Can universities solve society’s problems without publishing? The debate dividing scholars

It started, as so many arguments now do, with a post on X.

Dr Lawrence Muganga, Vice Chancellor of Victoria University Kampala, told his fellow academics, professors especially, that it was time to stop counting publications. He argued that in Uganda’s current context the obsession with publication counts is “almost immoral,” and a distraction from the real work of solving the country’s problems.

“We should stop counting publications and start building things,” Muganga wrote in a post on X. “We should be able to say, ‘This is how I am solving society’s problems,’ not how many publications I have put out there in journals, on the internet, or wherever else. What matters is the impact we make, not the number of papers we publish.”

It was a direct hit at one of academia’s most entrenched metrics and within hours, Uganda’s scholars, scientists, journalists and public commentators were arguing about it in public.

The Pushback: Can’t It Be Both?

The first serious challenge came from Jim Spire Ssentongo, a university philosophy teacher, who questioned the binary Muganga had set up. “Are the two mutually exclusive? Can’t it be both?” he asked. “Knowledge production is part of problem solving. Perhaps we should say that we need to do more than publishing, but not to give the impression that publication is unnecessary in problem solving.”

Muganga conceded the point but held his line on intent. “I agree, Prof,” he responded. “But such research should aim to create new knowledge that solves existing and anticipated problems, and to drive innovation or invention not merely to count publications or secure promotion.”

That distinction, publishing to solve problems versus publishing to advance a career, would end up running through nearly every contribution that followed.

The Realities of Academic Survival

For many in the system, the debate wasn’t abstract. It was about how careers are actually built.

“If you don’t publish you perish,” said Sabrina Kitaka, a Senior Lecturer at Makerere University. “Growth in academia is judged by how much you publish and thus comes down to how much research output you have.” She pointed to scale as much as principle: government funding now backs more than 1,300 research projects at Makerere alone, she said, “some of which are game changing.”

Dr Catherine Kyobutungi, Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center and a Joep Lange Chair at the University of Amsterdam, reframed the whole conversation as a resourcing problem rather than a values problem.

“Ugandan professors and academics have meagre resources to do research of any kind,” she wrote. “This argument addresses a symptom of systemic failure. Solutions cannot be created from air. Put the money on the table and then dictate what it should be used for. Academics are not magicians.”

It was a theme others would return to; that calling for “impact” without funding the conditions for impact risks shaming academics for a problem that isn’t theirs to fix alone.

“A Thesis on a Shelf Changes Nothing”

Still, a current of frustration with publishing-for-its-own-sake ran through many responses  particularly from outside the university gates.

“A thesis on a shelf changes nothing,” wrote X user Gabriel Katumba. “Knowledge only creates value when it becomes useful.”

Ojilong Solomon put it more bluntly, pointing to the gap between scholarly output and lived experience, “The average Ugandan farmer, teacher, or market vendor doesn’t know these publications exist, and they certainly aren’t benefiting from them. Their reality is unemployment, inflation, and weak institutions.”

Rubaasha Kajjaja took aim at a specific sector. “It is so shaming that professors spend a lot of time writing peer review papers with little translation of community benefit,” he wrote, pointing to Uganda’s National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), “Get to NARO, professors of agriculture presiding over malnourished animals and shrubs on several acres.”

Author Benard Mujuni argued the fix was structural. He said universities need research labs embedded in every college to convert findings into actual products and services. He pointed to the COVID-19 response as a model worth replicating. “All vaccines and healthcare interventions during COVID were a hybrid approach of private companies and academia,” he said. “This MUST be a standard practice for the knowledge economy we dream about.”

The Translation Problem

A second, more technical argument emerged alongside the “publish vs. build” framing it that the real failure isn’t too much research, but too little translation of research into use.

“In a knowledge economy, publications aren’t the problem,” argued Dr Arinaitwe Rugyendo, a media scholar. “They have findings and recommendations. The problem is translation and communication.”

