Thai academic researchers lag behind their counterparts in the Asean region, study finds

[Lite Beer]

Thai academic researchers lag behind their counterparts in the Asean region, study finds
Pratch Rujivanarom
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- THAI researchers perform at about the world average but are far behind regional neighbours like Singapore and Malaysia, Elsevier senior vice president Michiel Kolman has said.

He has advised related agencies to grant more funds and urge Thai researchers to collaborate more with international academic groups to improve research standards.

Elsevier, the world's largest online intellectual material provider, which owns around 25 per cent of academic articles online, spoke to The Nation recently about Thailand's position in the regional academic circle.

According to Elsevier's information, the number of Thai researchers in 2011 with articles on the Elsevier database increased to about 24,000. But that was still less than Singapore (34,000) and Malaysia (47,000).

"The number [of researchers from 2005 to 2011] is going up for Thailand but there is a gap with Singapore and the gap is getting bigger," he said.

"A big surprise is Malaysia, which started very low in 2005 and surpassed Thailand in 2009 and is now far above Singapore in the number of researchers," he added.

The sharp growth in the number of researchers was because the Malaysian government dramatically boosted funding compared to the Thai government, which has had a stable rate of funding in recent years.

"Thailand is actually growing very nicely - started with 5,000 articles per year [in 2005] and now is more than 8,000 articles per year. This is a good goal for other countries," he said.

"They [Malaysia] have money. They hire researchers. The researchers are active, so that the output is high," he explained.

Malaysia currently produces around 24,000 academic articles each year compared to Singapore, which publishes around 16,000 articles a year. Thailand was third, well above Indonesia (which publishes about 3,000 articles per year), Philippines (1,000 articles a year) and Laos (under 500 articles a year).

On the other hand, the quality of Thai researchers' work had dropped slightly, according to the Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) measurement.

"FWCI is the way to normalise [the quality of academic work judging by citation]. One is the world average, and Thailand is just below the world average at 0.96, which is good but there is still room for improvement," he said.

"Singapore is actually doing pretty well on quality. They are the champions in the region, while Malaysia started with much lower quality than Thailand |but now have overtaken Thailand."

He said international collaboration was a major factor in top academic work as well as funding.

"If you have sufficient funding, you build up the centre of excellence. Sooner or later you'll find yourself collaborating internationally. The output quality of international collaborators is higher than if you write an article alone or with your colleagues from you own institute or someone in your own country, so the way to increase quality is to go international," he said.

Elsevier said most research articles from Thailand were about medicine, although 16 per cent of Thai research is on this field.

Interestingly, Thailand's leading research fields are engineering and energy. Curiously, many Thai researchers studied agriculture science or computer science, but the quality of such research is still below international standards.

"Computer science [research] is relatively low quality and this is kind of interesting because I know that there is a lot of discussion in Thailand to go to a 'digital economy' and if you want to achieve that computer science is one of the drivers," he noted.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Thai-academic-researchers-lag-behind-their-counter-30257388.html

-- The Nation 2015-04-04

[zydeco]

Obvious. Singapore and Malaysia use English. Thailand can't compete with that. BTW, Malaysia appears to be in real trouble right now. Money has become a problem and research institutes are actually not renewing contracts. As for Elsevier, btw, they have become something of a problem themselves, a monopoly that many people in the sciences actually think is retarding the dissemination of knowledge because of the exorbitant prices they put on journals or online journal access. And the fact that they have fostered a very incestuous peer review process that is also stifling.

[wabothai]

same as tourism dept. quantity.

5000 articles and 400.000 Chinese visitors.

Academic researchers= pollsters.

[Tywais]

Working in a research center in Thailand, actually one of Thailand's Center's of Excellence, I see most of the problem is not the academics but the government funding. Singapore has massive funding for their research and as such can garner the best equipment and attract top researchers. Our group collaborates with a large Singapore research center which has 2-3 thousand times the funding so obviously we will lag until the government recognizes the funding problem.

We have some brilliant graduate/PhD students but we often have to send them off to places like Singapore where they have a much larger research infrastructure to train them. Just a few years ago the government here cut research funding by more than 60%. However, there appears to be a turn around on that taking place currently.

