Higher Education36: 195–208, 1998. 195c 1998Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Research output among the three faculties of business, education,humanities & social sciences in six Hong Kong universities

KWOK KEUNG HODept. of Curriculum & Instruction, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong.E-mail: kkho@ci.ied.edu.hk

Abstract. Academics in Hong Kong universities are urged to increase their research output.This article investigates the measurement of publication outputs among the three facultiesof business, education, humanities & social sciences in the six universities of Hong Kong.Data were collected from the 1990–95 annual reports of research and publication outputs ofeach university. In order to have a fair comparison of publication outputs of each academic,rank, faculty and university, a framework was developed from practical experience and fromliterature to investigate the problem. Results indicate that the publication outputs of academicsin Hong Kong were about the same as other countries in many aspects. Pressing academics formore research publications may raise the figure in the start, but would not necessarily increasethe output in the long run.

Introduction

Tertiary education in Hong Kong enjoyed a relatively calm and stable devel-opment up to 1989. Teaching in a university was comfortable, prestigious and,for the time, well-paid. Elsewhere, however, there was mounting pressure forincreased efficiency and greater research output. Universities in Australiaand Europe had been examining research performance indicators from themid-1980s while universities in North America had a competitive empha-sis in research long before that (Bieber and Blackburn, 1993; Hattie, 1990;Stolte-Heiskanen, 1992).

The picture of Hong Kong tertiary education changed quickly after thethen governor, in view of manpower projections and in line with the fastexpansion of tertiary education around the world, announced a developmentalplan which resulted in the number of universities growing from two to seven.Most of these new universities (except for one) were not created but achievedby redesignation of existing institutions. Hong Kong universities have beencompeting keenly since then. Fast expansion has led to the lowering of entrystandards among new students since the pool of senior secondary schoolstudents remains about the same. This trend of declining entry standard isdifferent from one university to another. In order to cope with this, universities

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have had to improve the quality of their teaching. The establishment ofteaching development unit or similar section in almost every university in thelast few years is an indication of the increased importance in this direction.

At the same time, the universities have had to pay more attention to theirown reputations and to attracting more funding and more capable students.The reputation of a university is often more linked to its research reputationrather than teaching. This depends on such variables as the age of the uni-versity, its size and funding. Many studies have indicated a high correlationbetween research output and reputation (e.g., Howard, Cole, and Maxwell,1987; Matson, Gouvier, and Manikan, 1989). Success in research is mainlybased on publication output by faculty members. Hence the pressure formore publications has quietly crept into Hong Kong universities in the lastfew years.

Earlier studies tended to argue that the threat of “publish or perish” wasa myth (Lewis, 1975) and that the majority of academics had little or nopublications at all (Ladd and Lipset, 1977). However, more recent literatureindicates that publication is important (e.g. Bently and Blackburn, 1990;Colman, Garner and Jolly 1992; Kyvik, 1993; Stolte-Heiskanen, 1992; Tienand Blackburn, 1996) and the “myth” is in fact real (Ochai and Nwafor,1990). In the case of Hong Kong, many universities indicate to their facultymembers that the conditions for substantiation, crossing the bar betweenranks or reappointment include a certain minimum quantity of publicationsin defined categories of journals.

The HKUGC (abbreviation for University Grants Committee in HongKong), which directs government funding to universities, began a researchassessment exercise to investigate the publication outputs of individualdepartments among the local universities in the early 1990s. Cowan (1995)complained that the research assessment exercise was too complicated. Hesuggested that a mere count of papers from the citation indexes was goodenough for the exercise, at least among the fields of science, engineeringand medicine. This is a common view in the academic world (Braskamp andOry, 1994; Garfield, 1987; Rushton, 1984). However, even though the useof citations has importance, it has drawbacks: the size of different academicfields varies; citations carrying equal weight may not be positive but critical;some highly significant works become common knowledge quickly withoutbeing cited; some important works may be neglected by contemporaries; thelanguage of publication may be biased; local journals may be missed; andthere may be over-counting of in-group citations (Chapman, 1989; Centra,1979; Cole and Cole, 1967; Colman, Garner and Jolly, 1992; Dahllof, Harris,Shattock, Staropoli, and Veld, 1991).

