Friday, March 17, 2023

Impactful Research

As a lecturer (and currently a Ph.D student), I do research and try my best to have my papers published. Our publications are expected to be impactful for academia and society at large. Often, the citations, H-index, and journal quartile are used to measure the impact of our research or us as researchers. These are surely correct, at least seen from the scholarly perspective. However, for societal impact, the measurement might be dissimilar.



One research topic that I conducted few years back was about the non-bank Islamic mortgage. It was basically a new phenomenon, primarily in Indonesia, where people do not go to the bank for their mortgage purpose. Instead, they go to the developers and pay installment directly to them. It was an interesting topic and my publications in this topic are among the first. 

To my surprise, I encountered two events related to that research I conducted. First, an American Muslim emailed me to have a Zoom session with me (shown in a photo above). He was planning to run home mortgage business in the US using Islamic contract and not involving bank. So, he basically read my papers previously and wanted to clarify some things. Indeed I was honored to have a Zoom session and explain things to him. I did not expect that someone might have gotten something from the things I do. 

Second, someone that I did not meet for long just commented on my social media account that he had bought a house using the non-bank mortgage scheme. He somewhat 'followed' what I explained him some years ago about the non-bank Islamic mortgage I was researching. I am glad that someone was practicing the scheme that I investigated. 

In short, I could say some points. First, I hope my research is impactful and beneficial for our community. Second, what we are doing in our research may take time to be useful or utilized by society. Thus, we should not stop researching and investigating something beneficial for them. Third, we have to keep in mind that the benefit of our research must not only for the academia, but also for society. To be honest, they are the ones who need our research the most. A researcher must put humanity first, not other things, such as awards, citations, and material stuff; these are secondary.

Thanks for reading.

(first post in 2023). 

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