I knew of no institutional misconduct. This prompted a question: Is the instrument flawed, or is something deeper happening that standard procedures can no longer detect?

I don't lean toward rejecting the RI² method. Instead, I want to accept its signal and investigate what system behaviors might create this outcome, not through linear blame, but through systemic understanding.

I've submitted research 54 times to academic journals, a number that includes every stage from desk rejections to eventual publications. Of those, 10 were accepted: Six in non-Scopus indexed journals, three in Scopus Q2 and one in Scopus Q1. These weren't passive submissions. They involved years of effort, including unreturned reviews, multiple resubmissions, technical formatting and strict ethical compliance.

My doctoral research and growing exposure to system dynamics have taught me that while structures determine behaviors, unintended effects are embedded in the models; structures don’t always produce what they intend. A system can be entirely compliant on paper, but if its feedback loops are overloaded, misaligned or tightly compressed, it can still produce unintended outcomes. In this case, I believe the red and yellow flags signal systemic saturation, not simply ethics violations.

The saturation itself stems from multiple pressures layered onto universities: Rankings, funding eligibility, publication quotas and promotion requirements. Each adds to the burden. When they converge, they produce what system dynamics calls a stock, or Institutional Saturation Point, the structural accumulation of performance pressure that becomes increasingly difficult to manage. Alongside that structural overload is a human consequence: System Fatigue, which is the exhaustion experienced by faculty and students expected to deliver high output under tight constraints.

From that saturation emerges several interacting loops. In most Indonesian universities, pressure to publish is not just common but structural. Rankings are influenced by volume. Promotion requirements are tied to publication output. Faculty absorb these demands, then pass them down to graduate students. This cycle feeds itself (R1: Publication Pressure Loop).