To be precise, how science could broadly benefits from expertise, skills, aptitude and talent of all worldwide researchers whatever their geography, resources, political system …..etc.

And how knowledge could be protected from vanishing when some conditions of the profession or resources are not suitable or not enough to its growth ?

By far, the best measure of research endeavours in developing countries is the quality of published journal articles by either independent or university researchers in the countries of interest. For example, the quality of journal articles published by researchers in India in recent years is very high.

Another measure to consider is the ranking of the journals that have published articles by researchers in developing countries.

Thank you James for your contribution; in fact articles quality is the first ranking factor for researchers. In India for example, there are inherited standards into serious universities and institutes, which is not the case into all less developed countries. For example into some Arabic countries, universal scientific standards are not often (or not yet) followed by universities/ institutes/ lab/ research centers, may be for sociological factors or may be for slow reconstruction and alphabetization processes after decolonization, or may be for non/less funding and may be all that mixed into non reliable political systems. So researchers could be confined into bad policies and running rules as well insufficient tools, and may be their effort and work couldn’t climb towards publications quality or impact factor’s journals. In that case what sort of measurable tool could be more right and equitable.

For example I relate my own experience not for the sake of comparison but for a real environment describing. i have followed (in my country) international studies standards in my former institute which was also a research center (the same in the lycee) where my professors and advisers were mostly from developed countries (Naturally they followed their know-how from universal teaching rules and programs content and couldn't be under any political or friendship influence) ; few years afterward (following hazardous political decisions), my institute falls down international standard and losses its research institute and school attributes, the nonresident professors returned to their countries and the institute was managed as any little department from any unknown university. The same story for the national research council ‘called haut commissariat a la recherche scientifique’ which lives only 6 years(1986-1992) consequent to incomprehensible political decisions, as result the national research system and policies breaks down as well the research centers running rules which were and are still following any serious scientific guidelines or protocols .. for many years..... These unstable and hazardous political decisions have negative impact on research and researchers’ work. I think that same unsteadiness or incompetence on decision systems could badly influence research in developing countries, and by far may be research works could vanish since researchers are demotivated and not stimulated for publishing and/or couldn't publish after confusion/or anarchy into their job;

Dear Ahed,

Even for promotion, it must follows skills and reliable research work published or recognized; this is part of a research culture. So how people could be interested by promotion out of this culture?

Yes, organizational problem from research projects planning is a very serious one. May be people conduct research without sufficient guidelines.

Into well established lab and countries, research projects are funded and supervised by governmental agencies following their academy of science planning and programs, and/or by private and industrial funds following technological and industrial improvements needs. How this is organized in Arabic countries??

Dear Ahed,

Thank you for your nice contribution. i think that some Arabic governments finance research without having any research planning or without knowing what research they need and who supervises it 'It is like a fashion or a vogue' . May be the problem resides into the governing competencies as nobody ignores that research is the core of any development. So if people conduct research only for the sake of ones intellectual interest,or for promotions or others interests, how could be protected new ideas or findings outside any supervising scheme??

I would like know the experience from other Arabian colleagues.

@Fairouz Bettayeb:

The first thing I learned as a young researcher is that research communities are small, often very small, depending on the research topic. For this reason, reviewers of submitted journal articles will more than likely be reviewed by someone who knows you or is familiar with your work.

In terms of acceptance of a journal article by anyone in a mainline research journal depends both on the content of the article and the trustworthiness of the researcher. As a researcher, it usually happens that you give experimental results or proofs of theorems to corroborate a new theory. As a reviewer of a journal article, it is very difficult to judge the validity of experimental results. In that case, trust comes into play in judging a work. On the other hand, if a journal article includes theorems and proofs to support a theory, the situation is much better both for the author and the reviewer. Either a proof makes sense (accept what is written) or not (reject what is written).

Research environment should be taken into account somehow. Also, we do have nice results from devoloping countries researchers, as we do have not so well results from reseachers coming from developed countries!!! Migration of researchers is a measure that could help to avoid the difference between researchers from developing and developed countries (quality unification which should be invariant to a researcher's country development level) . The key is cooperation! :)

Regards,

Ljubomir Jacic

@Ljubomir Jacić:

Good post. I agree with you. And RG provides an excellent platform for exchange of ideas and cooperation.

