But claiming credit for a scientist who does not engage in meaningful research with researchers at the university in question, or using work unaffiliated with the university to bump up rankings, is certainly suspect.”

I disagree with the author’s assessment of this practice in UK/Australia. Actually, when these Universities hire a prolific academic in time for the research quality assessment, all of the academic’s prior publications for the assessment period are counted towards his/her new employer.

The publications need not reflect any prior relationship between that academic and their new employer.

Certainly, an associate professor from my Institution (University of Melbourne) was offered a Professorship at a less research-intensive institution (Deakin University) so his publications could be counted for the latter’s profile.

I do however agree that the intentions of the Saudi Universities are less honorable in the sense that they deliberately intend to maintain only a casual relationship with academics whilst reaping the rewards of a formal relationship.

but these things need political animation and to be linked to the rest of the ummah states.

The d8 was erbakan’s baby, and Erdogan is different from Erbakan. We’d need an alignment of epistemic political windows in a majority of the 8.

Its not so simple even with members of the 8. e.g how do you think a nigerian igbo non muslim would feel about contributing to d8 civilisational movement if he is also collaborating with israelis?

Assalamoulaykum.

I agree with this but would like to add to the thought.

Collaborations are a costly way of not gettign much done.

Scientific creation cannot be isolated and dealt with in a technocratic manner, it needs to be embedded within cultural and artistic movements in societies.

Came across this article on science vs scientism just now. http://www.nextstepforward.net/resources/science-vs-scientism-question-of-cultural-space/

By the time these students reach Universities and Colleges, they are already toeing a line which they have been made to toe and learning Science and doing Science becomes an alien phenomena for them. The educational environment stifles creativity and the teachers attitude is paternalistic. Science should impart a sense of curiosity and should be challenging. The scientific method which is the soul of the scientific process does not entail being able to pipette effectively or to make a spectrohotometric reading or run an NMR, rather it should enable to envsion, understand, interpret and critique , something which is hardly taught at our Universities.

I hail the concept of Social contract and your notion of making science more accessible and understandable to masses and believe that these are the avenues that we should should strive to perfect in Islamic countries.

Its indeed a very good effort to let the global community know about the scientific developments in Muslim World. Hopefully, your high achievements will contribute more towards policy making in Muslim countries for science and technology innovations.

Hopefully, you will win the award as well, keep it up.

Regards

Congratulations. My best wishes are always with you. My hopes are even higher.