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Bangladesh lags far behind India, Pakistan in research

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Bangladesh lags far behind India, Pakistan in research

BANGLADESH
Kamran Siddiqui
10 January, 2021, 01:10 pm
Last modified: 10 January, 2021, 02:45 pm



Over 8,000 Bangladeshi publications appeared in global journals in 2020, with just one
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Bangladeshi researchers published more than 8,000 scholarly articles in international journals with impact factor last year – which is third in terms of the number among South Asian countries.

An online magazine, Scientific Bangladesh, published the annual report on scientific documents of the country analysing the data of Scopus, a citation database of peer-reviewed literature including scientific journals, books and conference proceedings.

According to the report, the scholars of the country published 8,140 articles and other documents in 160 peer-reviewed and impact factor journals. In the previous year, the number was 6,363.

In 2018, Bangladeshi researchers published 5,234 documents.

However, in 2020, Indian and Pakistani researchers published more than 199,000 and 28,000 documents respectively, which is far more than Bangladesh.

Among the other documents that were counted in the report are: conference papers, reviews, book chapters, letters, errata, notes, editorials, data papers, books, short surveys, and others.
The impact factor, also known as Journal Impact Factor (JIF), is a metric used to evaluate the relative importance of a journal.

Universities spend only 1% on research

It is determined by calculating an average number of citations received by the selected articles in that journal within the last few years.
For example, if the impact factor of a journal is three, that means all the articles of this journal were used or cited an average of three times as a reference in a particular year.

The top eight journals which published the highest number of articles by Bangladeshi researchers are: Plos One, Scientific Reports, Heliyon, IEEE Access, BMJ Open, Results in Physics, Environmental Science, and Pollution Research.

Among all impact factor journals, four were from Bangladesh.

According to Resurchify, an information portal, the impact factor of the Bangladesh Journal of Botany is 0.15.

Additionally, the impact factor of the Bangladesh Medical Research Council Bulletin is 0.09, of the Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science is 0.17 and of the Journal of Medicine Bangladesh is 0.10.
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Bangladesh's status

According to the Scopus database, the top three subject areas of publication for Bangladeshis are medicine (2,173), engineering (1,824) and computer science (1581).

Medicine has surpassed engineering as the top subject in this regard due to an increase in Covid-19 related publications.

Among the institutions of the country, both university and research organisations, Dhaka University (DU) has retained the top position with 760 – which is 100 more than last year.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) retained second position with 510 publications – over 100 less than in 2019.

Buet held first position in 2017 and 2018.
Rajshahi University is in third position with 465 publications while it was fourth in the previous year.

Jahangirnagar University has secured fourth position with 437 publications while it was fifth in 2019 with 250 publications.

The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (Icddr,b) is in fifth position with 418 documents while it was third in 2019.
The rest of the institutions are: the Bangladesh Agricultural University, North South University, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Khulna University, and Daffodil International University.


Not only education, empty classrooms hit others too


Dr Monir Uddin Ahmed, founder and executive editor of Scientific Bangladesh, said, "Though publications are increasing in small numbers, this is far from enough for the scientific advancement of the country. In comparison to India and Pakistan, our publications are very few with only one patent while India got 276 patents last year."

"Moreover, the majority of the publications are from non-resident Bangladeshi [NRB] researchers. Research funding also mostly comes from foreign funding bodies. This means that our own research organisations are not publishing enough documents. The result reflects that more and more Bangladeshi are going abroad for research purposes," he added.

Top Bangladeshi researcher with one patent
According to the Scopus database, Dr Tahmeed Ahmed, acting executive director of Icddr,b secured first position with 65 articles last year.
He has been working for the last three decades on simplifying the management of childhood malnutrition, childhood tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases.

He and his team at Icddr,b worked extensively with Professor Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, United States to find out ways and means of increasing the presence of the beneficial bacteria in the intestine of children suffering from acute malnutrition.

This has led to the discovery of a novel intervention called Microbiota Directed Complementary Food (MDCF). This novel intervention was adjudged by the world-famous journal Science to be a scientific breakthrough of 2019.

"This can be a game changer in the fight against childhood malnutrition. We have got the patent of the work in 2020 from the World Intellectual Property Organization," said Dr Tahmeed.

Meanwhile, Kawsar Ahmed, a teacher of Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University and Md Sahab Uddin, executive director of Pharmakon Neuroscience Research Network, jointly secured second position with 55 articles, according to the data available.
 
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Research is good but production of basic articles makes more sense for a country like Bangladesh.

What will Bangladesh do with intellectual property when we are an open economy dependent on exports unlike the giant neighbor?

They need IP because they can alter a few things from original patents and fabricate new patents to produce stuff for their large internal market. This way they can fight off claims of IP theft.

Bangladesh needs no IP support to make and export the basic stuff it needs to export and to employ its semi-skilled and skilled (wo)manpower. None of the tiger economies did.

On forward...
 
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Eh typical , a country that can't even spend enough money to provide better education of course won't spend money on research.

Leaders rather will steal it than give it to the country
 
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Bangladeshis are always commenting how far ahead of Pakistan they are.
Actually we need production based development,not research based .

Better you guys keep researching and we will make all production based goods in future.

So Pakistan and India will keep commitment on research and while Bangladesh will focus on production. Deal done okay ? ;)
 
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Research is good but production of basic articles makes more sense for a country like Bangladesh.

What will Bangladesh do with intellectual property when we are an open economy dependent on exports unlike the giant neighbor?

