West, envies Iran’s Progress: Iranian Scientist

Tehran, Dec 17, IRNA – Westerners envy Iran’s scientific progresses, Professor of Economics at University of Mazandaran said here Friday. “The Iranian researchers have made good progresses in science production and they should try to apply their scientific skills in practical fields,” the Iranian scientist added. Iran is an example of a country that has made considerable advancements through education and training, despite international sanctions in almost all aspects of research during the past 30 years. Iran's university population has swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to more than 3 million in 2011. Around seventy percent of its science and engineering students are women. Iran's scientific progress is reported to be the fastest in the world. Iran has made great strides in different sectors, including aerospace, nuclear science, medical development, as well as stem cell and cloning research. Iran considers scientific backwardness, as one of the root causes of political and military bullying by developed countries over undeveloped states. After the Iranian Revolution, there have been efforts by the religious scholars to assimilate Islam with modern science and this is seen by some as the reason behind the recent successes of Iran to augment its scientific output. Currently Iran aims for a national goal of self sustainment in all scientific arenas. The Comprehensive Scientific Plan has been devised based on about 51,000 pages of documents and includes 224 scientific projects which must be implemented by the year 2025. Iran's government has devoted huge amounts of funds for research on high technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, and stem cell research and information technology. Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology and the National Research Institute for Science Policy are two of the main institutions, depending on the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, in charge of establishing research policies at the state level. In 2006, Iranian government wiped out the financial debts of all universities in a bid to relieve their budget constraints. According to UNESCO science report 2010, most of the research in Iran is government funded with the Iranian government providing almost 75 percent of all research findings. The share of private businesses in total national R&D funding according to the same report is very low being just 14 percent as compared with the Turkey's 48 percent. The rest of approximately 11 percent of funding comes from higher education sector and non-profit organizations. In 2009, Iranian government formulated a 15 year comprehensive national plan for science focused on higher education and strengthening the links between academia and industry in order to promote a knowledge based economy. As per the plan by year 2030, Iran's research and development spending is to be increased to 4 percent of GDP from 0.59 percent of 2006 and increasing its education spending to over 7 percent of GDP from the 2007 level of 5.49 percent. Iran annually hosts international science festivals. The International Kharazmi Festival in Basic Science and The Annual Razi Medical Sciences Research Festival promote original research in science, technology, and medicine in Iran. Iranians welcome scientists from all over the world to Iran for a visit and participation in seminars or collaborations. Many Nobel laureates and influential scientists such as Bruce Alberts, F. Sherwood Rowland, Kurt Wüthrich, Stephen Hawking, and Pierre-Gilles de Genes visited Iran after the revolution. Some universities also hosted American and European scientists as guest lecturers during recent decades. Iran is also an active member of COMSTECH and collaborates in its international projects. The coordinator general of COMSTECH, Dr. Atta ur Rahman has said that Iran is the leader in science and technology among Muslim countries and hoped for greater cooperation with Iran in different international technological and industrialization projects. As per US government report on science and engineering titled 'Science and Engineering Indicators: 2010' prepared by National Science Foundation, Iran has the world's highest growth rate in Science and Engineering article output with an annual growth rate of 25.7 percent. This report also notes that the very rapid growth rate of Iran inside a wider region was led by its growth in scientific instruments, pharmaceuticals, communications and semiconductors. Iran ranked 49th for citations, 42nd for papers, and 135th for citations per paper in 2005. Their publication rate in international journals has quadrupled during the past decade. Although it is still low compared with the developed countries, this puts Iran in the first rank of Islamic countries. According to a British government study (2002), Iran ranked 30th in the world in terms of scientific impact. According to a report by SJR (A Spanish sponsored scientific-data data) Iran ranked 25th in the world in scientific publications by volume in 2007 (a huge leap from the rank of 40 few years before). As per the same source Iran ranked 20th by total output in 2010. In 2008 report by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Iran ranked 32, 46 and 56 in Chemistry, Physics and Biology respectively among all science producing countries. Iran ranked 15th in 2009 in the field of nanotechnology in terms of presenting articles. Science Watch reported in 2008 that Iran has the world's highest growth rate for citations in medical, environmental and ecological sciences. According to the same source, Iran during the period 2005–2009, had produced 1.71 percent of world's total engineering papers, 1.68 percent of world's total chemistry papers and 1.19 percent of world's total material sciences papers. According to the sixth report on 'international comparative performance of UK research base' prepared in September 2009 by Britain based research firm Evidence and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Iran has increased its total output from 0.13 percent of world's output in 1999 to almost 1 percent of world's output in 2008. As per the same report Iran had doubled its biological sciences and health research out put in just two years (2006–2008). The report further notes that Iran by 2008 had increased its output in physical sciences by as much as ten times in ten years and its share in world's total output had reached 1.3 percent, comparing with US share of 20percent and Chinese share of 18%. Similarly Iran's engineering output had grown to 1.6 percent of the world's output being greater than Belgium or Sweden and just smaller than Russia's output at 1.8 percent. During the period 1999–2008, Iran improved its science impact from 0.66 to 1.07 above the world's average of 0.7 similar to Singapore's. In engineering Iran improved its impact and is already ahead of India, South Korea and Taiwan in engineering research performance. By 2008, Iran's share of most cited top 1 percent of world's papers were 0.25 percent of the world's total. A bibliometric analysis of Middle East was released by professional division of Thomson Reuters in 2011 titled 'Global Research Report Middle East' comparing scientific research in middle eastern countries with that of the world for the first decade of this century. The study findings rank Iran at second position after Turkey in terms of total scientific output with Turkey producing 1.9 percent of the world's total science output while Iran's share of world's total science output was at 1.3 percent. Total scientific output of 14 countries surveyed including Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen was just 4 percent of the world's total output; with Turkey and Iran producing the bulk of scientific research in the region./end