P. D. Hien
Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety
Introduction
Following Japan, over the last decades South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and recently, China, have been successful in catching up with European and North American front runners in the world arena and global economy. Science and education, especially higher education, have been a driving force behind building the capacity of these globally competitive economies in East Asia.
In higher education, research universities play a crucial role in training high-level specialists, scientists, and researchers, who make up a pool of knowledge on which the country’s capability for technology adaptation (mainly for developing countries) and innovation is built-up (United Nations, 2005). Research Universities are expected to produce cutting edge science and technology and publishing research products in refereed prestigious international journals is a requisite for assuring their quality. Therefore, international publications are among key criteria used in ranking the world-class universities (THES, 2004; Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2005).
Vietnam has adopted free market policies only recently after many decades of war and the centrally planned Soviet system. It is obvious that in higher education Vietnam lags behind neighboring countries like Thailand and Malaysia, and has a long way to go to reach the current levels of Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. In this context, the comparison of research performance of East Asian countries based on international publications (IP) will help reveal regional trends that Vietnam may need to consider in reforming its Higher Education system (Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2005).
Hereafter, IPs only refers to articles in peer-reviewed Thomson-Reuters ISI-cited journals (http://isiwebofknowledge.com). By using the ISI database, an overall picture can be obtained about the research performance of eleven East Asian countries and territories with regard to the volume and growth rate of IPs, citations, and the contributions from domestic versus foreign authors. The amounts of IPs or citations calculated for one million population were used for characterizing the national science capability (NSC), as well as for revealing the possible relationship between research output and socioeconomic development.
As a case study, the comparison of research performance of top universities in Vietnam and Thailand will reveal the distance that Vietnam universities still have to go in order to be recognized as achieving some regional standard.
National science capability
Table 1 shows the volume and growth rate of IPs for 11 countries and territories in East Asia in 2002 and 2008. China and Japan, the two most populous countries in East Asia, occupy first and second place, respectively. To make the data in Table 1 comparable across countries, we will consider the total IPs per one million people in the population, which is called the national science capability (NSC).
The NSC of each East Asian country is growing at a roughly constant rate, as shown in Fig. 1. Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia have been growing rather rapidly, at about 16% annually. However, the NSC of Vietnam remains 6.5 and 9.5 times lower than Thailand and Malaysia, respectively. In the meantime, it is still three times as high as Indonesia’s and since 2004 has exceeded the Philippines’s, which maintains an annual growth rate of only 3-4%. China has developed the fastest with above 20%/year. It has overcome Thailand and is about to catch up with Malaysia in terms of NSC. In contrast, the most advanced economies in the region with high numbers of IPs have maintained lower annual growth rates, i.e. South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore: about 10%, Hong Kong: 7% and Japan: 1%.
Table1 Total IPs and growth rates of 11 countries and territories in East Asia in 2002 and 2008
2002 2008 IP growth,
%/year
China 31721 94766 20
Japan 59253 64039 1,3
Korea 14948 29114 11
Taiwan 10610 20122 11
Singapore 3863 6661 10
Hong Kong 2862 4221 7
Thailand 1547 3904 16
Malaysia 901 2658 16
Vietnam 324 806 16
Indonesia 400 668 8
Philippines 398 607 3,5
In terms of NSC, Singapore occupies the first place in the region, about 30, 170 and 530 times higher than Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, respectively. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan are next after Singapore. Such large gaps in NSC are observed not only between the regional top and bottom performers, but also between different groups of countries in East Asia (Fig. 1). To a great extent, these gaps reflect different levels of socioeconomic development in the region. In fact, within East Asia NSC correlates strongly with per capita GDP and even more strongly with UN’s human development index, hdi (UNDP, 2006), which combines normalized measures of per capita GDP, literacy, educational attainment, and life expectancy (Fig. 2). This finding shows the crucial role of research in building the national innovation capability that is relevant not only for technologically advanced economies but also for developing countries relying mainly on adaptation of imported technology (United Nation, 2005).
Figure1. National Science Capability (NSC) of East Asian countries determined as the total International Publications (IPs) per one million population.
Figure 2. NSC strongly correlate with per capita GDP (left) and even more strongly with hdi, (right). Data for 2004.
The quality of research
The NSC defined above does not capture the quality of IP that varies drastically among ISI-cited journals (impact factor) as well as within a journal, as shown by the citations of IPs in the ISI database. While caution is needed when using citations for comparing the quality of IP or researcher of different fields, the average or total citations can be regarded as the most reliable criterion for comparing the quality of research products from institutions and countries dealing with multidisciplinary research. Citations in peer-reviewed journals are considered one of the most reliable indicators of national science capacity (King, 2004).
