in determining a functional position of Indonesian lecturers. This is still possible because the assessment is measuring not only publication in the journal but also in the form of books, monographs, journals, proceedings of seminars or conferences, scientific works saved in libraries, book translation or editing, and intellectual property rights. However, the credit point for the conference proceedings is generally lower than the publication in the journal. As many as 10% of Tutors have never published a scientific paper in a journal. It may be a natural thing because they are usually a new lecturer. still did not get socialization yet about SINTA and some others still think that SINTA is only a product that is still in experimental stage and may change again both in terms of rules and systems at the future. Some other lecturers also consider SINTA not having their own original data and only depending on data held by Google Scholar and Scopus. Somehow, it makes the most of Indonesian lecturers did not know about another indexing database like DOAJ (see below). This also raises one big question that is how the fate of SINTA if then there are problems "arise" from Google Scholar and Scopus itself. If it is not anticipated, this will be a big problem, so the government needs to think about having their own database center. However, the government's effort to record the publication of lecturers in Indonesia through SINTA should be appreciated. Through SINTA, lecturers can easily view the contribution of universities and research institutions as well as the lecturer's personal contribution toward indexed documents by Scopus and Google Scholar, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows that Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) is an educational institution that contributes most Scopus-indexed documents registered in the SINTA portal, while Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB) is the largest educational institution that contributes most documents to Google Scholar registered in the SINTA portal. Figure 3 also shows the contribution of The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) is ranked at 8 th in the contribution of Scopus indexed documents and 7 th position for the contribution of Google Scholar indexed documents.
Ranking process of colleges and authors in the SINTA could spur authors for publishing intensively on reputable journals and increasing the number of citation as well as achieving SINTA score of colleges and themselves. The knowledge of Indonesian lecturers and researchers on SINTA can be seen in Table 2. Table 2 shows that most lecturers with various levels of functional positions have known about SINTA (the new indexer launched by Kemenristekdikti) indicating that the socialization about SINTA is successful. One of the success factors of socialization is the existence of link between ownership accounts in SINTA with the lecturer existence as a researcher. The registration in the SINTA has raised. However, it is viewed by some lecturers only as an obligation.   [3]. DOAJ measures the accessibility of a journal without a quality ranking system. However, DOAJ also provides a standard of DOAJ Seal to demonstrate the best practice of an Open Access (OA) journal where in Indonesia only 1 journal obtains DOAJ Seals similar to those occurring in the country Brazil. Figure 4 shows the number of OA journals indexed by DOAJ from different countries (Top 50). It can be seen from the graphic that the countries order based on the number of journals indexed DOAJ (Top 5) are Brazil, United Kingdom, United States, Egypt, and Indonesia [4]. Table 3 shows that lecturers' knowledge on DOAJ is less when compared to other indexers.    Table 4 shows that almost 90-95% of the total lecturers have knowledge about Google Scholar. This indicates that lecturers in Indonesia have been familiar with the least indexing database that functionate as a forum to publish the lecturer's scientific work in the field of research and community service. Google Scholar became the basis of lectures publication performance which recorded on SINTA. Therefore, for the 5% of the lecturers in the table who are not knowledgeable about Google Scholar, they will be encouraged to increase their literacy and insights related to Google Scholar's details. This is because the Google Scholar ownership publication profile is the main requirement to obtain the lecturer performance record through SINTA. Furthermore from 92,09% who know about publications in Google Scholar, based on empirical frequency about 80% have publications indexed in Google Scholar.

Scopus.