@James Peters, thanks. I do agree that RG is an excellent platform for this purpose!

Regards,

Ljubomir Jacic

@Ljubomir, very well said (38 minutes ago)! I agree with you.

I agree that researchers from developing nations are at a disadvantage, given that infrastructural and economic capacities may be compromised, especially with regard to research-related funding. Research programs in developed nations, given their momentum, do have a head start. However, all research begins with an idea. And i do not believe that ideas (and good ideas at that) can only be created by those in developed nations. The implementation of such ideas is a logistical, financial and resource-related endeavour. Raising or lowering the standard of the quality or output of research based on the economic standing of a nation may be fair, but may not help developing nations (and their researchers with their ideas) gain the momentum required to improve their research endeavours.

Unfortunately, the investment in technology in my country (Lebanon) is still in its infancy due to lack of financial resources and/or untrained staff. However, some private higher educational institutions and universities are investing heavily in technology and as a result they are creating a research culture in a way or another. That's why we usually purse our postgraduate studies in some developed countries such as France, USA and United Kingdom.

Dear professor Ali Tarhini,

Perhaps you will agree that the best technology is represented by pencil and paper. Strangely enough, the power of pencil and paper tencs to be discounted nowadays.

I know computers are useful, but it takes a person with simple tools to come up with novel expressions and representations of new ideas. You can see this in the drawings of Leonardo DaVinci.

Dear Professor Ahed Alkhatib,

Good post. Yes, starting with a hypothesis represented by key words and key phrases makes it possible to do meaningful searches with Google advanced search. Then it is possible to find helpful articles related to your research.

There is a trick you might try with Google advanced search:

http://www.google.ca/advanced_search

Click on

pdf file in the file type option. Then try

all these words: thesis

this exact word or phrase:

Then you will get a list of theses in pdf files that you can download.

Very good site.Thank you.

Dear Professor Ahed Alkhatib,

I agree that research tends to get its life from and to give life to society. Evidence of this can be seen in the ancient model of a researcher as a teacher, conversing with students. Originally, a monograph or an article was published by an author to give something (a discovery) to the community.

Thanks to all for the valuable comments;

I agree with you @Ljubomir Jacić, cooperation is the main purpose to highlight some research findings, since tools, staffs and environment could be lacking in many laboratories.

@James Peter thank you for the site, very interesting information. Well, research staffs are small into specific topics and maybe after a professional career we became familiar with each others, as we could meet up for example into congresses and conventions; so reviewers are naturally from the same research community and maybe papers could be reviewed by someone you knows us or is following one’s work.

Journal article acceptance depends on the editors running policies and the reviewer’s recommendations. You are right, when you said that the article content must be relevant from theory and/or experiments. As a reviewer I do not reject papers because I do think that more details and explanations from authors to the reviewers’ comments could improve paper’s content and clarity. And I believe that authors operate under a professorship and do have obtained submitting approval; and may be the paper needs only more arrangements or details. So rejecting a paper from its first examination could be none suitable scientifically and none adequate for the research team (authors and their affiliation) assessing, and as reviewers we do not have this qualification.

@Mohamed Ayaz, you said that my statement is not true; maybe it is not false too. I related a real story from research development functioning in my country, and the consequences of some inadequate political decisions on research running and research staffs. I do think that may be same consequences do arise in some Arabic countries as most of them have followed same route after decolonization. @Ali Tarhini said that is still in its infancy, but private higher institutions and universities are going on technology investment in his country; and that is good!! May be other countries are doing same… I do think that (in my country) as political authorities have decided to perform full arabization (of education and higher education from may be 1986/87) obliged professors from European countries and others to return home. And as the system was still in its early development with no sufficient professorships and running staffs (even in Arabic countries), this could created immediate anarchy and confusion into research development policies and running rules 'still to nowadays', and may be research development could obey to harmful and incompetent political direction instead of universal scientific rules.

@Hansika Kapoor i totally agree with your post, and I thank you for your contribution.

