Three years ago, the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) introduced the Current Research in Malaysia (CREAM) Awards to academic journals published by various scholarly publishers in Malaysia.
The awards are given out to journals which have been showcasing noticeable performance and promising growth. It is also a recognition given to the publishers that have been maintaining quality publications, as well as executing successful strategies in continuing growing their scholarly journals.
The awards come in the form of cash incentive, allocated to each recipient to plan intermediate growth strategy that could elevate the quality of publications, and acquire more high-impact researchers to publish with the respective journal.
In its inaugural year, held at the Aseana Resort, Langkawi, journals published by Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Penerbit Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) were among the winners, each bagging between RM12,500 and RM25,000 of incentive.
Now, the screening for 2017 award winners will begin in a few months. The awards will be divided into three main categories:
- Journals indexed in Web of Science (based on Impact Factor and Quartile)
- Journals indexed in Scopus (based on Percentile and CiteScore)
- Potential Journals (journals also indexed in Scopus but with less score on Percentile and CiteScore as in category 2).
Eligible academic journals for the CREAM Awards will be chosen from over 100-long list of journals indexed by the Malaysian Citation Index (MyCite). MyCite is a bibliographic information portal established by the Malaysian Citation Centre (MCC) in 2011. These 100+ journals are among a total of over 500 estimated journals published in Malaysia and were indexed into MyCite after meeting a certain number of specified criteria.
The final winners are expected to be announced sometime in September or October 2017.