They need IP because they can alter a few things from original patents and fabricate new patents to produce stuff for their large internal market. This way they can fight off claims of IP theft.

Bangladesh needs no IP support to make and export the basic stuff it needs to export and to employ its semi-skilled and skilled (wo)manpower. None of the tiger economies did.

On forward...
Manufacturing basic stuff like underwears can't go on forever though and tiger economies now have big dominating corporations like TSMC (Taiwan), Samsung (SK), LG (SK) and so on.. The seeds of all these were sown 3-4 decades back. And now, they have one of the top positions in world rankings of patent per-capita.
 
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Manufacturing basic stuff like underwears can't go on forever though and tiger economies now have big dominating corporations like TSMC (Taiwan), Samsung (SK), LG (SK) and so on.. The seeds of all these were sown 3-4 decades back. And now, they have one of the top positions in world rankings of patent per-capita.

Exactly , I don't why Bangladesh isn't moving away from the scamming @ss garment industry. We need heavy industries in Bangladesh not the same old boring making clothing.

We do make smatphones,fridges and ships etc but again they need better funding from the government
 
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One thing that's refreshing to see in this post.


There is no knee jerk reaction by Bangladeshis if their mistakes are pointed out. They know how to take criticism and not go hyper-nationalist

If someone were to say the same about Pakistan, the fanboys here would go in a hypernationalist frenzy~ bUt wE dEfEaTeD sOvIeTs wE aRe nUcLeAr pOwER~
 
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Research is good but production of basic articles makes more sense for a country like Bangladesh.

What will Bangladesh do with intellectual property when we are an open economy dependent on exports unlike the giant neighbor?

They need IP because they can alter a few things from original patents and fabricate new patents to produce stuff for their large internal market. This way they can fight off claims of IP theft.

Bangladesh needs no IP support to make and export the basic stuff it needs to export and to employ its semi-skilled and skilled (wo)manpower. None of the tiger economies did.

On forward...

BD is brilliant with exports but textiles alone can't support you 3~4 decades down the road. Would be great if BD invests in R&D as well. Pakistan is doing a bit better than BD in this regard but our output is still shamefully low compared to others.
 
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Eh typical , a country that can't even spend enough money to provide better education of course won't spend money on research.

Leaders rather will steal it than give it to the country
The problem is not funding but the education system itself.

Bangladesh's universities are basically training institutes where you are trained to get a job that's it. If an University does not focus on research, innovation and knowledge then it should not be called an University.

Also I hate the idea of increasing the literacy rate. In Bangladesh there are too many people who learn to read and write yet behaves like an illiterate skum.
Actually we need production based development,not research based .

Better you guys keep researching and we will make all production based goods in future.

So Pakistan and India will keep commitment on research and while Bangladesh will focus on production. Deal done okay ? ;)
Bangladesh needs to become a knowledge based economy too. We have engineers, doctors, IT experts in Bangladesh who are neglected and as a result they migrate out of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh experiences a very high brain drain because our economy is solely based on RMG and remittance and it did not improve its IT, Medical, Engineering and Corporate sector.
 
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The problem is not funding but the education system itself.

Bangladesh's universities are basically training institutes where you are trained to get a job that's it. If an University does not focus on research, innovation and knowledge then it should not be called an University.

Also I hate the idea of increasing the literacy rate. In Bangladesh there are too many people who learn to read and write yet behaves like an illiterate skum.

Bangladesh needs to become a knowledge based economy too. We have engineers, doctors, IT experts in Bangladesh who are neglected and as a result they migrate out of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh experiences a very high brain drain because our economy is solely based on RMG and remittance and it did not improve its IT, Medical, Engineering and Corporate sector.


Well again I expect too much from Bangladesh , even a little bit of development feels like a major milestone. We can improve Bangladesh but again corruption kills any sort of development.

Things countries get happy for

America : Future Mars colonization , AI , Hyperloop etc
China : Future Man on the Moon/Mars , EV car development , AI
India : Sending a man to space by 2023 and Bollywood
Japan : Anime , more anime and having amazing people and infrastructure

Bangladesh : Fking finishing a road project which took 8 FKING YEARS


See what I mean ? I wanna dream big for Bangladesh , but the whole country keeping blue balling me
 
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Anyone interested and capable in research goes to West as the opportunities are there.
 
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Actually we need production based development,not research based .

Better you guys keep researching and we will make all production based goods in future.

So Pakistan and India will keep commitment on research and while Bangladesh will focus on production. Deal done okay ? ;)

Actually, as you can see from the figure, Pakistan spends a lot less on research then India or Bangladesh, but seem to be getting much better results.

Having said that,
I do agree with your basic premise, that at this stage of our development, pure research is less important then production and manufacturing, which helps develop a sound infrastructure for future industrial and economic growth.
But, there is still plenty of scoop between doing nothing and pure research, it a good idea to research on topics that already exist, but how they can be applied to local economy and society.
 
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You need to climb up the economic and educational ladder before R&D becomes a factor. BD is currently in the manufacturing existing product and grabbing market share mode. We are participating in existing markets and leveraging our low labour cost to establish ourselves. We are not market makers yet.

It will come. However in agricultural sector BD have had notable successing in developing flood resistant rice and developing high yeild varieties of other products.

BD is also only a handful of developing nation that has sought to develop home grown vaccine for covid.

There are green shoots of progress everywhere and we will see more and more dividend as they mature.
 
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