In partnership with Times Higher Education, Covidence gathered a group of senior university leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region to tackle one of higher education’s most pressing challenges: how do institutions move from fragmented, isolated research activity to scalable systems that drive genuine, lasting impact?
Here are the five defining themes from the conversation.
1. Research Excellence Starts With People, Not Tools
It is tempting to treat research improvement as a procurement challenge – find the right platform, deploy it widely, and watch outputs rise – but the leaders on this panel were unequivocal: the human dimension of research is where the real work begins.
Professor Michael Joseph S. Diño, Director of the Research Development and Innovation Center at Our Lady of Fatima University in the Philippines, opened by framing his institution’s strategy around what he calls the “Three Ps”: people, process, and product. For Diño, the order is deliberate. “Success is 90% human resource and 10% physical resource,” he said. “If you’re going to provide the tools and techniques to the research center, it’s not actually enough.”
“We need to really embed culture into our human investments. We need to change the mindset of people — and that includes workload allocation, promotion criteria and incentives within the university.”
— Professor Michael Joseph S. Diño, Our Lady of Fatima University
This reframes the challenge for executive leaders. The question is not only which systems to invest in, but whether institutional structures with promotion pathways, workload models and recognition criteria, are genuinely designed to support and reward research. Without that foundation, even the most sophisticated tools will underperform.
2. From Fragmentation to Integration: Building Systems That Speak to Each Other
Across APAC, one of the most persistent barriers to research impact is fragmentation – where valuable work happens within departments but never connects across them. Daniel Lee, Director of Research and Sustainability at Sunway University in Malaysia, described this as one of the core challenges his institution works to address through what he terms an “IMPACT” framework.
The “I” in that framework stands for integration, and Lee was direct about why it matters: “What happens in the level above us may not be something that I know is happening in the level below us. There are a lot of good research and publications happening within the same ecosystem, but these are often not being shared.” To address this, Sunway University actively invests in systems, and even develops its own, to ensure that research data and outputs are visible and connected across the institution.
“We ensure that the systems we procure can integrate all the different workflows that we have.”
— Daniel Lee, Sunway University
Lee also made a point that resonates strongly for any institution weighing up technology investment: the decision-making lens for any new tool should be whether it can be used by everyone, including students, researchers, academic staff, administrators, and management alike. Tools that serve only one layer of the institution create new silos rather than breaking them down.
3. Ditch the KPI Mindset — Build a Research Journey Instead
One of the webinar’s most candid moments came when the conversation turned to performance measurement. The question put to Fadzil Hassan, Dean for Postgraduate and Research at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) in Malaysia, was blunt: what does it actually take to move an institution from fragmented, isolated research practices toward something more standardised and scalable?
His answer was equally direct. “The easier way to impose something is through KPI,” he acknowledged. “So you impose a KPI, everyone needs to follow that – but is it the answer? I would say no. It’s not going to sustain. It’s going to be a short-term [fix].” The risk is real: when academics are told to hit publication targets or secure a set number of grants by year-end, they may comply, but genuine research culture does not follow.
“It is very important early on to make everyone understand that it is a journey rather than a short-term deliverable at the end of the year.”
— Fadzil Hassan, Universiti Teknologi Petronas
At UTP, this philosophy is operationalised through an 80/20 model: 80% of research activity is aligned to the university’s three grand challenges (energy security, sustainable living, and regenerative futures), while 20% is deliberately left open for researchers to follow their own intellectual curiosity. “There’s a fine line,” Hassan admitted, “because we need to ensure that the university is moving in a unified manner, but at the same time we also give freedom.” It is a model worth studying for any leader trying to balance institutional strategy with academic autonomy.
4. AI in Research: Adopt Responsibly, or Risk the Consequences
No conversation about the future of research could sidestep artificial intelligence, and the panellists brought nuance to a topic that often attracts either uncritical enthusiasm or reflexive caution. The consensus was clear: AI adoption in research is not optional, but it must be governed carefully.
