It gives me great happiness and satisfaction to send this message to souvenir of the CVCD 2022 as the Chairperson CVCD 2023. We were not able to conduct CVCD excellence awards on time from 2020 onwards due to the pandemic. CVCD 2020 award ceremony was held in 2022. We strived hard to catch up with lost time for CVCD excellence awards 2022 and we have just managed to do that within six months of completing year 2022.  Hopefully, CVCD excellence awards 2024 would be on time with no delays. It is important for us to do that because it is a much sought after competitive event across all the state universities in Sri Lanka. It gives all the national university academics to test their research and innovation achievements against their peers in the system. CVCD is also witnessing the number of academics from universities established during the  last 25 years winning awards competing with peers in older universities established more than 40 years back a good sign for the future of higher education in Sri Lanka.

 

CVCD during the last few years developed a rigorous evaluation scheme for these awards. CVCD went through a difficult and tortuous path the develop guidelines to exclude fake/predatory journal publications from evaluation. CVCD went one more step forward this year by deciding to disqualify the applicants for submitting applications with such journal publications from the final selection. It was fully functional this time than on all previous occasions under the able leadership of Senior Professor Nilanthi de Silva, Vice Chancellor University of Kelaniya and the team members Prof. T. Mangaleswaran and Prof. Sanjeewani Gingaddara Vice Chancellors of Vavuniya and Rajarata Universities. I feel very proud of this achievement on behalf of the entire academic community with integrity in the state university system. CVCD also believes that, this step will go down the history as the single most important decision to change the academic culture of the state university system up to date. CVCD believes that the quality assurance system and University Grant Commission would follow it up with strengthening the evaluation scheme for promotions in the future as fake /predatory publications, fake conferences and abstract publications have become a huge problem

for the academic integrity.

 

However, the CVCD also communicated with those identified applicants and gave them opportunities to submit evidence of peer review. If they did not submit despite several reminders, the applicants were disqualified.

 

CVCD excellence award is a once in life time award for an academic and hence in a way it would be seen as a pinnacle of a person’s career. CVCD is grateful to His Excellency the President Ranil Wickramasinghe for participation as the Chief Guest to confer the honours to award winners. It would be remembered by the academics who have worked very hard in their careers to win these awards as a glorious moment in their life.

 

None of the above would have been possible, if not for the guidance given by CVCD members, evaluation committees with librarians and academics who contributed for evaluations in different fields, secretary CVCD and staff members of Universities of Kelaniya and Ruhuna who supported the teams, all universities for supporting the process. I wish to thank all of them whole heartedly for doing so.I wish the CVCD excellence award ceremony every success.

Senior Professor Sujeewa Amarasena
Vice Chancellor
University of Ruhuna