Dear Mohamed, I do not mind your comment and it doesn’t hurt me ‘why so??’ I do thank you for your contributions. Well, in gulf Arab countries for cause of internal competencies absence, foreigners are administrating research with universal policies (it was same in my country 2 decades ago), and that is good!!

Unfortunately in my country research is no more ruled with good laws and good staffs and may be good chiefs with the paradox of many good researchers and competencies inside the country and outside it. Various bureaucracies, dogmatic and doctrinal interferences from political issues do not following any scientific and serious scheme but may be to much closed benefits (or friendship profits).

In recent years universities are encouraged to work with French laboratories for the sake of doctoral thesis issue, so teachers used to work with French laboratories subjects and students perform the French research projects. Few years following the end of the scholarship (18 months in France with an Algerian funding), the doctoral dissertation is organized into a national university generally with no supervision or reviewing from the French lab . After the thesis no official collaborative work is organized. And many new doctors do not perform any research project following their thesis….

For the case of professional researchers, authorities asked for research project ideas ’detenteurs de projets’, but when the project idea is submitted no response follows it. This notion is no comprehended, as people are affiliated to governmental research labs and centers which means that are organized under a national program!! But this program is not understood and may be do not has any real existence; Many researchers do not know for what work they are asked for , and many others couldn’t perform any serious research and in some cases they are obliged by their affiliation to stop their research even if results are interesting!!

I think a cooperation scheme with worldwide visiting professors and researchers with an open access to private universities and schools could be more beneficial. And maybe could remove any form of interference into research decision and practice in my country.

Is it the same scheme from others Arab countries??

By the question if same scheme occurs in Arab countries, I mean if all Arab countries were asked to follow any approach into their research development system.

For example my country was under French colonialism for a century and 32 years. After liberation, government and educative systems were totally under French working rules and speaking language for many years. The educative system was partly public and private (the private scheme was under French ministry of education until 1976). The higher education system was public with universities and engineering schools schemes and very few research centers. Until 1987-88 , Grand Lycées, engineering schools, and scientific and medical universities teachers’ were at 80% from many European countries, Russia, USA, Canada, Latin America, …. ‘named les coopérants techniques’, (added to a very small number of Algerian doctorates).

A first research council was created few years after the end of the French nuclear essays in Algerian desert by 1971, this council ended his mission by 1983. And a new research council system emerged in 1986 focused on technological studies and mastery.

Anyway, arabization of the education and the administration systems was developed in parallel through teachers from Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. When government decided full arabization, ‘coopérants techniques’ ended their mission. Scientific Algerian people skilled in Arab language scientific terminology were very few and scientific professionals from Arab countries were not sufficient in number and not sufficiently skilled too.

After this sudden political decision ‘may be following any regional or international pressure’, education and higher education systems fall down, and the research council was suppressed in 1992 following this decision. 16 years later a new kind of research council is set in 2008 at a nearest bureaucratic scheme, education and higher education policies continue to be same as 16 years before with a little overture for doctorate diploma via French laboratories but without any significant cooperation between French and Algerian laboratories only the one for doctorate preparation under Algerian funding and usually below French research subjects.

So the Algerian experience from international system towards an Arabian system could give significant insights of the research policy from Arab countries.

So, could Arabian colleagues tell us research and development experience of their countries, in the purpose to correlate different experiences and understand what is asked to this region of the world in term of research strategy.

Thanks to all.

@Fairouz Bettayeb:...

I think a cooperation scheme with worldwide visiting professors and researchers with an open access to private universities and schools could be more beneficial.

Good post. With RG, we have an instance of virtual visiting professors. The exchanges and papers and books and datasets available via RG is astonishing and reaches to all corners of the globe.

@James, I agree. RG is great as a platform exchanging ideas, opinions, results and Q&As from multiple point of views.

@Fairouz, the story of your education system is very interesting, and you were quite frank in telling it. Here in Thailand we have a rather different situation, since Siam (the former Thailand) has never been under direct control of a foreign power. The education system has therefore evolved out of the old temple school system, where Buddhist monks taught the pupils living near the temples. Monks are highly respected in Thai society, and the teachers of today have inherited this respect. At universities many of them are educated abroad (USA, Australia, UK, NZ, India, Germany). The National Research Council focuses on applied research for the benefit of the people. The limitations are obvious if it comes to equipment available only from abroad. It's not always the money, though, that counts in measuring research endeavours. We should not underestimate the ingenuity of people, who are in need.