Professor Diño described Our Lady of Fatima University’s approach as “hybrid artificial intelligence” – a framework designed to maximise the benefits of AI while minimising its risks. His institution developed its AI policy through systematic literature reviews and stakeholder surveys, arriving at what he calls the “CRUSH” factors: the institution avoids deploying AI for tasks that are Critical, Risky, Unethical, Sensitive, or that are “typically done by Humans.”
Julie Brown, Principal Consultant Systematic Reviewer at Covidence, brought a specific and sobering lens to the AI debate from her field of evidence synthesis. “Fast doesn’t always equate to quality,” she cautioned, noting that in health research especially, inaccurate outputs can have direct consequences for clinical treatment and policy. She pointed to the Responsible Use of AI in Evidence Synthesis (RAISE) Guidelines as an important standard, and flagged a growing and very real problem:
“We’ve just seen a whole flurry of publications around hallucinated references. We need to be very, very cognizant of work that’s being produced and that we’re reading and integrating into our practice and research.”
— Dr. Julie Brown, Covidence
The message for university leaders is not to slow down AI adoption, but to ensure it is scaffolded by proper ethics frameworks, governance structures and, critically, the kind of critical thinking skills that no AI tool can substitute.
5. The Measure of Research Is Its Impact on Society — Not Just Its Citation Count
The final theme brought the conversation to its most important destination: what is research ultimately for? Across all speakers, there was a clear and deliberate shift away from publication metrics as the primary currency of research success, toward something more demanding – demonstrable, real-world impact.
Fadzil Hassan shared a formative memory that captures this shift powerfully. When pitching for a government research grant in Malaysia, the evaluation panel did not ask how many publications the project would generate. Instead, they asked what the research would mean for the “machi and pachi” – a Malay phrase for the elderly residents of rural villages. “I think it’s very important,” Hassan said. “At UTP, whenever we talk about seed funding, we already lay out the plan of where the research work will end up – which particular community is going to get the benefit, which particular society, which particular industry.”
Daniel Lee reinforced this with equal conviction, declaring that “gone are the days” when fundamental research alone was sufficient. “It is time now that we rise above fundamental research to look at translational research. That is where funding is, where impact can really be articulated, and where lives can really be transformed.”
“Technology matters – including AI – but technology alone is not enough. Research culture matters, governance matters, transparency matters, strong systems also matter.”
— Shah Satini, Covidence
Shah Satini, Covidence’s Regional Sales Director for APAC, had set this frame at the opening of the session, drawing on observations from the THE Asia University Summit earlier in the year. It is a frame that is held throughout the entire conversation: the institutions that will lead on research impact are those that treat culture, governance, and systems as equally important as any individual tool or technology.
How Covidence Supports Institutions on This Journey
The themes from this webinar – people-first culture, integrated systems, sustainable governance, responsible AI, and translational impact – are precisely the challenges that Covidence is built to address. As a not-for-profit organisation and the primary platform for Cochrane authors, Covidence supports more than 480 universities, medical institutions, and research organisations globally across health, education, engineering, policy, and beyond.
Covidence helps institutions build the infrastructure behind research excellence: structured, transparent, and scalable workflows; tools that support collaboration across faculties, disciplines, and institutions; and a research insight dashboard that give leadership the visibility they need to allocate resources, track progress, and identify opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration.
As Dr. Brown put it during the webinar, the institutions that lead on research are not simply buying tools; they are reimagining their research ecosystems. Covidence exists to support exactly that reimagining: building local expertise on campus, standardising evidence synthesis methodology, and helping teams work consistently at scale without sacrificing quality.
If today’s themes resonate with the challenges your institution is navigating, let’s have a conversation.
Get in touch with our team to find out how Covidence can support your institution’s research goals.
Featured Speakers
- Julie Brown, Principal Consultant Systematic Reviewer, Covidence
- Shah Satini, Regional Sales Director APAC, Covidence
- Professor Michael Joseph S. Diño, Director, Research Development and Innovation Center, Our Lady of Fatima University (Philippines)
- Fadzil Hassan, Dean for Postgraduate and Research, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (Malaysia)
- Daniel Lee, Director of Research and Sustainability, Sunway University (Malaysia)
- Xiuting Chong, Senior Consultant, Times Higher Education (Chair)