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The present study investigate the publication outputs of academics drawnfrom the three faculties of business, education, humanities & social sciencesin the six universities of Hong Kong during the period of 1990–95. The dis-ciplines in these faculties all belong to the “soft” academic areas as classifiedby Biglan (1973) and the research & publication works often relate to localproblems which may not be of interest or significance to the global academicworld (Hattie et al., 1994; Stolte-Heiskanen, 1992). Cowan’s suggestion ofusing citation indexes is not appropriate in this area since many of its publi-cations may not appear in the journals included in the citation indexes. Thisarticle intends to bring additional insight on the problem and help to improvethe universities’ policy on research and publications which are highly relatedto appointment, tenure and promotion.

Method of the study

The six universities in Hong Kong (except for one) publish annual reports onresearch and publication outputs of their faculty members. Each member ofacademic staff has to file their research and publication record in the annualreport in order to show to the public their achievement in this area. However,the names of those faculty members who have not published anything willnot appear in the reports. On the other hand, the names of outsiders who arevisiting scholars or co-researchers with some members of a department mayappear in some of the reports of some universities. Since these reports donot show the full list of the academics in each department, it is difficult forreaders to know the performance of each academic, faculty or university as awhole. The present study tries to deal with such problems.

Research publications appear in many forms: articles in journals, news-papers, bulletins and magazines, books, chapters in books, monographs,research and working reports, paper presentations in conference, articles inconference proceedings, etc. It is difficult for readers to know the relativeand combined importance of all these forms of publication. A number ofresearchers have examined this issue (Bieber and Blackburn, 1993; Cave,Hanney, and Kogan, 1991; ESFCSRI, 1990; Gabbin, Cairns, and Benke,1990; Hattie, 1990; Jones, 1992; Kyvik, 1993; Miller, 1974).

An examination of these different methods of weighting in calculating thetotal publication outputs of individuals and departments makes it clear thatno universally accepted standard exists. However, those people who performthe research assessment exercises need a reference frame in order to carryout their duty. If academics do not have suggestions for calculating the pub-lication outputs on a relatively sound basis, the administrators will definitelydevelop their own scale for the evaluation. After comparing different methods

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of scaling and the Hong Kong situation, the author arrived at the followingmethod of weighting and counting of publication outputs which, when con-verted to points, may provide a fair comparison among the three faculties ofbusiness, education, humanities and social sciences in the six universities ofHong Kong:

1. newspaper article:0.5;2. magazine article, working paper, monograph, research report, master’

thesis, or presentation at local conference:1;3. presentation at non-local conference, doctoral dissertation, article in local

conference proceedings (Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Macau areconsidered as local), chapter in a locally published book, editor of a localjournal or locally published book:2;

4. article in non-local conference proceedings, chapter in a non-locally pub-lished book, editor of a non-local journal or book, author of the newedition of a published book:4;

5. article in local journal or author of a locally published book:10;6. article in regional (other Asia, excluding Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and

Macau) journal or author of a regionally published book:15;7. article in an international journal or author of an internationally published

book:20.

A number of procedures and rules were followed to guide the calculation.

1. if there is more than one author for any publication, the weighting shouldbe divided by the total number of authors;

2. if one serves as an editor of a book or journal, the weighting of his ownarticle in that issue will be reduced by 50%. Similarly, if that journal orbook is published by the same university or that editor were in the sameuniversity, weighting of those articles will be reduced by 50%;

3. the weighting of journal articles shorter than 5 pages will be reduced by50%;

4. the weighting of a book with volume less than 100 pages will be reducedby 50%;

5. the upper limit of the total number of items in the above calculationshould be 10 per category annually; in other words, the best 10 itemsper category for the calculation of a faculty member’s annual publicationoutputs are used if there are more than 10.

There will of course be questions about the above method. The author wouldlike to include some arguments for the above weighting and calculation.

1. Some academics would consider newspaper or magazine articles to be oflittle or no value at all. However, one must accept that academics do not

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live in an ivory tower; they must try to explain to the public what theyare doing and newspaper and magazine articles may serve this purposewell. In the long run, this kind of publication may help to gain supportfrom the public on issues such as funding which is crucial to the survivalof the academic community. Hence, academics’ publications in this areashould not be neglected. In order to avoid over-emphasis, they are givena relatively light weighting and the upper limit of the best 10 items percategory in procedure 5 above should offset any bias from this inclusion(Braskamp and Ory, 1994; Clement and Stevens, 1989). Even though 10appears to be an arbitrary number at this point, the author found fromthe data set that there were no academics in Hong Kong (in this dataset) could produce more than 10 items by himself/herself alone in eachcategory except for newspapers and magazines.

