On 11th November 2015, Prasetiya Mulya Business School (PMBS) in cooperation with Indonesia’s Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and bibliographic database SciVerse Scopus (Scopus) held a national symposium on ‘New Perspectives on Scientific Journal Management: Digital, Business and Scholarly Integrity’ which examined scientific journal digitisation in Indonesia. Taking place at one of PMBS’ auditoriums on its campus in Cilandak, South Jakarta, the event featured a number of government officials, academics and experts in the field as speakers, including former Minister of Education and Culture, Dr. Daoed Joesoef; PMBS’ very own Prof. Djoko Wintoro Ph.D., Prof. Sammy Kristamuljana, Ph.D. and Prof. Dr. Andreas Budihardjo; Prof. Dr. Ocky Radjasa, Dr. Sadjuga, MSc., and Dr. Istadi from the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education; Mr Lukman, MT, a researcher from LIPI; and Mr Nicholas Pak as Scopus’ Product Manager for Asia.
In accordance with the main thread running throughout the discussion, Dr. Joesoef as one of the panelists in the symposium underlined scientific journals as an important infrastructure for developing a strong scientific community, further explaining that “society will develop by having an advanced scientific community as it will become the source of ideas that will bring forth progress.” Meanwhile, Prof. Djoko Wintoro Ph.D. as Rector of PMBS stated that the modern era requires a new approach to scientific publications. Particularly for academia in Indonesia, developing digital-based journals should stand as a timely innovation in broadcasting their latest research results. He also emphasised, however, that the pursuit of scientific truth must always be the foundation of all research, thus integrity is a value that scientists must consistently uphold.
The symposium, which followed on from a similar event held by PMBS in 2013, served as a forum for universities and academics, government and research agencies, and scientific journal writers and editors to exchange insights on the topic of scientific dissemination management, as well as on identifying present-day challenges in Indonesia’s scientific community related to its journals, and finding the solutions to these problems. In their sessions in front of approximately 170 attending participants, the esteemed panelists covered subjects such as the challenges in research and publication in Indonesia, business development strategies and online-based management for scientific journals, and plagiarism and scholarly integrity. Furthermore, Scopus as a global abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature shared its outlook on Indonesia, citing the country’s current standing in the internationalisation of its scientific journals.