VietNamNet Bridge - The best way for candidates to receive a professorship is to increase the number of internationally published articles, especially in prestigious journals of ISI (Information Science Institute) and Scopus. However, Vietnam has been behind in this.

 

Nguyen Ngoc Minh from the Hanoi University of Natural Sciences

According to the Ministry of Science & Technology (MST), Vietnam has had 2,000-3,000 ISI articles published each year in the past few years.

With such a figure, there is no surprise that only 3 out of 28 professorship title councils have 100 percent of candidates with many ISI and Scopus articles. A lot of candidates recognized as meeting the standards for professorship title in 10 councils have no internationally published articles.

A report released in 2013 by MST showed that Vietnam had 130,000 scientific researchers, including 12,000 with doctorates. With such a high number of researchers, 2,000 internationally published articles is a modest figure.

Meanwhile, analysts noted that while the number of internationally published articles has increased slightly recently, the percentage of high-quality articles is on the decrease.

The best way for candidates to receive a professorship is to increase the number of internationally published articles, especially in prestigious journals of ISI (Information Science Institute) and Scopus.

Nguyen Ngoc Minh from the Hanoi University of Natural Sciences, who has won the 2016 Ta Quang Buu Prize, thinks that international publication culture, financial capability and the environment are the three major obstacles that hinder Vietnamese scientists from publishing in international publications.

Minh said ISI international publications have only been set as a standard for assessing scientists’ capability recently. Therefore, Vietnamese researchers did not pay appropriate attention to international publications in the past.

Minh does not think the problem lies in the low capability of Vietnamese scientists.

Meanwhile, Tran Van Kham from the Hanoi University of Social Sciences & Humanities believes that the biggest problem Vietnamese scientists have is limited foreign language skills.  

Besides, the research method followed by Vietnamese scientists, especially in social sciences, has become out of date. 

Vietnamese scientists also meet difficulties in presenting their research works in accordance with standards set by international journals.

However, Pham Van Dong from the Physics Institute of the Vietnam Academy of Science & Technology, does not think foreign language skills are a problem for Vietnamese scientists.

He believes the problem is in the modest number of researchers. While the number of scientists is high, there are not many researchers who devote themselves to scientific research works.

Dong, 35, has 35 ISI articles after 10 years of research and is one of the Vietnamese researchers with the highest number of internationally published articles.

Le Van