The average number of citations can be obtained from the total citations that are available from the ISI database for countries with research output of less than 10,000 IPs/year. For countries producing more than this threshold (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China) the average citations were computed by random sampling across the database with the relative standard errors of less than 5%. The results are shown in figure 3.
To obtain an indicator that is able to capture both the quantity and quality of IPs, the NSC defined above based on the number of IP (NSC-IP) should be multiplied by the average citations in order to obtain the total citations per one million population (NSC-citation). Within East Asia NSC-citation correlates with per capita GDP and hdi similarly well as NSC-IP does. Thus, both NSC-IP and NSC-citation can be regarded as good proxies for socioeconomic development. However, the use of NSC-citation as a development indicator is inconvenient because it varies with the date of access to the ISI database.
The average citations of East Asian countries in Fig. 3 do not reflect the levels of science and technology development in the region, unlike NSC-IP (Fig. 1). IPs from China, Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea are, on average, less cited than those from Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. The analysis of the origins of authors contributing to the IPs in the next section will explain this matter.
Figure 3 Average citations of East Asian countries for ISI articles
published in 2004. Access to ISI database: August 2009.
Domestic versus foreign authors.
The NSC-IP and NSC-citation discussed above did not take into account the fact that a great number of authors contributing to the IPs are foreigners. The statistics in figure 4 derived from the built-in tool “Analyse” in the ISI database show that the proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors varies from about 30% for China, Taiwan, and Japan to 218% for Philippines.
IPs of countries with weak science capability such as Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam rely heavily on foreign authors, most of whom are from North America, Western Europe and Japan. In this case, a large number of IPs are done essentially in these advanced countries through bilateral scientific cooperation or fellowship of young scientists from the less developed countries. As shown in the next section, these IPs are cited much more than those done by domestic authors using much weaker resources, especially in research fields that require sophisticated laboratory facilities. This explains the fact found in Fig. 3 that Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand rank ahead of China, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan in terms of average citations..
Meanwhile, IPs from advanced East Asian countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and China are dominated by domestic authors.
The proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors results from the interplay of the two trends, namely the strengthening of both internal resources/infrastructure (human and material) and external cooperation in science and technology. Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have kept the growth rates in both efforts steady so that the foreign-to-domestic proportions did not change over the period 2002-2008 (Fig. 4). For Japan, Singapore, and especially Philippines international cooperation have been expanding faster resulting in the rise of the proportions. Conversely, for Malaysia and China domestic research infrastructures seem to have developed faster than international cooperation.
Thus, besides the volume and quality (citation) of IPs a third dimension is revealed on the extent of self-reliance in scientific research that reflects the real strength of a country in science and technology and, on the other hand, brings benefits directly to the country’s socioeconomic development through the linkage of research institutions with business and industries.
Figure 4. The proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors in
IPs across 11 East Asian countries and territories
In general, it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly whether an IP is carried out mostly in the country using domestic resources or essentially done abroad. In this study, the address of the corresponding author available from the ISI data base will be used to distinguish between the two IP categories. This approach is justified by the two reasons. First, it is obvious if all co-authors contributing to the article are domestic. In the case of Vietnam, this sub-category accounts for about two-thirds of articles with domestic corresponding authors. Second, a sharp difference of citations of the two IP categories is observed especially in the case of IPs from less advanced countries (see the next section).
The above approach can also be applied to assess the strength of various domestic research fields of a country. As an example, Table 2 shows the case of Vietnam. In many research fields, especially those of great importance for socioeconomic development, such as medicine and agriculture, most IPs are done essentially by foreign authors. Conversely, mathematics and theoretical physics, which require little investment in research infrastructure, are the two strongest research fields not only in the amount of IPs but also in self-reliance from foreign authors.
R&D performance of top Vietnamese universities
To see what position Vietnam’s top universities occupy in the world’s higher education in terms of research performance, we can look to Thailand’s top universities Chulalongkorn and Mahidol for comparison. Chulalongkorn University was among the top 200 world-class universities in 2005, 2007, and 2008 according to the ranking by The Times Higher Education Supplements (THES).
Table 2 Research fields in Vietnam with foreign and indigenous corresponding authors, 2008.
Research field Indigenous corresp. authors Foreign corresp. authors Foreign/
indigenous
Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics 95 21 0.22
Physics, Optics; Applied Physics 52 37 0.71
Plant Sciences; Cell Biology; Develop. Biology 6 6 1.00
Engineering 14 20 1.43
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health 14 25 1.79
Chemistry, Analytical; Electrochemistry; Instrumentation 17 35 2.06
Fisheries 4 10 2.50
Agriculture, Agronomy 7 25 3.57
Zoology 3 13 4.33
Immunology; Infectious Diseases; Pediatrics; Parasitology; Tropical Medicine 14 62 4.40
Geosciences, Geography, Multidisciplinary 4 21 5.25
Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology 2 14 7.00
Ecology; Environmental Sciences; Toxicology 4 30 7.50
All Vietnam 301 505 1.68
R&D activities in Thailand are performed mainly in universities, which account for more than 95% of the country’s total IP output, compared with only 55% contribution from universities in Vietnam. Besides Chulalongkorn and Mahidol Universities, Thailand has other prestigious universities such as Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, Prince Songkla, Thammasat, and Asian Institute of Technology, each producing a few hundred IPs annually.