James,

I totally approve that RG turn out to be an excellent platform for sharing knowledge, expertise and ideas, but it doesn’t rise to cooperation stage yet. I hope that reel cooperation schemes could be reorganized in my country as earlier, with a large mobility of teachers/researchers from abroad and vice verse. You know the fuse between different cultures and expertise is very useful for universities or research centers as well for science; since it has been proved that multicultural and international professional format give birth to satisfactory results as well for society progress and for science (anyhow, when no reel human exchange is organized, the society closed up on itself and declines). As result the University could run in a more ethical value without any closeness, as well inboard good scholars could give vocation abroad.

Michael,

You are right, as you said we should not underestimate the ingenuity of people, who are in need; the measuring of research endeavor couldn’t be same for rich and poor, inborn and older, ….. laboratories and countries belonging to them, each has his history, environment and tools. So for that reason we need to rethink the measuring system of global research effort for science and knowledge growth. May be many findings are dissimulated everywhere and couldn’t be known or couldn’t be published for weak funding or unknown names.

The experience in Thailand with teachers educated abroad is interesting. In my country there are also few numbers of teachers educated abroad, the majority are educated from national system with a number of doctorate from abroad ‘generally from France’. Most of people granted for higher abroad education during the 2-3 past decades in USA, Canada, England, Germany, France, Belgium, Russia, and other EU countries as well Japan, Chine and others, do not return inboard for ill social-professional conditions or for political issue, or also for arabization.

In fact, in my country there is a big problem with degrees equivalence, for example people with a PhD from USA or Eu, are positioned as the national one, and in some cases some degrees are not recognized or depressed. It is the real paradox with the higher education system of my country where government funds abroad degrees and do not recognizes them after !! or make them equal with the national system which has not same competencies and recognition as the well known worldwide universities... a crazy system!!! the same for the national system where ministry makes equal or depress dissimilar educational programs and contents....' my be the problem arises from arabisation'

Fairouz,

Excellent post! It may be that your observation that what is missing in the current RG platform is cooperation schemes suggests the possibility of a future structure to be considered for RG. A cooperation scheme might be possible, provided that such a scheme has a provision for open and closed seminars on topics of interest to some researchers. An open seminar could be built around the Socrates model, going round the proverbial table, so that each participant summarises what has been said by prceding participants. For a closed seminar, the discussion would limited to subscribers to the seminar. The closed seminar is important, since it would encourage more candid discussion of a topic.

agree that RG is a platform which gives us the idea of cooperation necessary among developed and researchers from underdeveloped countries.

Researchers from developing countries are at disadvantage at various levels from poor resources to educational opportunities so without this cooperation better work is difficult to produce.

@James, interesting idea on open and closed RG seminars, this could help to different cooperation schemes be discussed.

@Aniqa, i agree with you that developing countries suffer from lack of resources and equipments, and many times research works interrupt facing costly experimental setups. Without cooperation framework, interesting results/ideas could be waste or rob or corrupt by inadvertent third parts

The research endeavors of developing countries may be on a low scale due to options and avenues available in their countries budget towards these normally Science & Development segment... However all countries either small or big in terms of avenue have clearly understood that with investing on research they can never grow... other such countries other investing do not stop the arrival of newer technologies so that usage of newer facilities arises the need to level and evolve to better heights... Example Korea evolving to Scientific process of MASS TOOL manufacturing in INJECTION MOLDING was a threat to JAPAN in early 1990

Many Thank to all of you for your inspiring ideas and thoughts. The thread is still open to discussion. "De la discussion jaillie la lumiere";

In fact @Krishnan, all countries understand that investing in science and research financially and in skilled human resources, they could faster their development. However small countries, under developed or not developed, could face some resistance from some parties. and be delayed or stopped in their goals. This resistance could be under the form of cheating, corruption, stilling, destruction, administrative terror...etc...

