Nerdy Science Blog

I just read “Why is science in Vietname Underdeveloped?” written by Pham Duc Chinh and it is alarming true that with such huge funding in the country, yet so few papers are published.

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam spends over US$400 million for scientific research a year but Vietnamese scientists have independently published only around 80 scientific articles in international magazines a year in the past decade.

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In the world, the capability of scientists and nations is evaluated firstly by the number of articles published in international scientific magazines and the number of patents granted by prestigious international agencies.

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While Thai and Malaysian scientists have accepted standards on publishing scientific research in international magazines, Vietnamese try to neglect the standards, saying that Vietnam doesn’t have sufficient conditions for it.

According to Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Malaysia has published 13,059 papers from January 1997 to December 2007 (11 years), and granted 23 patents in 1997.

Even in Malaysia, I heard rumours that some research lab tend to buy really expensive lab equipments imported from USA rather than getting same quality cheap lab equipments from China. I talked to some researchers, and they complaint they are underpaid in Malaysia.