The aggregate output of the four top universities in Vietnam (Hanoi National University, Hanoi University of Technology, Hanoi University of Education, and Ho Chi Minh City National University) are compared with those of Chulalongkorn and Mahidol Universities in Thailand using statistics of 2004 in Table 3 and 2007 in Table 4.
Table 3 International publications of some top R & D organizations in Vietnam and Thailand in 2004. Access to the ISI data base in December 2008 ...
Total IP Average CN Domestic corresponding author Foreign corresponding author
IP Average CN IP Average CN
Four top universities of Vietnam 80 5.5 36 3.6 44 7.2
VAST (Vietnam’s Academy of Science and Technology) 83 4.3 27 2.8 56 5.1
All Vietnam 403 8.1 102 3.7 301 9.5
Chulalongkorn University 416 9.4 295 7.1 121 15.3
Mahidol University 465 11 320 8.3 145 16.9
Table 4 International publications of some top R & D organizations in Vietnam and Thailand in 2007.
Total IPs Domestic
corresponding
author Percent domestic
Four top Universities of Vietnam 162 99 61%
Vietnam’s Academy of Science and Technology 98 51 52%
All Vietnam 692 234 34%
Chulalongkorn University 709 569 80%
Mahidol University 707 515 73%
The IPs from Vietnam’s top universities has increased rapidly in recent years and has doubled from 2004 to 2007. Despite the fast growth, Vietnam’s top universities still have ten times fewer IPs than Chulalongkorn or Mahidol University. Each of these universities published more than the total number of IPs from all of Vietnam’s research institutions. IPs from Thailand’s universities were also cited more often than those from Vietnam with average citations of about 9.4 - 11 for Thailand vs. 4.1-6.9 for Vietnam (access to the ISI database in December 2008).
There is a remarkable detail in column 3 of Table 3, where the average citations of the five top Vietnamese research institutions (4.3 – 5.5) are less than that of the whole country (8.1). This happens because the IPs associated with the remaining institutions were dominated by authors from advanced countries. For example, among 82 IPs on medical science in 2004, only 7 have Vietnamese corresponding authors.
Vietnamese corresponding authors account only for 25% of the total IP in 2004 and 34% in 2007. The average citation of IPs with domestic corresponding authors is also much lower than that of foreign corresponding authors, i.e. 3.7 vs. 9.5 for 2004 (Table 3).
In contrast, in the two Thailand universities, Thai corresponding authors account for 70% of the total IPs in 2004 (Table 3), and nearly 80% in 2007 (Table 4). Their average citations are also twice as high as that of Vietnam.
With the advancement of science and higher education of the country, both the proportion and quality of IPs with domestic corresponding authors are expected to increase, as shown by the comparison of Thailand vs. Vietnam in Table 3.
The profile of research fields
From the above analysis it is clear that in order to gain insight into the profile of the most advanced research fields in Vietnam, instead of relying on all the IPs, we have to look at those with Vietnamese corresponding authors. Thus, the 234 IPs of this kind from all institutions of Vietnam in 2007 were classified into different research fields, and the results are compared with those (569 IPs) from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand (Table 5).
Most major fields of study in Chulalongkorn university are applied-oriented, such as medicine, chemistry, biochemistry, engineering, materials sciences, agriculture, etc... In contrast, Vietnam’s IPs are dominated by mathematics and physics (half of which is theoretical physics), while the IP output in these two fields is very modest in Chulalongkorn and other Thai universities. The dominance of mathematics and theoretical physics of Vietnam’s IP is explained partly by the inheritance of the previous Soviet-style science and higher education system and the inclination of Vietnamese in abstract thinking. But the most important factor explaining the weakness of applied sciences and engineering in Vietnam is the inadequate science policy and the lack of investment in research and training bases.
Many leading scientific research institutions in Vietnam are absent in international scientific journals. In Hanoi National University, which enrolls more than 30,000 students, IPs from domestic corresponding authors comes only from the School of Engineering and the Math and Physics Departments of the School of Natural Sciences. Similarly, among 19 articles from Ho Chi Minh City National University in 2004, nine were on Physics.
