RSI – Research Synergy Institute

19th June 202014th July 2020

Fostering Data Analysis in Educational Research Using SPSS Software

Data collection, processing, and analysis represents an essential part of the research. It is not uncommon for researchers, educators, and even journals editors to find a statistical problem in a stage of the research process. Poor data analysis and lack of supporting evidence can be one of those important causes for global journal editors rejects a submitted manuscript. We can simply assumed that “bad data practice will lead to bad research”. In order to assist educators and researchers in improving the quality of research data analysis skills, we conducted a webinars by the theme Fostering Data Analysis in Educational Research Using SPSS Software. We invited Engr. Dr. Muhammad Mujtaba Asad, the Head of Educational Technology & TVET Research Sukkur IBA University as a trainer to deliver his knowledge and experience regarding SPSS Software and its application in a research. The webinar has more than 125 participants that has been registered from 10 countries around the world.

In the first session, webinars started by a brief introduction regarding Research Synergy Foundation as a global research ecosystem by Mrs Santi Rachmawati. The event then continued with an introduction of Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) from the trainer Engr. Dr. Muhammad Mujtaba Asad which was moderated by Mrs. Ani Wahyu.

Dr. Asad presented a complete overview of the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) as an application to analyze scientific data related with the social science. Basically, all versions of this software can be used for managing and analyzing all sorts of data. He emphasized that the main thing that must be considered by qualitative or quantitative researchers is what method is used in a research. Choosing a research method will depend on: research questions, philosophy of research, researcher preferences and skills.

Either Qualitative or Quantitative researchers may favor focused on research data. Data is not a systematic or irregular part, so a researcher have to manage it properly and analyze it effectively. For students, research questions may be influence on supervisor’s beliefs, but at least, we have to consider several questions regarding unit of analysis, whether theory or data will come first, or it is cross-sectional or longitudinal.

Dr. Asad then gave an explanation about a key description about quantitative and qualitative approach. Quantitative approach attempts to explain existing phenomena by collecting and analyzing numerical data, using statistical methods. Quantitative researchers will worry about sample, statistical test, result and suitable methods. While qualitative researchers will worry about data coding, capturing a situation in a realistic manner, describe context detail, also whether the approach is flexible and able to change. Qualitative researchers also often have issues regarding respondents and ethical issue of the research process. In conducting a survey, researchers have to make sure that the interview is manageable and not overlapping.

In his presentation, Dr. Asad showed how descriptive statistical analysis can be analyzed using SPSS.

For descriptive analysis, SPSS is able to:

Create histograms
Frequency Distribution of Data
Calculate the Mean Scor
Calculate the Median and Mode
Standard Deviation (SD)
Scattered Graphs Plot
Pie & Bar Charts

Dr. Asad then explained about what is parametric and non-parametric statistical analysis. He also demonstrated an exercise on how to run hypothesis testing like F test, T test, Annova, and coding variables using SPSS.

After the online training session was over, the webinars moved to the Q & A session. Here are we gathered some interesting questions from the participants.

Dimas

Q: Is SPSS Similar to Winstep?

A: SPSS more advanced,detailed and extensive output, while winstep have more limited option

Christopher

Q: How to get a standard sample size?

A: I will recommend the morgan table of sample size based on your population.

Arik Susanti

Q: Is it ok to conduct blended/mix method in the research?

A: It is not always necessary to conduct a mix-method approach in a research. You can consult with a supervisor to find an authentic result of your research and depend on what your research needs.

Tuti Rahmi

Q: How about the questionnaire shared online or by social media which can be filled by anyone who is eligible? Can it be generalized? What kind of sampling techniques is it?

A: There is no issue you can share an online questionnaires or telephonic interviews, conducting panel discussion via online platforms due to current situation. You must target your respondents with a specific skill and particular respondents, and better to not make it as an open source. It is okay for qualitative research, based on your nature of your study that you are targeting either random or convenience sampling.

Desi Rahmawati

Q: What is the difference the use of Spearman and Pearson Product Moment?

A: It can be used for the linearity of data, we can find out the association between 2 variables, whether it is negative or positive. Pearson parametric, spearman non parametric

Hajra Ameer?

Q: Will the validity of questionnaire compromise after modification?