But science serves all human not only a big or a small country, example a vaccine when found in a big or small country still be a big finding for human kind as well as any technology or tool which will end in all market places.

So is it time to perform real collaborative research which could be the only mean that could preserve science from any resistance like form, and in short help real development of small countries as well as big countries??

Never these can be measured in a same balance, just reverse these situations and you will see the output in real senses - may be a researcher giving good results with low facilities can give wondering results if placed in a high rated laboratory - truly speaking in developing countries much of the time of a researcher gets engaged/consumed in research management rater than doing real researches? .

It is true that research endeavors of developing and developed countries can't be the same due to issues mentioned in the explanation of this thread. One of the core issues is, availability and accessibility of required data sets to conduct research as well as lack of supervision.

I concur with all contributors that RG is an excellent platform that can be benefited for measuring research endeavors and also to facilitate researchers of developing countries. Please see thread in the similar context:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_there_volunteers_to_be_advisors_if_not_supervisors_for_PhD_students_of_developing_countries?_tpcectx=profile_questions

Now the question, how to measure that is focal point of this question. I think for that modalities needs to be worked out with the consultation of RG administration and senior researcher who exist on RG.

Developing countries remain constantly in that state of existence and category merely by political reasons. The political system of such countries is run by people who have no vision and intellectual insights as to how science, education, research and development of knowledge are important vehicles to the growth and development of their society, but in contrary they constantly dream and act in keeping their society away from knowledge in the ship of ignorance and darkness as a means of lasting political power. International scholastic communications and visiting research and professorial partnerships are severely limited and in most cases purposely blocked. That is why we see considerable numbers of learnt members of such countries leave their countries and we can therefore say, we measure research endeavors of such countries by the numbers of learnt members leave their country for better academic life.

Thank you Kuldeep, Ali Abdil, Asmat and Dejenie for your responses.

Agree with you Kuldeep that " in developing countries much of the time of a researcher gets engaged/consumed in research management rater than doing real researches". This is a very heavy question from bureaucracy scheme and its incompetency. Researchers spend most of their time to try let understanding bureaucrats for their needs of equipments, tools, documentation, space organization, project managements etc ... Many times people who manage research are not scientists or are not sufficiently skilled and competent ones.

Asmat i endorse your statement "One of the core issues is, availability and accessibility of required data sets to conduct research as well as lack of supervision". So the research and researcher evaluating tools couldn't be same in developed and developing countries; how to measure the research endeavor still be focal point of this question. Hope that RG; could be a helpful platform not only for Phd students, but also for real collaboration schemes.

Dejenie you resumes the real state of research in developing countries : "politicians and the political system constantly dream and act in keeping their society away from knowledge in the ship of ignorance and darkness as a means of lasting political power ", so " International scholastic communications and visiting research and professorial partnerships are severely limited and in most cases purposely blocked".

Consequently " we can therefore say, we measure research endeavors of such countries by the numbers of learnt members leave their country for better academic life. "

On a practical note...The researcher is blessed to be born in a developed country.... else they can earnestly try changing the existing to become blessed (if not) move to blessed...

@ Fairouz Bettayeb,

Well, It is an open secret that researchers from developing countries find it difficult in publishing in very high standard journals because of various reasons. So, in order to measure the research endeavors made by a researcher in a developing country, we could develop an empirical formula incorporating the research infrastructure of country, academic rigorous, percentage of GDP invested in R & D of the country apart from the usual things like impact factor, publications and so on. This will give a very reasonable estimate of the actual contribution made by any researcher of a particular country considering the kind of environment he works in.

I can only make an opinion from personal experience. When we were looking for a journal to publish an article,  I found out a very similar work as the one I did in Latin America. However, when I submitted the work it was immediately rejected (less than one hour!) because it was too “local”. While our work was similar as another one published in the same journal, ours was taken as “local” and the other one was published. Perhaps it had a European context and therefore represented a more international interest? Or maybe we just failed at putting it in the right context, however, I think this last problem could have been solved with peer-review and a better contextualization.