Research fields in food processing, agriculture, and natural resources exploitation, which currently dominate the major export items of Vietnam, are weak in terms of IP using domestic resources. The level of medical research using domestic resources is also not adequate for a country regularly plagued by tropical infectious diseases. In fact, IP output in the medical field is dominated by articles with foreign corresponding authors (Table 2), indicating that efforts in training Vietnamese medical scientists in advanced countries have not yet yielded sufficient professional skills for carrying out advanced research at home. The shortage of professional research skills is observed also in oceanic and atmospheric studies, which are very important for a country which suffers regularly from weather-related calamities and has a long coastline with a large, and potentially productive, exclusive economic zone.
Table 5. International publications by indigenous corresponding authors in 2007 from Chulalongkorn University and from all Vietnamese research institutions classified in research fields
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand All Vietnam
Research fields IP Research fields IP
Chemistry 97 Mathematics 58
Medicine 72 Physics 39
Engineering 51 Engineering 15
Biochemistry, biology 36 Materials science and engineering 12
Synthetic material, cotton yarn 28 Medicine 11
Polymer science 26 Computer science 10
Veterinary 20 Chemistry 9
Biotechnology & microbiology 19 Environment; Geography 7
Botany 14 Nutriology 5
Agriculture 13 Asian study 5
Microbiology 11 Automation and cybernetics 4
Rehabilitation 9 Horticulture 4
Pharmacology & pharmaceutics 8 Energy and fuels 3
Environment; Geography 7 Botany 3
Others (less than 7) 158 Others (less than 3) 50
Total 569 Total 234
Conclusion
This study reveals that the NSC-IP or NSC-citation (defined respectively as the total IPs or total citations per one million population) are closely related to per capita GDP and human development index (hdi), and therefore, they can be used as proxies for socioeconomic development of countries. Singapore leads the East Asia region with 1549 IPs per one million population in 2008, about 30, 170 and 530 times higher than Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, respectively. With regard to the IP growth rate, China has developed the fastest with above 20%/year, followed by Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam with 16%/year, while the most advanced economies in the region with great amounts of IPs have maintained lower growth rates, e.g. Hong Kong: 7%/year and Japan: 1%/year.
Large gaps are also observed within the region regarding the extent of self-reliance in scientific research. The proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors varies from about 30% for China, Taiwan, and Japan to 218% for Philippines. For less advanced countries, articles with foreign corresponding authors are cited much more than those with domestic corresponding authors. Therefore, in order to assess the real capability of research institutions/universities, it is more appropriate to rely on the IPs with domestic corresponding authors, especially when the IPs are dominated by foreign authors, as in the case of Vietnam. With the advancement of the country’s science and higher education both the proportion and quality of IPs with indigenous corresponding authors are expected to increase.
At the moment, the total IPs from Vietnam falls short of output from a single university in Thailand, such as Chulalongkorn or Mahidol. Moreover, domestic corresponding authors account for nearly 80% of IPs from Thailand compared with only 34% from Vietnam. Thailand’s scientific research is closely linked with university training, with 95% of IPs from universities vs. 55% in Vietnam. Also in contrast with Thailand, a majority of IPs from Vietnam are in mathematics and theoretical physics. While many engineering and applied research projects are executed in Vietnam, but the outcomes do not appear in international journals in high numbers.
After more than a decade of reform from a centrally-planned economy to a market- oriented system, Vietnam’s per capita income has surpassed the 1000 USD threshold, enabling the country to escape from a less developed status. Much of the credit goes to the higher education system, which has generated an educated work force for the country’s development. However, the increased challenges faced by a competitive global market require a radical change in the Vietnam’s universities to satisfy increasing demand on skilled manpower (Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2005). A large number of Vietnam’s universities need to shift from teaching-based to research-oriented.
The above analysis helps suggest approaches for reshaping science and higher education system in Vietnam. The country needs to concentrate more R&D resources and efforts in building multidisciplinary research universities that pursue internationally-recognized standards in teaching, research, and governance. This creates a valuable opportunity to fix the lopsided profile of science and technology, i.e. the shortage of professional skills in engineering, medicine, agriculture, and many other areas of applied and social sciences that prevents universities from being able to meet the social and economic needs of the nation. If this can be done, centers of excellence in teaching, research, and technology innovation will spring up creating a new face of Vietnam’s science and higher education.
References
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2005), Resolution No. 14/2005/NQ-CP On Fundamental and
Comprehensive Higher Education Reform in Vietnam for the period of 2006 – 2020, 2
November 2005
David A. King (2004), The scientific impact of Nations. Nature, No 430. July 2004.
United Nations (2005) World Investment Report – Transnational Corporations and the Internationalization of R&D, New York and Geneva, 2005.
UNDP (2006) Human Development Report
THES. 2008. The Times Higher Education World Rankings 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.jk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1.
SJTU (Shanghai Jiao Tong University). 2008. Academic Ranking of World Universities 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/EN2008.htm.
Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety
Introduction
Following Japan, over the last decades South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and recently, China, have been successful in catching up with European and North American front runners in the world arena and global economy. Science and education, especially higher education, have been a driving force behind building the capacity of these globally competitive economies in East Asia.
In higher education, research universities play a crucial role in training high-level specialists, scientists, and researchers, who make up a pool of knowledge on which the country’s capability for technology adaptation (mainly for developing countries) and innovation is built-up (United Nations, 2005). Research Universities are expected to produce cutting edge science and technology and publishing research products in refereed prestigious international journals is a requisite for assuring their quality. Therefore, international publications are among key criteria used in ranking the world-class universities (THES, 2004; Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2005).
Vietnam has adopted free market policies only recently after many decades of war and the centrally planned Soviet system. It is obvious that in higher education Vietnam lags behind neighboring countries like Thailand and Malaysia, and has a long way to go to reach the current levels of Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. In this context, the comparison of research performance of East Asian countries based on international publications (IP) will help reveal regional trends that Vietnam may need to consider in reforming its Higher Education system (Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2005).
Hereafter, IPs only refers to articles in peer-reviewed Thomson-Reuters ISI-cited journals (http://isiwebofknowledge.com). By using the ISI database, an overall picture can be obtained about the research performance of eleven East Asian countries and territories with regard to the volume and growth rate of IPs, citations, and the contributions from domestic versus foreign authors. The amounts of IPs or citations calculated for one million population were used for characterizing the national science capability (NSC), as well as for revealing the possible relationship between research output and socioeconomic development.
As a case study, the comparison of research performance of top universities in Vietnam and Thailand will reveal the distance that Vietnam universities still have to go in order to be recognized as achieving some regional standard.
National science capability
Table 1 shows the volume and growth rate of IPs for 11 countries and territories in East Asia in 2002 and 2008. China and Japan, the two most populous countries in East Asia, occupy first and second place, respectively. To make the data in Table 1 comparable across countries, we will consider the total IPs per one million people in the population, which is called the national science capability (NSC).
The NSC of each East Asian country is growing at a roughly constant rate, as shown in Fig. 1. Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia have been growing rather rapidly, at about 16% annually. However, the NSC of Vietnam remains 6.5 and 9.5 times lower than Thailand and Malaysia, respectively. In the meantime, it is still three times as high as Indonesia’s and since 2004 has exceeded the Philippines’s, which maintains an annual growth rate of only 3-4%. China has developed the fastest with above 20%/year. It has overcome Thailand and is about to catch up with Malaysia in terms of NSC. In contrast, the most advanced economies in the region with high numbers of IPs have maintained lower annual growth rates, i.e. South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore: about 10%, Hong Kong: 7% and Japan: 1%.
Table1 Total IPs and growth rates of 11 countries and territories in East Asia in 2002 and 2008
2002 2008 IP growth,
%/year
China 31721 94766 20
Japan 59253 64039 1,3
Korea 14948 29114 11
Taiwan 10610 20122 11
Singapore 3863 6661 10
Hong Kong 2862 4221 7
Thailand 1547 3904 16
Malaysia 901 2658 16
Vietnam 324 806 16
Indonesia 400 668 8
Philippines 398 607 3,5
In terms of NSC, Singapore occupies the first place in the region, about 30, 170 and 530 times higher than Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, respectively. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan are next after Singapore. Such large gaps in NSC are observed not only between the regional top and bottom performers, but also between different groups of countries in East Asia (Fig. 1). To a great extent, these gaps reflect different levels of socioeconomic development in the region. In fact, within East Asia NSC correlates strongly with per capita GDP and even more strongly with UN’s human development index, hdi (UNDP, 2006), which combines normalized measures of per capita GDP, literacy, educational attainment, and life expectancy (Fig. 2). This finding shows the crucial role of research in building the national innovation capability that is relevant not only for technologically advanced economies but also for developing countries relying mainly on adaptation of imported technology (United Nation, 2005).
Figure1. National Science Capability (NSC) of East Asian countries determined as the total International Publications (IPs) per one million population.
Figure 2. NSC strongly correlate with per capita GDP (left) and even more strongly with hdi, (right). Data for 2004.
The quality of research
The NSC defined above does not capture the quality of IP that varies drastically among ISI-cited journals (impact factor) as well as within a journal, as shown by the citations of IPs in the ISI database. While caution is needed when using citations for comparing the quality of IP or researcher of different fields, the average or total citations can be regarded as the most reliable criterion for comparing the quality of research products from institutions and countries dealing with multidisciplinary research. Citations in peer-reviewed journals are considered one of the most reliable indicators of national science capacity (King, 2004).