2. Working papers, monographs, research reports, master theses, doctoraldissertations and presentations are intermediate forms of publication. Allthese can be reorganised to become journal articles or books, so theirweighting is not high to avoid over-counting (Tognolini et al., 1994).

3. It is a common practice to value non-local publications more than the localones since they are usually more difficult to get published (ESFCSRI,1990; Ochai and Nwafor, 1990; Vroeijenstijn and Acherman, 1990). Thisis certainly influenced by factors such as language, context as well asdiscipline (Dahllof et al., 1991). Non-local academics and those in thefield of science, engineering and medicine usually have the advantage inlanguage or universality of context while publishing their papers abroad.

4. Readers will realize the difference between refereed or non-refereed jour-nals. Even though refereed journals are supposed to be more reliable inquality, this may be doubtful (Miller, 1974). For some editors, whethera journal is refereed or not is just a game and the existence of soft andtough reviewers is unavoidable. Furthermore, there is a trend that morejournals are striving to become refereed in order to be recognised. Even-tually, whether a journal is refereed may not be so important. Since someof the publication reports of the six universities do not say whether thosejournals listed are refereed, the author considers that all journal articles ofthe same category mentioned in the above method carry the same weight.

5. Some may query the grounds for different weighting for different kindsof publications. This was not arbitrarily determined but based heavilyon previous literature (e.g. Centra, 1979; ESFCSRI, 1990; Gabbin et al.,1990; Hattie, 1990; Vroeijenstijn and Acherman, 1990) and practices insome universities of Hong Kong. For example, even though an article ina journal will be shorter than a book, journals are usually considered tobe more original and up to date than books in the three fields of business,

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education, humanities & social sciences. Hence the two categories ofpublications are considered to be of equal weight.

6. When one’s own publication appears in books or journals edited or pub-lished by people in the same institution, outsiders will query the possibilityof in-group preference, so a reduction of 50% weighting is imposed onthese publications.

7. For journal articles shorter than 5 pages or books shorter than 100 pages,people will query the substance contained in the work, so a reduction of50% of weighting is applied.

8. Some faculty members, especially those tenured or established, may havea tendency to under-report their publications. However, since reporting isthe duty of all faculty members, they are not fulfilling their own respon-sibility to the university if they do not report in detail.

Results

From the 1990–95 annual reports of research and publication outputs of eachuniversity, the publication profile and hence the publication outputs (in pointscalculated by the method proposed in the previous section) of each memberin the reports was obtained. The academic rank of each member was checkedby cross referencing with the catalogue of that university. Since there wasa different ranking system between the “old” universities (Chinese Univ. ofHong Kong, short form CUHK; Univ. of Hong Kong, short form HKU; HongKong Univ. of Science & Technology, short form HKUST) and those recentlyupgraded ones (City Univ. of Hong Kong, short form CITYU; Hong KongBaptist Univ., short form HKBU; Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., short formHKPU) before 1993, the author converted all the ranks of those membersin the upgraded universities to the present ranks in order to provide a faircomparison. Thus principal lecturers were converted to senior lecturers, seniorlecturers became lecturers, while lecturers remained the same. There mightbe some individual discrepancies among the conversions which were tracedby the author against the annual catalog. Similarly, whether that member hadbeen promoted or had left in a certain year, could also be checked.

Table 1 is the ANOVA table of publication outputs of academics by uni-versity, by faculty, by rank and by year during the period of 1990–95. Factorssuch as university, rank and year are found to be significant, indicating thereare difference in publication outputs between different universities, ranksof academics and years. There are also significant 2, 3, 4 ways interactionsamong the factors except for (facultyx rankx year).

Table 2 is a list of the average publication outputs of an academic (inpoints) in the six universities between 1990–95. The publication outputs

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Table 1. ANOVA table of publicatgion outputs of academics during the period of 1990–95

Source of variation S S D F M S F Sig. of F

Within + residual 1130018.17 5951 189.99University 64018.44 5 12803.69 67.43 0.000Faculty 229.36 2 114.68 0.60 0.547Rank 70764.68 4 17691.17 93.17 0.000Year 7581.62 4 1895.41 9.98 0.0002 way interaction 91750.04 69 1329.71 7.00 0.0003 way interaction 86586.74 156 555.04 2.92 0.0004 way interaction 21847.13 85 257.03 1.35 0.017

Table 2. Average publication output (in points) of an academic in the universities

