VietNamNet Bridge - Scientometrics for Vietnam, or S4VN, a team of three Vietnamese researchers in Taiwan – Huynh Huu Hien, Pham Hiep and Tran Danh Nha – for the last year, has been measuring and analyzing research achievements gained by domestic university training establishments and providing information for free on www.scientometrics4vn.com. 

In order to have proper assessment about the quality of scientific research works and not to be influenced by biased viewpoints, people need scientometrics, i.e. the study of measuring and analysing science, technology and innovation, and peer reviews.

This was the reason why Hien, Hiep and Nha, who all studied in Taiwan, in 2014 began discussing a scientometrics project for Vietnam to measure the achievements gained Vietnamese universities.

In 2015, scientometrics were made public for the first time by the team which scientists gave feedback to.

S4VN, or Scientometrics for Vietnam, officially made debut on October 26, 2015.

The main scientometrics indexes shown by S4VN include the total numbers of ISI (information science institute) articles, citation index, Hirsch (H) index (as classified by the Web of Science and Thomson Reuters) and the indexes that reflect the scientific impacts and research capacity.

In order to have proper assessment about the quality of scientific research works and not to be influenced by biased viewpoints, people need scientometrics, i.e. the study of measuring and analysing science, technology and innovation, and peer reviews.

The team has summarized scientific research in the world from indexes for scientometrics and collected scientomestics information from 15 domestic university education establishments with the best achievements. 

It has also compared Vietnamese ISI announcements with that of other ASEAN countries and described the use of ISI in science & technology activities in Vietnam.

Scientometrics started in 1960 in the world and a lot of important hallmarks have been made since then, including the establishment of ISI in 1960 and Scientometrics journal in 1978.

Nearly all science management bodies in the world such as the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and Taiwanese Academia Sinica have scientometrics divisions.

In Vietnam, scientometrics have become more familiar to people recently, while some legal documents have mentioned ISI and Scopus as the international scientific standards. However, the information remains modest.

In Vietnam, many scientists trained abroad have been familiar with scientific surveys; a number of documents on scientific management have mentioned scientific standards as ISI, Scopus. But information on this subject is still lacking.

S4VN’s statistics show considerable improvement in Vietnam’s number of scientific publications and their influence. 

In 2010, Vietnam ranked 62nd in the number of ISI publications, but it jumped to 55th in 2015. Vietnam has strong advantages in some branches, while it leads ASEAN countries in international publications in mathematics (the 37th in the world and six grades above Singapore).