The average number of citations can be obtained from the total citations that are available from the ISI database for countries with research output of less than 10,000 IPs/year. For countries producing more than this threshold (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China) the average citations were computed by random sampling across the database with the relative standard errors of less than 5%. The results are shown in figure 3.
To obtain an indicator that is able to capture both the quantity and quality of IPs, the NSC defined above based on the number of IP (NSC-IP) should be multiplied by the average citations in order to obtain the total citations per one million population (NSC-citation). Within East Asia NSC-citation correlates with per capita GDP and hdi similarly well as NSC-IP does. Thus, both NSC-IP and NSC-citation can be regarded as good proxies for socioeconomic development. However, the use of NSC-citation as a development indicator is inconvenient because it varies with the date of access to the ISI database.
The average citations of East Asian countries in Fig. 3 do not reflect the levels of science and technology development in the region, unlike NSC-IP (Fig. 1). IPs from China, Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea are, on average, less cited than those from Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. The analysis of the origins of authors contributing to the IPs in the next section will explain this matter.
Figure 3 Average citations of East Asian countries for ISI articles
published in 2004. Access to ISI database: August 2009.
Domestic versus foreign authors.
The NSC-IP and NSC-citation discussed above did not take into account the fact that a great number of authors contributing to the IPs are foreigners. The statistics in figure 4 derived from the built-in tool “Analyse” in the ISI database show that the proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors varies from about 30% for China, Taiwan, and Japan to 218% for Philippines.
IPs of countries with weak science capability such as Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam rely heavily on foreign authors, most of whom are from North America, Western Europe and Japan. In this case, a large number of IPs are done essentially in these advanced countries through bilateral scientific cooperation or fellowship of young scientists from the less developed countries. As shown in the next section, these IPs are cited much more than those done by domestic authors using much weaker resources, especially in research fields that require sophisticated laboratory facilities. This explains the fact found in Fig. 3 that Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand rank ahead of China, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan in terms of average citations..
Meanwhile, IPs from advanced East Asian countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and China are dominated by domestic authors.
The proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors results from the interplay of the two trends, namely the strengthening of both internal resources/infrastructure (human and material) and external cooperation in science and technology. Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have kept the growth rates in both efforts steady so that the foreign-to-domestic proportions did not change over the period 2002-2008 (Fig. 4). For Japan, Singapore, and especially Philippines international cooperation have been expanding faster resulting in the rise of the proportions. Conversely, for Malaysia and China domestic research infrastructures seem to have developed faster than international cooperation.
Thus, besides the volume and quality (citation) of IPs a third dimension is revealed on the extent of self-reliance in scientific research that reflects the real strength of a country in science and technology and, on the other hand, brings benefits directly to the country’s socioeconomic development through the linkage of research institutions with business and industries.
Figure 4. The proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors in
IPs across 11 East Asian countries and territories
In general, it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly whether an IP is carried out mostly in the country using domestic resources or essentially done abroad. In this study, the address of the corresponding author available from the ISI data base will be used to distinguish between the two IP categories. This approach is justified by the two reasons. First, it is obvious if all co-authors contributing to the article are domestic. In the case of Vietnam, this sub-category accounts for about two-thirds of articles with domestic corresponding authors. Second, a sharp difference of citations of the two IP categories is observed especially in the case of IPs from less advanced countries (see the next section).
The above approach can also be applied to assess the strength of various domestic research fields of a country. As an example, Table 2 shows the case of Vietnam. In many research fields, especially those of great importance for socioeconomic development, such as medicine and agriculture, most IPs are done essentially by foreign authors. Conversely, mathematics and theoretical physics, which require little investment in research infrastructure, are the two strongest research fields not only in the amount of IPs but also in self-reliance from foreign authors.
R&D performance of top Vietnamese universities
To see what position Vietnam’s top universities occupy in the world’s higher education in terms of research performance, we can look to Thailand’s top universities Chulalongkorn and Mahidol for comparison. Chulalongkorn University was among the top 200 world-class universities in 2005, 2007, and 2008 according to the ranking by The Times Higher Education Supplements (THES).
Table 2 Research fields in Vietnam with foreign and indigenous corresponding authors, 2008.
Research field Indigenous corresp. authors Foreign corresp. authors Foreign/
indigenous
Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics 95 21 0.22
Physics, Optics; Applied Physics 52 37 0.71
Plant Sciences; Cell Biology; Develop. Biology 6 6 1.00
Engineering 14 20 1.43
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health 14 25 1.79
Chemistry, Analytical; Electrochemistry; Instrumentation 17 35 2.06
Fisheries 4 10 2.50
Agriculture, Agronomy 7 25 3.57
Zoology 3 13 4.33
Immunology; Infectious Diseases; Pediatrics; Parasitology; Tropical Medicine 14 62 4.40
Geosciences, Geography, Multidisciplinary 4 21 5.25
Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology 2 14 7.00
Ecology; Environmental Sciences; Toxicology 4 30 7.50
All Vietnam 301 505 1.68
R&D activities in Thailand are performed mainly in universities, which account for more than 95% of the country’s total IP output, compared with only 55% contribution from universities in Vietnam. Besides Chulalongkorn and Mahidol Universities, Thailand has other prestigious universities such as Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, Prince Songkla, Thammasat, and Asian Institute of Technology, each producing a few hundred IPs annually.