Univ 90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 Average

CUHK 8.9 (13.6) 11.6 (17.7) 15.2 (21.0) 9.0 (16.3) 11.2 (19.1)11.2 (17.9)HKU 6.8 (16.3) 9.3 (17.1) 7.1 (14.3) 10.6 (18.1) 11.2 (22.1)9.3 (18.1)HKBU 5.0 ( 9.7) 5.6 ( 9.9) 5.3 (10.6) 4.2 ( 9.7) 6.9 (13.6)5.4 (10.9)CITYU 1.7 ( 4.8) 7.5 (17.7) 2.7 ( 8.5) 2.9 ( 8.9) 1.6 ( 6.2)3.1 (10.1)HKPU 0.7 ( 3.4) 4.9 (16.0) 4.1 ( 9.5) 7.5 (15.2) no data 4.4 (12.4)HKUST no data no data 14.8 (24.0) 7.8 (12.0) 9.3 (13.8)10.0 (16.3)average 5.0 (11.8) 8.2 (16.5) 8.1 (16.2) 7.3 (14.4) 8.0 (16.5) 7.4

Note: number inside the bracket is standard deviation

fluctuate between these five years and vary considerably across differentuniversities and also across different years for the same university. In fact,the universities can be divided into two groups according to their publicationoutputs: a high group (CUHK, HKU, HKUST) and a low group (HKBU,CITYU, HKPU). The difference of publication outputs may be partly dueto the unequal workloads and funding obtained by the two groups. The lowgroup consists of all the recently upgraded universities. When these threeuniversities were upgraded in 1993, they did not receive extra funding fromthe Government (this was the condition laid down by the Government inallowing them to be upgraded). The academics working in the low grouphave heavier teaching workloads (about 20% more) and hence they have lesstime to research and publish. Furthermore, the institutional culture and legacyof recruitment in the low group might be difficult to change in a short time.

Table 3 is a list of the annual average percentages of academics who hadno publication outputs during the period between 1990–95. No statisticswere included for academics who did not publish anything for two to fiveconsecutive years. There is a decreasing trend over these five years (except

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Table 3. Average percentages of academics who have no publication output

University 90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 average

CUHK 42.9 34.0 23.1 44.3 39.2 36.7HKU 55.7 42.6 38.7 17.1 5.2 28.7HKBU 43.1 33.8 39.8 58.8 40.6 43.0CITYU 76.1 41.7 67.7 65.6 74.9 65.8HKPU 89.8 52.4 54.5 29.1 no data 55.7HKUST no data no data 2.4 9.7 19.7 11.8Average 61.1 40.8 39.9 35.7 36.0 41.3

Table 4. Publication output (in points) by ranks of academics

90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 average

P & R 13.2 (16.3) 21.6 (31.9) 22.9 (30.0) 22.1 (28.3) 20.8 (29.4)20.7 (28.4)SL 6.6 (12.3) 12.8 (20.8) 8.9 (16.1) 9.5 (17.0) 11.4 (24.5)9.8 (18.8)L 4.6 (12.4) 7.3 (15.6) 7.9 (16.8) 6.6 (13.5) 7.4 (15.6)6.8 (14.9)AL & I 1.4 ( 3.9) 3.7 ( 7.0) 3.1 ( 6.3) 2.3 ( 5.2) 3.1 ( 6.4) 2.8 ( 5.9)

Note: P – professor, R – reader, SL – senior lecturer, L – lecturer, AL – assistant lecturer, I– instructor

for HKUST) indicating that academics have been working harder to increasetheir publication outputs.

HKUST is a young university (established in 1988 and began to recruitstudents in 1991) with comparatively more newly recruited academics thanthe other universities. Theoretically, HKUST can employ very productive staffand drive away the non-productive ones. However, there are many factorsaffecting publication outputs of local academics, such as heavier work loadin CITYU, HUBU & HKPU. Hence HKUST also has some non- productiveacademics and the percentage has been increasing even though they has thelowest average among all the other universities.

On the other hand, even though HKU is the oldest university, the percentageof non-productive academics has continued to decrease, especially after thefirst HKUGC exercise in 1993. Taking Table 2 & 3 together, one would noticethat the academics in HKU are the ones that had encouraging improvementduring the period 1990–95 when compared with others.

Table 4 is a list of the publication outputs of different ranks of academicsin all these universities between 1990–95. The number in the parentheses isthe standard deviation. It is clear that academics of higher ranks generally aremore productive than junior ones.

