VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese scientists have different viewpoints about the number of Vietnamese scientific papers published in international prestigious journals.

Do Tien Dung, director of Nafosted, the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, at a conference reviewing the operation of the foundation in 2014, emphasized the increase in the number of internationally published scientific works carried out under Nafosted’s funding as a great achievement.

However, some scientists disagreed with Dung, saying this could not be described as a “great achievement”, because the increase in quantity was not in accordance with improvement in quality.

A researcher at a research institute noted that some scientific research works have been “divided into fractions” and published as separate works, which aimed to have more internationally published scientific papers.

Dr. Dang Quang A from the Information Technology Institute and Dr. Dong Van Quyen from the Biotechnology Institute of the Vietnam Science and Technology Academy pointed out that the citation index of the scientific research works funded by Nafosted remains low.

They quoted ISIKNOWLEDGE 2014 as saying that Vietnam’s ISI (institute for scientific information) citation index was 0.29 only.

Quyen noted that the time when Vietnam has to have as many international publications as possible is over, and that Nafosted needs to take necessary measures to improve the quality of the published scientific papers it funds.

However, Dr. Nguyen Van Hieu from the International Training Institute in Material Science believes there are no concerns about the quality of internationally published scientific papers funded by Nafosted, denying the fact that Vietnam has been just trying to have as many publications as possible, while not attaching much importance to the papers’ quality.

Hieu pointed out that the number of Vietnamese publications in ISI journals remains modest, even compared with South East Asian countries.

According to ISIKNOWLEDGE, Vietnam published in 2,301 international publications in 2014, ranking fourth in the region. The first position belonged to Singapore with 12,387 publications, followed by Malaysia with 10,208 and Thailand with 6,663 publications.

If comparing the international publications with the total population of 90 million, one would see that the ratio of international publications per head is far below that of Singapore which has 5 million people, Malaysia with 30 million and Thailand 66 million.

Hieu said that even published work in journals with low IF (impact factor) are very helpful for young Vietnamese scientists, because this helps them become familiar with the international research environment.

“We need to go step by step,” he said, adding that Vietnamese should not have an inferiority complex if their scientific papers are published in a low-IF journal.

“Five years ago, South Korea, now a science power, also did not dare dream of high-IF journals,” he said.

Tia Sang