By: Athar Osama

Published on SciDev.Net on 12 January 2012

Some Muslim countries’ powerful financial incentives to make quick progress in research could backfire, cautions Athar Osama.

Over a decade ago, several governments in the Islamic world woke up from decades of slumber to begin investing heavily in science and innovation. A funding boost helped set up new universities, enhance research grants, and send thousands of students to do PhDs in the developed world.

The regulators and ministries that rolled out these ambitious efforts cautioned against judging their effectiveness and viability too soon, pointing to the limited scientific capacity in these countries. It was popular to say, ‘let’s build a critical mass (quantity) first and worry about raising the standard (quality) later’.

But there was clearly something amiss: some policies seemed either deficient or simply wrong-minded. And evidence of this is beginning to pile up.

Evidence of misguided priorities

The picture emerging is one of a mindless race to secure international publications and increase university rankings using ‘shopping sprees’ for highly cited academics, plagiarism and even outright academic fraud.

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