He cited the aftermath of the Kiteezi landfill disaster, where he said a solution-oriented paper addressing the crisis was “suddenly pulled” from circulation — evidence, in his view, that the bottleneck is institutional, not academic.

Dr Paddy Kinyera framed it as a matter of sequencing rather than substitution. “We translate the publications into tangible outputs to society. Publications are meant to be ways of generating, curating, documenting, disseminating and spreading knowledge. How do we move from text to practice, without trashing the text?”

Gira Emmanuel pushed this furthest, arguing that publishing and “making” are not competing activities at all but stages of the same process. “Publishing is just the final stage in research,” he wrote.

“Researchers generate ideas, innovators utilize ideas to develop a product. Song writers write, producers and singers craft the final product. Let’s talk about how we can transform published papers into solutions, instead of thinking we can craft solutions from nothing.”

T.I. Mugaanire, a PhD researcher, added a commercial dimension. In the sciences, he said, “behind each publication is a filled patent,” and each patent represents a discovery with the potential to spin off jobs; provided the money is there to pursue it.

George Lugalambi, Executive Director of ACME Uganda, offered the debate’s tidiest summary of this position and said, “There is nothing more practical than a well thought-out theory.”

Don’t Ask Academia to Do Everything

A third group pushed back on the premise that academia should be reorganised around “impact” at all and warned against piling new expectations onto an already strained sector.

“You cannot separate academia and publication,” wrote Wakulira Mathias. “What you should call for is generating and publishing knowledge that is relevant, replicable and addresses the challenges at hand. Don’t give academia more roles than it is supposed to do. Don’t mix things.”

John Kemet agreed that the more useful target was partnership, not publishing itself. “Academia is driven by research. You should instead advocate for more meaningful collaborations between academia and industry partners, opening pathways for better knowledge and technology transfer through R&D. Publications are part of that; they address actual problems and gaps.”

Deus Kamunyu Muhwezi defended a category the debate had largely ignored – research with no immediate application at all. “There is a solid place for basic research at any potent scientific university,” he wrote. “This is basically research done for the sake of it. This assures research sovereignty and advances. It’s the real engine for innovation and independence.”

Eryenyu David framed the issue as cultural rather than structural, pointing to China’s research economy as a counter-example. “Chinese solve problems and put them into publication. It’s a problem of orientation. Publications serve critical and analytical skills that can be translated to problem analysis and solutions development. Do we challenge scientists to solve problems? Where is the room for them?”

Where the Money Goes

Several contributors steered the conversation toward the question underneath the question -funding and incentives.

Mayanja Ibrahim, a researcher, put it directly to Muganga. “Presence of publications is an indicator that knowledge is generated towards solving society’s problems. How much does the government of Uganda invest in research? What are the government’s priorities versus resource investment? If there is a mismatch, don’t expect magic.”

Kalugana Cirus raised a different concern about the integrity of the metric itself. “It’s possible for papers to be manipulated, so publication counts shouldn’t be a sole measure of academic success. One’s impact should be reflected in how much their work contributes to addressing real societal challenges.”

And from within Muganga’s own institution, Dr Joseph Tabula, Admissions Officer at Victoria University Kampala, suggested the debate pointed toward curriculum reform. “This must be a call to introduce a somewhat new curriculum to that particular academic level, just like we have done in other levels of education.”

The Unresolved Question

What the thread never quite settled and perhaps couldn’t is whether Uganda’s research culture has a production problem or a translation problem. Muganga’s critics largely agreed that publishing and impact are not opposites; his defenders largely agreed that publishing without funding, patents, or industry partnership is publishing into a void.

If there was a consensus, it sat closest to Andrew Tumusiime’s framing. He said publications matter “not only for development but also as a flashlight to existing gaps” useful, in other words, not as an end point, but as a map of the work still to be done.

Whether Uganda’s universities, research funders and government agencies act on that map remains the open question the debate leaves behind.