Scopus is the largest abstract database and citation of a scientific publication such as scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. Scopus contains publications in the form of science, engineering, social sciences, medicine, arts and humanities. At worldwide, Scopus is used by over 3,000 academic, government and corporate institutions and is the primary data source that supporting the Intelligence Research portfolio (Scopus.com). Based on the discussion results in the ResearchGate forum [5], there was a fierce debate about the pros and cons regarding to the question of "Is SCOPUS (Elsevier) a suitable indexing database to evaluate a researcher's career and academic productivity?". Some argue that "Scopus is the best indexing platform among the available databases. Compared  strict indexing rules to maintain quality, which is quite valid. I am not sure about the cost of indexing though." And on the other hand, the cons side with this statement says that (1) the process of its data update is not fast (conference may be waiting until six months before appearing in Scopus), and Elsevier's product may be updated more faster than non-users of Elsevier (e.g. ACM and IEEE); (2) includes only a portion of the scientific literature (e.g. not all IEEE conferences), and (3) Scopus is a commercial database. Table 5 shows that the number of lecturers who did not know about Scopus is highest among 4 indexing platforms (SINTA, Google Scholar, DOAJ, Scopus) compared in this study at each functional position. Of 59,81% of lecturers/researchers who know about Scopus and based on empirical frequency there are 76% who have never done publication in Scopus. It is possible that lecturers / researchers only know about Scopus without ever doing a publication indexed in Scopus. The number of lecturers who did not know about Scopus is closely related to the access to related journals because the journal is paid. The number of Indonesian scientific articles published in Scopus indexed journals has increased significantly and it was the highest at the ASEAN scientific articles (76%) since 2011 to 2016 (Table 6). countries and has more than 55.000 employees. Thomson Reuters became Canada's leading corporate brand on the list of Inter-brand Best Canadian Brands 2010. Web of Science is a Thomson Reuters service product that provides access for academics and scientists to access and to cite the research results more easily. The knowledge of lecturers and researchers related to the overall publications indexed by Web of Science's, is still poorly understood about it. As many as 56,01% of lecturers and researchers were still less know about Web of Science, according to the research result.

Publication Issues
Scopus is not clean from predatory journals. Mart, as cited in Savina and Sterligov [6], revealed that the government and academia will be bothered with the fake papers that are claimed to appear in international journals. The development of fake or predatory journals is significantly improved even the predatory journals also present prominently in the 2,79% of journals indexed in Scopus database by 2015 [6]. Such information is often under-socialized by the government to the scientific community or academics till not a few lecturers who fall into the trap of predatory journals, of course with promise of indexation.
The ability of lecturers in generating appropriate articles with the indexed journal standards is still minimum and the lack of information on the procedure of the indexed journal become problems experienced by some lecturers / researchers studied. It is true especially for lecturers who are interested only in his or her environment and do not want to explore the world outside. Many lecturers conduct research but only when reporting it into Department of Research and Community Service, they are not brave or lazy to publish their research results. Even though, more of their research can be used directly for a businessmen and stakeholders. In addition, the language barrier is also one of the obstacles of lecturers to be able to publish on reputable international journals indexed in Scopus. Even if the contents of research is worthy to entry at international journals but because the language constraint, the researchers prefer a local journal that is not necessarily indexed and reputable.
The real phenomenon shows that lecturers are too preoccupied with teaching and paradigm of money source which is only obtained from teaching. One of the right strategies is to build the knowledge management and through it the culture of collecting, managing, and sharing publicity knowledge. The simple tactical step of the knowledge management is to make a schedule of workshops about the publications followed by publication accompaniment.
Furthermore, the accepted research report in reputable international journals that have a highquality level might be contributed by adequate funding. Unfortunately, not all researchers in college can access the funding of the study. The research policy still requires competition so more lectures do not qualify than those who qualify. This becomes an imbalance that must be improved, where all lecturers should be able to access the source of research funds. The unevenness of educational facilities and infrastructure in universities is a problem that is still very strong. The most classic example is the laboratory facilities and infrastructures among universities are still showing a gap, as well as reliable laboratory resources. It must be admitted that there is a gap of infrastructure between universities in the region (outside Java) with universities on the Java Island.
The enforcement of rules related to reputable international publication for Associate Professor and Professor functional lecturers is sufficient to have a disastrous impact. It is because the sudden implementation of the policy is accompanied by the "punishment" of terminating the professional lecturers (including professor) allowances. Based on discussions with the researcher/lecturer who participate in this research, there are aspirations that lecturer publication policy to not be linked with the threat of the dismissal of the certification allowance and the honorarium of the professor. The scholarly publications achievement for lecturers who penetrate reputable international journals is the time to be motivated by the provision of additional reward in the form of research funding without selection, so it can motivate researchers and other prospective researchers. Performance of researchers, lecturers and institutions is not only measured by the number of published papers and citations but also measured by the number of unique paper readings.

Is Knowledge / Understanding Sufficient? The Position of This Paper
The data contained in the four tables (Knowledge about SINTA, DOAJ, Google Scholar, and Scopus) indicated that consecutively the indexing databases known by Indonesian lecturers are 1) SINTA, 2) Google Scholar, 3) DOAJ, and 4) Scopus. SINTA is most widely known when this research was conducted. This is not surprising because of the endorsement by the Ministry of Researcher, Technology and Higher Education of The Republic of Indonesia policy which requires the lecturers to have SINTA account because of the practical implication to the promotion of academic position as well as the acceptance consideration in the future proposal of research grant in the Ministry.