A: Modification is not about modifying the major part of that particular research, you are just going to align with your particular context. If it is not relevant, delete it, integrate other questionnaire and replace them (with a good reference), ensure and construct validity. You can also run validity practice to minimize an error.

How insightful the discussion was, and many more questions to ask from the participants. The webinars has closed successfully and we look forward to your participation in RSF next events.

Finally, we concluded this webinar successfully. We are glad to hold this webinar and we hope that it can help all researchers analyze their research data. So, we are waiting for you to take part in RSF Webinar Series.

9th June 202027th July 2020

Publication Opportunities in Scopus and WOS Indexed Journals: Advice and Recommendations from the Editors

For some researchers, publishing scientific articles in high-quality journals have been quite challenging. Publication of a scientific article becomes a stage that must be passed by researchers considering that this is a form of validation of the research done. By publishing an article, researchers are making their knowledge contribution available to a community of scholars and society. There are various reasons why an article is accepted or rejected, and sometimes this makes researchers feel a little bit frustrated with the research they are working on. In fact, the rejection and any kind of challenge when publishing scientific articles in high-impact journals are part of the process. All of the process will become beneficial to improve a research experience.

Facing the challenges of publication, all we need is to keep learning to improve in each process. Writing a research can be considered as an art, it involves skill to express complex ideas in a concise way, communicate with readers, benefit civil society, and contribute to a better life. Thus, we organized a Webinar that might be helpful for researchers to learn and understand a proper research publication from the point of view of journal editors by the theme: “Publication Opportunities in Scopus and WOS Indexed Journals: Advice and Recommendations from the Editors”. The webinar was organized by Research Synergy Foundation (RSF), Research Synergy Institute (RSI) in collaboration with Sarawak Research Society (SRS), Emerald Publishing (East Asia), Ikatan Dosen Republik Indonesia (IDRI), and Pampanga Research Educators Organization (PREO) Phillippines. Presented as trainers are the journal editors from Scopus and WOS Indexed Journal: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mumtaz Ali Memon from NUST Business School Pakistan, Assoc.Prof. Dr. Evan Lau from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Iris Lui from Ming Chuan University, Taiwan, and Mdm. Rozita Gee from Emerald Publishing.

There are more than 1.135 scholars from more than 30 countries across the globe registered to the Webinar. The event is not just a simple Webinar, it is also an opportunity for participants to submit their articles in the high-reputable journals edited by the trainers.

The first session of the webinar was opened with an explanation of Emerald Publishing by Mdm. Rozita Gee. Emerald Publishing was founded in 1967 with only 1 journal published. In this year, Emerald has more than 300 journals with any reputable indexed and 3000 books. Emerald opened its branch in Asia on 1983, located in Singapore, and then in Kuala Lumpur on 1995. Emerald now has 8 regional offices worldwide. All journals in Emerald have been indexed by well-known indexation institution such as DORA, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, EBSCO, and etc. Some Emerald journals currently open its special issued for certain themes.

In the subsequent sessions continued with an explanation of the special issue in each journals and its submission deadline. One of the journals that have a special issue is Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology that later be presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Iris Lui. The journal is opening a special issue with a theme: Challenges and Prospect of AIoT Application in Hospitality and Tourism Marketing. The journal wishes to expand the knowledge regarding an application of IoT in the hospitality and tourism fields, like the using of Disney Magic Band and West-Western Alexa Deployment.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mumtaz Ali Memon explained the special issue of Electronic Journal of Applied Statistical Analysis by the theme “digitalization and its impact on contemporary marketing strategies and practices”. The topics include digital marketing, cross cultures comparative studies, multi group analysis, marketing analytics, and etc. The journal will prioritize the advanced methodological papers or the research using PLS Path Modelling as a statistical analysis software.

The next journal is International Journal of Business and Society. This session was explained by Assoc.Prof. Dr. Evan Lau as a Journal Editor. International Journal of Business and Society is published by University Malaysia Sarawak and it has been indexed by Scopus from 2009. The journal publish 3 times a year with the main topics are high-quality papers using multidisciplinary approaches with a strong emphasis on business, economics and finance. The theme of special issue of the journal is: the coronavirus pandemic: economic impact, challenges, opportunities, and recovery paths for emerging countries.