The aggregate output of the four top universities in Vietnam (Hanoi National University, Hanoi University of Technology, Hanoi University of Education, and Ho Chi Minh City National University) are compared with those of Chulalongkorn and Mahidol Universities in Thailand using statistics of 2004 in Table 3 and 2007 in Table 4.
Table 3 International publications of some top R & D organizations in Vietnam and Thailand in 2004. Access to the ISI data base in December 2008 ...
Total IP Average CN Domestic corresponding author Foreign corresponding author
IP Average CN IP Average CN
Four top universities of Vietnam 80 5.5 36 3.6 44 7.2
VAST (Vietnam’s Academy of Science and Technology) 83 4.3 27 2.8 56 5.1
All Vietnam 403 8.1 102 3.7 301 9.5
Chulalongkorn University 416 9.4 295 7.1 121 15.3
Mahidol University 465 11 320 8.3 145 16.9
Table 4 International publications of some top R & D organizations in Vietnam and Thailand in 2007.
Total IPs Domestic
corresponding
author Percent domestic
Four top Universities of Vietnam 162 99 61%
Vietnam’s Academy of Science and Technology 98 51 52%
All Vietnam 692 234 34%
Chulalongkorn University 709 569 80%
Mahidol University 707 515 73%
The IPs from Vietnam’s top universities has increased rapidly in recent years and has doubled from 2004 to 2007. Despite the fast growth, Vietnam’s top universities still have ten times fewer IPs than Chulalongkorn or Mahidol University. Each of these universities published more than the total number of IPs from all of Vietnam’s research institutions. IPs from Thailand’s universities were also cited more often than those from Vietnam with average citations of about 9.4 - 11 for Thailand vs. 4.1-6.9 for Vietnam (access to the ISI database in December 2008).
There is a remarkable detail in column 3 of Table 3, where the average citations of the five top Vietnamese research institutions (4.3 – 5.5) are less than that of the whole country (8.1). This happens because the IPs associated with the remaining institutions were dominated by authors from advanced countries. For example, among 82 IPs on medical science in 2004, only 7 have Vietnamese corresponding authors.
Vietnamese corresponding authors account only for 25% of the total IP in 2004 and 34% in 2007. The average citation of IPs with domestic corresponding authors is also much lower than that of foreign corresponding authors, i.e. 3.7 vs. 9.5 for 2004 (Table 3).
In contrast, in the two Thailand universities, Thai corresponding authors account for 70% of the total IPs in 2004 (Table 3), and nearly 80% in 2007 (Table 4). Their average citations are also twice as high as that of Vietnam.
With the advancement of science and higher education of the country, both the proportion and quality of IPs with domestic corresponding authors are expected to increase, as shown by the comparison of Thailand vs. Vietnam in Table 3.
The profile of research fields
From the above analysis it is clear that in order to gain insight into the profile of the most advanced research fields in Vietnam, instead of relying on all the IPs, we have to look at those with Vietnamese corresponding authors. Thus, the 234 IPs of this kind from all institutions of Vietnam in 2007 were classified into different research fields, and the results are compared with those (569 IPs) from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand (Table 5).
Most major fields of study in Chulalongkorn university are applied-oriented, such as medicine, chemistry, biochemistry, engineering, materials sciences, agriculture, etc... In contrast, Vietnam’s IPs are dominated by mathematics and physics (half of which is theoretical physics), while the IP output in these two fields is very modest in Chulalongkorn and other Thai universities. The dominance of mathematics and theoretical physics of Vietnam’s IP is explained partly by the inheritance of the previous Soviet-style science and higher education system and the inclination of Vietnamese in abstract thinking. But the most important factor explaining the weakness of applied sciences and engineering in Vietnam is the inadequate science policy and the lack of investment in research and training bases.
Many leading scientific research institutions in Vietnam are absent in international scientific journals. In Hanoi National University, which enrolls more than 30,000 students, IPs from domestic corresponding authors comes only from the School of Engineering and the Math and Physics Departments of the School of Natural Sciences. Similarly, among 19 articles from Ho Chi Minh City National University in 2004, nine were on Physics.
