The rector of University of Pristina – Kosovo’s largest university – Ibrahim Gashi is being pressured to resign after it was revealed he published articles in predatory journals to meet the requirements for promotion to full professor, reports Scholarly Open Access blog post.

All five articles published by Gashi had been, reportedly, published in journals considered to be predatory by the infamous Beall’s list.

Close to 30 students have been arrested following their protests in relation to this scandal, Kosovo 2.0 reports.

The events point to a larger problem of ensuring quality in science in emerging, developing nations such as Kosovo. A recently passed science law there, for example, mandates that to qualify for a post of a full university professor – essentially getting tenure – researchers need only five published papers. When even those five can be published by paying to do so, and bypassing proper peer review, it leaves one wondering what the future may hold for science and higher education in Kosovo.

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Mićo Tatalović

Science journalist, news editor at Research Professional News

Mićo Tatalović is a news editor at Research Professional News. He has previously worked as a science news editor at Nature, New Scientist, and SciDev.Net. In 2018, he completed the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US, where he researched the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in science journalism. He is also immediate former chairman of the Association of British Science Writers, and a board member of the European Federation for Science Journalism.

He runs the section Balkan Science Beat.

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