Malaysia at #2 for Research in Asia Pacific

With local universities ranked among the Top 200 in the world, Malaysia’s higher education is gaining international traction. Beating even the likes of China and Japan in growth of number of papers cited in research worldwide, Malaysia’s academia shows no signs of slowing in wake of higher educational growth.

Coming in close behind is India (whose growth in scholarly research output is at an astounding 8.0%), Malaysia records a whopping 7.2% growth indications, leaving Thailand, Australia and China way back with only rises in 4.8%, 4.6% and 4.2% as they claim 3rd, 4th and 5th places respectively.

(Image by Elsevier)

These ratings come from Elsevier, a global informatics company utilising the Scopus database for global peer-related literature, and SciVal data analysis records for big data, of which over the performance of 220 nations are included.

As a nation that is still considered to be developing, these 133,143 certified academia publications from the years 2012 to 2016 is a proven increase in quality and output, a clear product of Malaysia’s Education Blueprint 2015-2025.

(Image by Elsevier)

Citations of Malaysian-published papers have increased 4x, and a growth of 11% in patents and generated revenues up to RM1.25 billion have been a result of Malaysian Research Universities providing solutions to industries, NGOs and agencies.

Main areas of scholarly research involve Agricultural Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Humanities, Medical and Health Sciences, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, a clear move to increase the country’s development both academically and economically by feeding insights and probabilities to global curiosities and challenges.

(Image by Elsevier)

This record achievement is especially impressive, as its establishment was well underway during a budget cut by RM2.4 billion in the Budget 2016. As a matter of fact, scholarly publications even increased by 29,867 in that year alone compared to previous years.

The Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh, has expressed pride and gratitude for the country’s academia, noting a bright future for Malaysia’s graduates.

(Image from ds_idrisjusoh, Instagram)

As testament and acknowledgement to the services of the academia, Budget 2018 now has stated an allocation of a 13.15% increase (RM12.28 billion to RM13.89 billion) for higher education in high hopes of pushing Malaysia towards the TN50 (2050 National Transformation) goal.