Research fields in food processing, agriculture, and natural resources exploitation, which currently dominate the major export items of Vietnam, are weak in terms of IP using domestic resources. The level of medical research using domestic resources is also not adequate for a country regularly plagued by tropical infectious diseases. In fact, IP output in the medical field is dominated by articles with foreign corresponding authors (Table 2), indicating that efforts in training Vietnamese medical scientists in advanced countries have not yet yielded sufficient professional skills for carrying out advanced research at home. The shortage of professional research skills is observed also in oceanic and atmospheric studies, which are very important for a country which suffers regularly from weather-related calamities and has a long coastline with a large, and potentially productive, exclusive economic zone.
Table 5. International publications by indigenous corresponding authors in 2007 from Chulalongkorn University and from all Vietnamese research institutions classified in research fields
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand All Vietnam
Research fields IP Research fields IP
Chemistry 97 Mathematics 58
Medicine 72 Physics 39
Engineering 51 Engineering 15
Biochemistry, biology 36 Materials science and engineering 12
Synthetic material, cotton yarn 28 Medicine 11
Polymer science 26 Computer science 10
Veterinary 20 Chemistry 9
Biotechnology & microbiology 19 Environment; Geography 7
Botany 14 Nutriology 5
Agriculture 13 Asian study 5
Microbiology 11 Automation and cybernetics 4
Rehabilitation 9 Horticulture 4
Pharmacology & pharmaceutics 8 Energy and fuels 3
Environment; Geography 7 Botany 3
Others (less than 7) 158 Others (less than 3) 50
Total 569 Total 234
Conclusion
This study reveals that the NSC-IP or NSC-citation (defined respectively as the total IPs or total citations per one million population) are closely related to per capita GDP and human development index (hdi), and therefore, they can be used as proxies for socioeconomic development of countries. Singapore leads the East Asia region with 1549 IPs per one million population in 2008, about 30, 170 and 530 times higher than Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, respectively. With regard to the IP growth rate, China has developed the fastest with above 20%/year, followed by Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam with 16%/year, while the most advanced economies in the region with great amounts of IPs have maintained lower growth rates, e.g. Hong Kong: 7%/year and Japan: 1%/year.
Large gaps are also observed within the region regarding the extent of self-reliance in scientific research. The proportion of foreign-to-domestic authors varies from about 30% for China, Taiwan, and Japan to 218% for Philippines. For less advanced countries, articles with foreign corresponding authors are cited much more than those with domestic corresponding authors. Therefore, in order to assess the real capability of research institutions/universities, it is more appropriate to rely on the IPs with domestic corresponding authors, especially when the IPs are dominated by foreign authors, as in the case of Vietnam. With the advancement of the country’s science and higher education both the proportion and quality of IPs with indigenous corresponding authors are expected to increase.
At the moment, the total IPs from Vietnam falls short of output from a single university in Thailand, such as Chulalongkorn or Mahidol. Moreover, domestic corresponding authors account for nearly 80% of IPs from Thailand compared with only 34% from Vietnam. Thailand’s scientific research is closely linked with university training, with 95% of IPs from universities vs. 55% in Vietnam. Also in contrast with Thailand, a majority of IPs from Vietnam are in mathematics and theoretical physics. While many engineering and applied research projects are executed in Vietnam, but the outcomes do not appear in international journals in high numbers.
After more than a decade of reform from a centrally-planned economy to a market- oriented system, Vietnam’s per capita income has surpassed the 1000 USD threshold, enabling the country to escape from a less developed status. Much of the credit goes to the higher education system, which has generated an educated work force for the country’s development. However, the increased challenges faced by a competitive global market require a radical change in the Vietnam’s universities to satisfy increasing demand on skilled manpower (Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2005). A large number of Vietnam’s universities need to shift from teaching-based to research-oriented.
The above analysis helps suggest approaches for reshaping science and higher education system in Vietnam. The country needs to concentrate more R&D resources and efforts in building multidisciplinary research universities that pursue internationally-recognized standards in teaching, research, and governance. This creates a valuable opportunity to fix the lopsided profile of science and technology, i.e. the shortage of professional skills in engineering, medicine, agriculture, and many other areas of applied and social sciences that prevents universities from being able to meet the social and economic needs of the nation. If this can be done, centers of excellence in teaching, research, and technology innovation will spring up creating a new face of Vietnam’s science and higher education.
References
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2005), Resolution No. 14/2005/NQ-CP On Fundamental and
Comprehensive Higher Education Reform in Vietnam for the period of 2006 – 2020, 2
November 2005
David A. King (2004), The scientific impact of Nations. Nature, No 430. July 2004.
United Nations (2005) World Investment Report – Transnational Corporations and the Internationalization of R&D, New York and Geneva, 2005.
UNDP (2006) Human Development Report
THES. 2008. The Times Higher Education World Rankings 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.jk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1.
SJTU (Shanghai Jiao Tong University). 2008. Academic Ranking of World Universities 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/EN2008.htm.
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