The needs of a developing country is mostly towards fulfilling the basic needs of Food, Housing, Health, Education, Amenities  etc.,

There the development research of a country should be more focused to groom in-house talent to be oriented towards such research.

This research activity can be added along with newer evolving technologies so that the development becomes updated with the world stream.

Dear Prashant, i totally agree with you that "the usual things like impact factor, publications and so on" couldn't be an equitable formula for every environment. And then "an empirical formula incorporating the research infrastructure of the  country, academic rigorous, percentage of GDP invested in R & D," in addition to  the percentage of corruption into academic and research policies and practices of each country.

Dear Karim, thank you for your inputs. In fact international journals prefer new or updated data 'as part of the competitive market of publications'. Journals need to be innovative and competitive to survive and keep interests from the worldwide scientific communauty. May be known authors or institutions they belong to could be considered by some journals as good indicator from the paper content. However when the paper is of good quality, these journals publish it out of author's name or institution interest. In fact local journals should be encouraged to improve their content and visibility, be part of some regional attention and be competitive. May be international journals haven't  entire capacity to absorb all research works of the planet,  Sure that the scientific publication market need to be expanded by serious and competitive regional and local journals.

You are right dear Krishnan , developing countries have research interests more focused on their basic needs,  with the newer evolving technologies, may be research there could impact novel methods or tools that haven't been identified earlier. Mostly the basic questions from food, lodging, health etc.. have been resolved in developed countries with previous tools and methods, so with the evolving technologies, may be new things could be added

Dear @Fariouz and friends, I think that the following research might enrich this discussion:Gearing Academic Research Endeavors towards Achieving Sustainable Development in Third World Countries !

http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/files/51656/11634341025Khasawneh_Owais_Malkawi-EN.pdf/Khasawneh_Owais_Malkawi-EN.pdf

Thank you dear @Ljubomir for the link. Very informative and quiet focused on R&D v.s industry connection;

Yet R&D in most third countries expect the BRIC has at 99% any direct connection with local or global industries. The industrial map in these countries is very poor, practically local industries are mainly traditional or hand made ' ie.artisanale' or some food/clothes industries not competitive at the extent to use R&D policies. The global industries 'petrochemical, construction, water, transport, genie civil, telecom... 'working in these countries are mainly marketing companies. May be some global industries could be interested by some researches but without really investing in them; However research policies there are still simply slogan, and or oriented for some foreign universities interests

The big problem the developing country researchers have been increasingly facing in carrying out quality research and bringing out papers in reputed international journals published by some of the big multinational publishing companies. Although these publishing houses talk much about providing equal opportunities to all authors, irrespective of countries whether developed or developing, and wider dissemination of knowledge they actually resort to highly discriminatory practices against the researchers belonging to the southern part of the globe by rejecting their papers citing reasons like “although your paper (note that dealing with problems encompassing the part of the world where more than 85% of earth’s population lives) is of some interest, it is too specialized for our journal” and by charging high submission fees that unfortunately the institutions/institutes of the developing countries do not provide even though there are generous provisions for affording travel grants for presenting papers in seminars and conferences in foreign countries. However, paper presentations are of very little consequence unless the final products are culminated in publications in respectable journals. Consequently, the devoted researchers are left with very few outlets for our research and have to submit our high-quality papers too to a few journals with low impact factors that do not yet charge a submission fee. Many researchers do not like to go abroad but want to contribute to the society by publishing quality research in respectable journals. We feel extremely deprived and some of us in my circuit have in fact stopped carrying out research completely. I hope that one day will soon come when good sense would prevail and dedicated researchers will be able to work peacefully without feeling deprived anywhere!

Unfortunately dear Sarbajit,  researchers at worldwide scale are not with same potentials and same opportunities, but all should carry quality research and publish in high quality journals. The discrimination between the standards of the working places and countries, couldn't let researchers from developing countries be more productive or be more helpful for human knowledge innovation, even if some of them are gifted or with very high IQ. Research in developing countries seems to be a hidden game for powerful labs. Researchers there are counted as second or third class of intellectuals and citizens too, but their results are not ignored and sometimes are competed for. However  the researcher's professional and social life is counted to be from the poorer.