GUIDELINES FOR REWARDING POSTGRADUATE CANDIDATES WHO PUBLISH AN ACCREDITED RESEARCH ARTICLE BASED ON THEIR MASTER’S OR DOCTORAL STUDY

Purpose of Funding Postgraduate Students Who Publish from Their Master’s or Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this incentive is to stimulate the publication of accredited articles by postgraduate students from their master’s and doctoral studies and thereby increase the research outputs of the faculty.

Background

The existing policy specifies that master’s and doctoral students have to submit an article ready for publication. Consider the excerpts below:

4.2.5  In addition this policy expects each prospective master’s candidate to have submitted to the supervisor at least one manuscript of a paper/article in the format required by an accredited journal for that specific discipline as a condition for graduation; the student will receive appropriate guidance from his/her supervisors in preparing the manuscript of the paper. Authorship of such a paper must be guided by UJ Guidelines on Authorship. Faculty regulations will stipulate under which conditions students may be exempted from needing to submit such a manuscript.

5.5 In addition, a prospective doctoral graduate will submit to his/her supervisor at least one publishable manuscript, in the format required by an accredited journal, for that specific discipline as a condition for graduation. Authorship of such a paper/article must be guided by UJ Guidelines on Authorship. Faculty regulations will stipulate under which conditions students may be exempt from needing to submit such manuscripts.

Despite the above-mentioned requirement, very few such articles are eventually published.

It is believed that the proposed incentive will lead to postgraduate students and supervisors ensuring that these research articles get published.

Monetary Value of the Incentive Funding

The amount made available to a postgraduate student who is the sole author of an accredited article is presently R20000. If a postgraduate student co-authors an article with the supervisor(s), the student will receive R10000. (However, these amounts may change if DoHET alters the subsidy formula.)

This incentive funding is valid for claims made for accredited articles published up to two years after completion of the postgraduate qualification.

Exclusion from the Incentive of Staff Members Who Are Also Postgraduate Students

Accredited research articles authored by staff members who are also postgraduate students will not be considered for this incentive programme, but will be claimed in the normal manner and the staff member’s portion of the subsidy will be transferred to the staff member’s research account in the normal manner.

Claiming an Output and Incentive Funding

The onus is on the postgraduate student to submit the necessary evidence of the published accredited article timeously to the faculty co-ordinator for the DoHET claims (Mrs Lou-Ann Anderson).

An amount of R20000 will be made available to the postgraduate student (for a sole authored article) soon after the successful submission of the claim. (This implies that the amount owing to the postgraduate student will be transferred before the subsidy is received from DoHET.)

After completing the claim for the article on the RIMS system, the faculty co-ordinator will provide the necessary information to the Vice-Dean Research, who will then arrange for the transfer of funds.

The amount due to the student may either be paid into the relevant department’s research account (where it will be ring-fenced for future use for research or study purposes by the postgraduate student) or it may be paid into the student’s UJ student account.

The department/centre that provided supervision for the postgraduate student will receive an incentive of R15000 for the article sole-authored by the student. However, this amount will be made available to the supervisor only once the subsidy has been received from DoHET. This amount may be used for research purposes at the discretion of the department/centre concerned.

Implementation Date for Postgraduate Article-Writing Incentive Funding

This incentive funding is applicable to all postgraduate graduates from 2012 onwards.

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