The 2^nd session of the webinar was 2^nd Topic Advice for submission to the special issues and expectation from the guest editors that presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mumtaz Ali Memon and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Iris Lui. The session began with the emphasis from Dr. Iris that as an editor she did not expect a paper like a compile of information from textbook. To start writing a proper scientific article, researchers should consider: study from recent literature on subject matter, solicit ideas from the practitioners and observation of the real world, read recent papers of each journals and author guideline to know how the manuscript should be prepared.

From the perspective of Dr. Mumtaz, as an editor he expects the submitted articles that are:

Relevance: it means the paper suits the theme and topics of the journal
Quality and Contribution: it is okay not always using PLS, but make sure it contributes a new knowledge.
Complete: complete all parts of the research sections, like implication and discussion of findings which are often incomplete in a research.
Balance: put the same efforts between analysis and other sections, such as theoretical, findings, or background.
Efforts: make your manuscript worthwhile and do not use outdated references.

The 3^rd webinar session is Reasons for Manuscript Acceptance, Revision (Major & Minor) and Rejection that was presented by Assoc.Prof. Dr. Evan Lau. In this sessions, the participants learned about crafting an excellent research paper. Researchers should consider what a journal looking for and what should be inside the research. Here are some consideration in crafting a research paper:

Solid, interesting and attractive intro (the research should attract the editors in the first reading)
Unique dataset
Good presentation and discussion of results
Solid set of empirical robustness tests
Importance of abstract and conclusion
Contribution and what is new
Localized issue with international appeal

Dr. Evan also showed common issues why the papers are being rejected.

Lack of motivation (too outdated reference, not sufficient contribution)
Out of scope (easy to reject)
Fundamental flaws
Topic is dated
Key sections are missing
Unreadable
Unethical practices

He also showed what common major and minor corrections. For major correction, generally caused by several factors: lack of justification of contribution, poor storyline (needs to improve the storyline), lack of theoretical support, underdeveloped hypotheses, key information is missing, key references are missing. For minor corrections caused by linguistic issues, not following submission guidelines, and less recent literature. To improve minor correction, researchers needs a proofreading and improve citations.

The topic of the next session was Editorial Decision to Accept and Reject a Manuscript that presented by Dr. Iris. She showed a chart of decision process and important dates so that Authors can understand the journal publication process and see how the editors work together to accept or reject manuscripts (you can see the chart in the webinar recording).

Mdm. Rozita also shared tips for writing more effectively. All Emerald journals does a double blind review, so make sure to craft a high-quality research and find a suitable journal.

She highlight five important things:

Structure your journal submission
Writing a literature
Writing simply
Proofreading
Writing collaboratively with your peers

Dr. Evan also advised 3 golden rule:

Read and explore the literature
Do not write a murder mystery – adopt KISS method
Do not rush your article for publication – select the right journal

The last advice was given by Dr. Mumtaz

Attend all comments
Prepare response sheet and highlight revisions/changes
Be polite, honest, and appreciative

When a reviewer give a comment, Authors must understand that the reviewers also given a lot of time and efforts to suggest your manuscript. So, we need to appreciate each other, even author can ask their peers to make sure that the social writing in response to a reviewer comments is a good-enough.

The last topic was presented by Dr. Iris regarding 3 criteria to determine a manuscript publishability. It includes more attention to originality of the research, findings, and rigors.

The webinar was closed by concluding remarks from the moderator. After the webinar, make sure as researchers we do not rush to publish our manuscripts, make it worthwhile, also put a learning-mindset when we revise a manuscript. So we hope there should be no particular difficulty if Authors can match the high quality manuscript and high-reputable journal.

For more complete lecture access, please check out the link below:

20th May 202027th July 2020

Scientific and Academic Writing Workshop

On 19 May 2020, Research Synergy Foundation in collaboration with Poltekkes Medan and Palu held a live Scientific and Academic Writing Workshop to help enhance and accelerate author capacity towards outstanding global scholars. This online workshop is attended by more than 100 lecturers and faculty staff of Poltekkes Medan and Palu. The event is strategically designed to discuss urgency and what must be prepared to be global researchers and how to build a global reputation in academic world. By this program, we strive to provide facilities and intensive training for researchers so that it will help changing the productivity and merit of their work. Engaging a new platform internationally international exposure is highly beneficial for academic careers

