The Quality Of Pakistani Research

Good article...

However, I must add a few bits here...

If research is done for the sake of research, it is a luxury. Rich countries can afford it. Poor countries like Pakistan should be a bit more selective in choosing their research focus. And the research done by Pakistan should be objective enough. It should be done on the topics which are important according to our needs. For example, too much theoratical research which doesn`t give short term material benefits is useless for Pakistan. The papers which are cited the most in a domain lie on the theoratical end. And it takes several years for that work to be translated to something being applied in industry. So may be, in Pakistan status symbol for researchers shouldn`t be number of citations only. It should also include the effect of their research on Pakistani society.

Let`s take another example. Researcher ``A`` worked well on a subject that will come to life after 20 years. And his paper was cited 100 times. Resarcher ``B`` worked on a topic and ended up starting a new hitech company based in Lahore. Although topic of researcher ``B`` didn`t get any citations, it brought money, jobs and a culture of entrepreneurship. For me, ``A`` and ``B`` are simply not comparable. I have a lot of respect for both of them.

I hope I was clear in my point.