SCOPUS is the least understood indexing database among the four. In this case, Scopus is still perceived as an "alien" by the majority of the lecturers, despite the fact that Scopus contains many useful functions such as publication search serving various boolean operations (so that the retrieval becomes very precise), citation tracking, and author identification. In addition to paid access, this lack of understanding may also be contributed by "the experience of contact" with Scopus. This experience in getting published with Scopus journal/proceeding is apparently able to explain the gap between the four tables ( Table 2, Table 3, Table 4, Table 5) and Table 6. It has been known that the number of Indonesian scientific articles indexed in Scopus has increased sharply. The increasing number has been the highest in the ASEAN scientific articles. The numbers even exceeded Thailand, and according to the Ministry's strategic plan would surpass Malaysia.
Based on the empirical data collected through this present study, Scopus is the least understood database. However, the quantity of scientific publications of Indonesians is increasing rapidly in Scopus. How to bridge these two seemingly contradictive realities?
In this Discussion, the author presents a theoretical perspective of the field of psychology, namely the importance of past experience. The authors argue that the disparity between the two realities is highly likely to be due to the experience of "in touch or together with Scopus" is unevenly distributed, both among institutions/universities/research institutes and among lecturers/researchers. This unequal distribution of experience can contribute to the formation of so-called "elitism". The term "elitism" is used to illustrate the possibility that a particular group (both individuals and institutions) contributes to Scopus database with their publication significantly in higher frequency than any other rest group. These "elite groups" are instrumental in accelerating the increasing number of Indonesian publications indexed by Scopus.
Theoretically, these groups are very likely to be the group that has had a debut in the publication of Scopus indexed articles. While the other group, either for one reason or another, has not even debuted, either because of financial, psychological or other structural and/or situational restrictions or barriers.
Based on social psychology studies, one of the most potent predictors found to affect future behavior is past behavior, either through intention [7] or directly without intention [8]. Investigation of these variables is continuously carried out to this day within the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) [9][10]. Ajzen found that the explained variance grew from 41% to 54% after adding past / prior behavior into the TPB predictive model of behavior, without mediation of intention; in fact, its predictive power goes beyond the contribution of intentions, attitudes, and other variables in the TPB framework [9]. A number of alternative explanations, such as the high frequency of past behavior, constitute a habituation / routine process that leads to similar subsequent behavioral automation, without meaningful cognitive effort [11].
In that kind context, this paper is written and published. In the dialogues in the Telegram group, the authors of this paper agreed to do a crowd-writing to gain a first experience of obtaining Scopus ID. Related to the mentioned theory, this research contributes to the occurrence of "past behavior" in order to psychologically facilitate lecturers to come back into contact with Scopus in the future. In the psychological term, it is called "efficacy" [12]. In the process of compiling this paper, for example, lecturers are either (consciously) or indirectly (unconsciously) gaining shared learning experience in preparing the Introduction of research. The section containing the state of the art of this paper is the most contributed by lecturers from various scientific backgrounds and institutions. Therefore, partially the preparation of this paper is actually a good example of a kind of action research. Research is conducted not only to explain phenomena but to make meaningful social changes for both the community and the actors. The writing of this paper would address the inequity of Scopus experience. Thus, knowledge / understanding on indexing databases, according to the results of this present study, might be not sufficient to support the Government's vision to develop the number of publications. It would be unfair if the experience and incentives of publications can only continuously be enjoyed by certain individuals and groups without a meaningful or systematic effort to take care lots of other inexperienced---vis a vis unknowledgable---lecturers/researchers. We could not rely solely on the Government programs and initiatives but as intellectuals need to jointly empower ourselves. Shared or coordinated practices become the unique key words, psychological breakthrough and contribution of this paper to improve the habits and enjoyment of proceeding to give birth to publishable articles indexed in Scopus. That is the position of this crowd-writing paper.

Conclusion
On average, 66,5% of Indonesian lecturers/researchers have known about SINTA, DOAJ, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science. However, based on empirical frequency 76% of them have never published with journals or proceedings indexed in Scopus.