The online workshop was hosted by Dr. Hendrati Mulyaningsih, SE., MM., CECP., CT as founder and chairman of Research Synergy Foundation. The workshop presented 3 session. In the first session, Dr. Hendrati started the presentation with her explanation about the objective of the workshop and benefit of research publication. She also summarized 2 main ways for being globally accepted: wider your horizon and know what to write. As the final step in the research process is disseminating the work, publishing research works in scholarly journals has now become not just optional but obligatory for researchers. Publishing process refines writing skills and it will help the researchers get different benefits, such as: peer recognition, career advancement, subject development, and professional promotion. Research publication with the aim of making knowledge beneficial at various levels are also in line with education policy in Indonesia. To fulfil this step, researchers should engage in any scientific forum. There are many option for students or researchers to present their work: non-indexed and indexed conference proceeding or non-indexed and indexed journals.

In the 2^nd session, Dr. Hendrati gave details of what is meant by research and what is key attributes of a good research paper. Structuring a good paper, authors should pay attention to what they read and how to fill the gap between them, reviewers, and editors. Dr. Hendrati then showed some tips for technical improvement in crafting a good research paper and how to avoid violations of publication ethics in the last session of her presentation. The presentation was so clear enough to be applied and hope it encourage participants to develop their research skill and give a huge benefit to society.

19th May 202027th July 2020

How to Make your Academic Conference Effective and Efficient?

An academic conference or scientific conference is a one-day or multiday meeting which researchers present and discuss their work within their field. Attending an academic conference is an exciting opportunity to build networks with other academics and experts and exchange stimulating ideas. Academic conferences are not just for academics, it can be attended by various groups of people with certain expertise and profession from local to global. Some conferences focus on highly-specialized topics and are usually organized by institution, associations, or group of independent researchers. For some researchers, academic conference help to make their research process easier. Thus, the academic conference is a crucial part of academic life.

As a stage for academic career development, some researchers began to choose to become conference organizers. They seemed to rest for a while from a busy moment in the campus or laboratory, and meet with their circle that will give birth and transmit constructive ideas. However, conferences held by certain institutions experience convoluted bureaucratic constraints, as well as financial problems that tend to be wasteful. As a social enterprise committed to being dedicated to the education world, we (Research Synergy Foundation) would like to share our experience in managing international conference which is one of our featured program. Presented as a speaker of the webinar is Mrs. Santi Rahmawati, a founder and director of Global Network Operation of Research Synergy Foundation, also served as Director of Scholarvein. More than 120 participants were engaged virtually in this webinar.

Mrs. Santi began her presentation by emphasizing four common questions in managing international conference; Man, Budget, Process, and Output. She also discussed some of the benefits for organizing international conference for institution that includes publication matters, university ranking, international outlook, accreditation, credibility, and positioning, develop stronger research groups and collaboration, and extra non-tuition fees. Conferences can come in any shape, like academic conference, virtual conference, trade conference, UnConference, business conference, and etc. As more gatherings get shut down due to current pandemic outbreak, virtual conferences appeared to be very popular as an alternative to any various meetings.

Mrs. Santi then gave a detailed description of the process of managing a conference which she divided into 3 stages: pre-during-post process. The description explains what actually needs to be prepared rather than what most people sees. In terms of publication as the final outcome which is usually awaited by the participants, she illustrated a complete process which happened immediately after the conference was over. By applying these 3 stages, RSF ensures that the process of publishing participants articles runs properly. Both the organizer and the participant must work together and support each other during the publication process. RSF have affiliated with hundreds of national and international journals and publishers with various indexation. With these sources, we hope to provide greater ease and effectiveness to disseminate knowledge contribution across the globe. Conference management also requires the role of appropriate stakeholders to create a conducive ecosystem. They also have to make sure that the budget is reasonable and well-allocated. A good collaboration between each parts will result in a successful conference.

In RSF development journey, we always learn and make our utmost effort to manage conferences effectively and efficiently. To achieve this, we complete each process by creating a system that embraces every process and help to answer various challenges in managing conference. We create a global research ecosystem that includes: Scholarvein as our integrated conference operating system, Research Synergy Institute as an enhancement and learning platform, RSF Press as an integrated international journals system, and Reviewer Track as a hub for worldwide reviewers. We will keep track a lot of important moving parts in every process. Therefore, we are open to any collaborative cooperation to help managing successful scientific event.