VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese scientists have been criticized heavily for their modest scientific research achievements. However, it is really unfair to condemn them.

Vietnam produces many PhDs and few inventions

“Stop criticizing Vietnamese scientists. They are living in difficulties and working in poor conditions, but they still have been working and devoting themselves to scientific research, and they are not bad at all,” said Nguyen Phung Quang, a lecturer of the Hanoi University of Technology.

It seems to be accidental when a series of local newspapers recently have driven spearhead to Vietnamese scientists. The authors of the articles published on the newspapers over the last few months, citing statistics and reports, came to a conclusion that Vietnam has many scientists, but it has not got any benefits from the scientists. Vietnam has many PhDs, but has little grey matter. Vietnam has many scientists, but has few inventions.

Vietnamese scientists have become the subjects of the criticisms, because they are believed to spend too much money of the state, while their contribution to the country’s development is still very modest.

The articles quoted Pham Bich San, Secretary General of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associates VUSTA, as saying that the number of the scientific research articles published internationally by Vietnamese scientists, who come from a country with 90 million people, is just equal to that of a university in Thailand.

The figures show the modest achievements gained by the Vietnamese scientists, which is now seen as the shame for the scientists.

Scientific articles are the ruler that measures scientists’ achievements?

Quang from the Hanoi University of Technology affirmed that Vietnamese scientists have few scientific articles published on international journals, but he doesn’t think it is a problem.

Quang stressed that one should not consider the number of published scientific articles as a measurement of the achievements of Vietnamese scientists, and that few articles means weak capability.

“It’s unfair to hear the criticism about the weak capability of Vietnamese scientists which is reflected in the number of scientific articles. Have ever the critical people tried to find out the reasons behind this?” Quang wrote on VnExpress.

No one in the world can say that Vietnamese mathematicians are weaker than others in the world. The number of scientific research works in the field is not modest as people think. It is a noteworthy thing that one can publish his works on mathematics journal free of charge, but articles would be only published after going through a very strict examination process.

There’s little difference in the procedures for publishing scientific articles in basic sciences and in applied sciences and technologies. In order to publish articles on prestigious journals (the ones with high ISI), one would have to pay high fees.

IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, for example, sets up the basic fee at $110 per page for the first eight pages, and $162 for the ninth and subsequent pages.

A physician working for the Military Hospital 103 has also affirmed that Vietnamese scientists have fewer scientific articles published on international journals simply because they don’t have money, while this should not be blamed on their weak ability.

In fact, even foreign scientists, who have the incomes higher by tens of times than that of Vietnamese scientists, also don’t spend their own money to publish articles on the journals. The fees for the publishing are all sourced from the budgets allocated to the projects they implement.

Quang has blamed the modest number of scientific articles on international journals on the lack of the support from the State.

South Korea, just after a short time, has listed itself in the top 10 countries with the highest numbers of published scientific research works, which has been explained by the effective support from the state. And Quang believes that a similar encouragement mechanism should be applied in Vietnam.

VNE