Table 5 is a list of annual average percentages of different ranks of aca-demics who have no publication outputs between the period 1990–95. The

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Table 5. Average percentages of academics who have no publication output by rank

90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 average

P & R 29.8 29.5 22.8 24.4 29.5 26.8SL 61.2 34.5 49.7 48.0 50.9 48.9L 71.0 51.3 52.2 47.9 50.4 54.1AL & I 74.6 60.3 57.5 55.8 62.1 61.0

Table 6. Average publication output (in points) of academics in different faculties

90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 average

Business 3.7 ( 9.8) 7.4 (14.9) 7.7 (14.2) 7.1 (13.8) 8.3 (17.3)7.0 (14.4)Hu. & S. Sci. 5.3 (11.6) 8.1 (16.6) 8.3 (18.9) 7.3 (14.9) 6.8 (14.4)7.3 (15.7)Education 8.3 (16.3) 10.6 (20.3) 8.3 (15.3) 7.9 (14.7) 9.7 (18.5)8.9 (17.0)

Note: Hum. & S. Sci – Humanities and Social Sciences

percentages of non-productive academics decrease while the higher the rankof the academics. When taking Table 4 & 5 together, one would notice thatthe higher rank academics are really more productive than the lower ones.This is also a counter proof to the rumour that higher rank academics do notwork that hard in research.

Table 6 is a list of the publication outputs of the academics in the threedifferent faculties of the six universities. It can be seen that the academicsin the faculty of education are more productive than those in business, andhumanities & social sciences.

Table 7 is a list of the annual percentage of academics in the three facultieswho have no publication outputs during the period of 1990–95. There isgenerally a decreasing trend in the percentages of non-productive academicsamong the faculties of education, and humanities & social sciences. Faculty ofEducation staff have the smallest percentages of non- productive academics.

Table 7. Average percentage of academics in different faculties who have no publicationoutputs

90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 average

Business 64.6 36.1 34.8 31.1 42.6 40.1Hum. & S. Sci. 57.9 46.3 48.1 44.5 36.6 45.8Education 57.6 41.9 35.9 29.1 17.9 33.9

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Discussion

In 1993, the HKUGC conducted a research assessment exercise in all HongKong universities which involved submission of individual publication resultsin the form of his/her best three papers in the immediate past three years.Even though the HKUGC did not specify formally the type of publicationswhich qualified, it might be suggested that the minimum acceptable standardwould be equivalent to one paper in a local refereed journal annually. Whenconverting to the present scale, this would be approximately 10 points peryear.

However, different faculties and different universities have set up varyingstandards for their staff in the past and whether the standard laid down bythe HKUGC will become an objective criterion is still questionable. One ofthe universities once informed its academic staff that the publication outputsrequired for substantiation (obtain tenure) should be at least two articles ininternational journals in the immediate past three years, i.e. about 13 pointsper year for the present scale. For reappointment, the requirement should beat least two articles in local journals in the immediate past three years, i.e.about seven points per year for the present scale. Setting a standard such asthis formal requirement (if it is reasonable) is better than not doing so, sinceit prevents individual faculties from setting unreasonably high standards. Theworst situation is where there is no standard or the scale moves constantly.Those who are favoured by the decision makers can be promoted or sub-stantiated even though they have few publications, while those who are notfavoured by the decision makers may be treated harshly even though theyhave many publications.

From Table 2, it can be seen the average annual publication outputs of anacademic in the six universities during the period 1990–95 is 7.4, i.e. theequivalent of three quarters of an article in a local journal per year. For alecturer, the average outputs is 6.8 or about 0.7 of an article in a local journalper year as shown in Table 4. However, these publication outputs are notconfined to referred journals or books, but include all possible outlets. Inother words, the average publication outputs for a lecturer would probably beconsiderably below the requirement set down by senior personnel. Further-more, Tables 3, 5 & 7 indicate that many have no publication outputs. Thesepercentages are high although not greatly different from those for other coun-tries (Hattie, Print, and Krakowski, 1994; Lewis, 1975). For those academicswho are on a contract basis or still under probation (i.e. those who do nothave tenure), no output or a moderate number of publications is not accept-able under the present climate. A number of academics have been warnedor sacked in recent years (e.g. Ming Pao, 2 March, 1994; H.K. EconomicJournal, 18 March, 1994, Education Information Bulletin, February 1997,

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39–44) and some universities have been actively applying for more fundingin order to compensate those unproductive academics by forcing them toleave. This, however, did not occur in Hong Kong universities before theHKUGC research assessment exercise except for a few isolated cases.

The reader may ask whether the standards set by the HKUGC are too high,and whether the HKUGC has adequate grounds for the standards it sets?Similar standards elsewhere are reported in the literature (e.g. Hattie, 1990;Kasten, 1984; Vroeijenstijn and Acherman, 1990). Since the policy makers inHKUGC or the senior personnel in the universities are mainly of the ranks orprofessor or reader, for whom the average publication output (Table 4) is 20.7,it is understandable that the HKUGC would set reasonably high standards.But should the HKUGC use the standards for senior academics to judge junioracademics? Interestingly, when Vroeijenstijn and Acherman (1990) reportedtheir study in the Netherlands, they found that the majority of the academicsin their study could not reach the standard of one journal article (10 points)per year.

If the standard of one journal article per year is too high, what wouldbe a better standard? Centra (1979) and Lewis (1975) have investigated theproblem separately and arrived at similar conclusions: they found that theaverage publication output of an academic was less than one journal articleevery two years. However, since then, there appears to have been a kind ofpublication inflation (Bieber and Blackburn, 1993). After converting to thepresent system, the ESFCSRI study (1990) among universities in mainlandChina found that the average publication output of an academic was 7.6 points.The results found by Hattie et al. (1994) among Australian universities was8.4 points. Kirshstein (1997) found that the U.S. results were 10.2 points (afteradjustment of collaborative authorship suggested from the data of Beecher,1989 and Kyvik, 1993). So the average publication output of the academicsin Hong kong, namely 7.4 points is not too low after all.

The results in Table 4 are similar to those obtained by Hattie et al. (1994)who offer this explanation: “Senior academics have more collegial networks,are more likely to work in research teams, have a greater knowledge ofmanuscript acceptance procedures, and have a greater number of graduatestudents”. Research publication does not stop for senior academics whenthe prospect of promotion is no longer a challenge. The motive for researchinvolvement appears to be intrinsic rather than extrinsic.

The results in Tables 6 and 7 are also in accord with Hattie et al. (1994):educationalist across the universities in this study had a higher publicationoutput than those in the other two faculties of business, and humanities &social sciences. However, the percentage of senior academics as a proportionof the total in the faculty of education was not as high as the proportion of

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senior academics in other faculties. Is this further evidence that the facultiesof education are often neglected or even looked down upon by colleagues inthe other faculties and thus find it harder for their staff to get promotion?

The average publication outputs (including all written materials) foundby this study may be a good reference point for the HKUGC officials orsenior personnel of the six universities. Since there is a large percentageof academics who published nothing at all, and many of these people havealready achieved tenure, pressing those who have not obtained tenure topublish in international refereed journals is not only unfair but also unrealistic.Greater pressure will not guarantee more output as indicated in Table 2: theaverage publication output has not increased after the HKUGC carried outthe research assessment exercise in 1993. This result is also in accord with theoverall result reported by the HKUGC to the public (Research Output, 1996).However, the 1996 HKUGC research assessment exercise has asked eachmember of the academic staff in the Hong Kong universities to submit the bestfive research output items completed in the past four years. Besides puttingmore emphasis on teaching, the HKUGC has also increased the pressure onmore publication. It is clear that working in the universities in Hong Kong istougher than the past. Cheng (1995) has even warned that exerting too muchpressure would bring permanent harm to the universities as well as to theHong Kong society in a long run.

Acknowledgement

The present paper is a continuation of the author’s paper “The measurementof publication outputs in the six universities in Hong Kong” which appearedin the 1996, Volume 11, No. 1 issue of the Hong Kong Educational ResearchJournal. The author would like to thank his former CUHK colleagues for theirhelpful comment on an earlier version of this paper. The author would alsolike to thank the Alumni Fund, the Chou’s Foundation and the Chung ChiCollege Student Work Fund of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for theirfinancial support in employing research assistants to do the data analysis.

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Address for correspondence:Dept. of C.&I., H.K.I.Ed., 10 Lo Ping Rd., Tai Po, N.T., HongKong.E-mail: Dr.K.K.Ho <kwokkho@hotmail.com> <kkho@ci.ied.edu.hk>Tel.: (852) 2948 7534 (off), 2336 3244 (res). Fax: (852) 2948 7563