Bottom line, it is not lack of talented and motivated research students but the lack of funding to attract and support them that hampers Thailand.

[robblok]

Obvious. Singapore and Malaysia use English. Thailand can't compete with that. BTW, Malaysia appears to be in real trouble right now. Money has become a problem and research institutes are actually not renewing contracts. As for Elsevier, btw, they have become something of a problem themselves, a monopoly that many people in the sciences actually think is retarding the dissemination of knowledge because of the exorbitant prices they put on journals or online journal access. And the fact that they have fostered a very incestuous peer review process that is also stifling.

As far as I know Elsevier is a Dutch company and I use their services too as they are also on the forefront of Dutch tax law information. They are quite expensive.. but if you want to keep updated they are the one.

Your remark on English is spot on.. Thais are in general not good at English.. though one would imagine many researchers would have to be good to access the information that is available already.

[Tywais]

Your remark on English is spot on.. Thais are in general not good at English.. though one would imagine many researchers would have to be good to access the information that is available already.

From my broad experience with researchers, both student and working researchers, the vast majority are very good in written English and reading. There are of course exceptions. Spoken English is a mixed bag, but most try hard with it. They have to as per your comment regarding accessing research material and they all have to write International research publications which is always in English. Even a large percentage of papers for national conferences and seminars are written in English as they are often distributed to an International audience. One of my responsibilities is proofing anything from formal e-mails to PhD thesis so I have a pretty fair grasp of their capabilities.

So need to be careful about this comment "Thais are in general not good at English" as it really doesn't apply in the academic community. But in the general population, I will agree, at least in comparison with some of its' Asian neighbors.

[robblok]

Your remark on English is spot on.. Thais are in general not good at English.. though one would imagine many researchers would have to be good to access the information that is available already.

From my broad experience with researchers, both student and working researchers, the vast majority are very good in written English and reading. There are of course exceptions. Spoken English is a mixed bag, but most try hard with it. They have to as per your comment regarding accessing research material and they all have to write International research publications which is always in English. Even a large percentage of papers for national conferences and seminars are written in English as they are often distributed to an International audience. One of my responsibilities is proofing anything from formal e-mails to PhD thesis so I have a pretty fair grasp of their capabilities.

So need to be careful about this comment "Thais are in general not good at English" as it really doesn't apply in the academic community. But in the general population, I will agree, at least in comparison with some of its' Asian neighbors.

You got the experience.. I dont.. and I know of a few highly schooled Thais with perfect English too. So Ill go with what you say.

[Alwyn]

Thailand has researchers?

[zaphod reborn]

Your remark on English is spot on.. Thais are in general not good at English.. though one would imagine many researchers would have to be good to access the information that is available already.

So need to be careful about this comment "Thais are in general not good at English" as it really doesn't apply in the academic community. But in the general population, I will agree, at least in comparison with some of its' Asian neighbors.

Sorry, but Thais tend to be very poor in output of academic English. If you were an experienced IELTS instructor, you would know this. If you are just proofing academic texts, most of what you are reading is cut and pasted or outright plagerized.

Ive both edited academic research papers written by graduate Thai students, and been an IELTS instructor. Thais lack sufficient confidence in their English language skills to attain the output levels being measured by these studies.

[Chris Lawrence]

Your remark on English is spot on.. Thais are in general not good at English.. though one would imagine many researchers would have to be good to access the information that is available already.

So need to be careful about this comment "Thais are in general not good at English" as it really doesn't apply in the academic community. But in the general population, I will agree, at least in comparison with some of its' Asian neighbors.

Sorry, but Thais tend to be very poor in output of academic English. If you were an experienced IELTS instructor, you would know this. If you are just proofing academic texts, most of what you are reading is cut and pasted or outright plagerized.

Ive both edited academic research papers written by graduate Thai students, and been an IELTS instructor. Thais lack sufficient confidence in their English language skills to attain the output levels being measured by these studies.

The Government wants to change the education system, so how do you think this will effect tertiary education? The theme appears to be 'Thainess' and the Generals 12 commandments. Don't know how this will translate into this level of education, but there is talk of tinkering with the funding of Universities.

I just get the feeling that the Thai education system will lose under the current Government. I would like to be proved wrong but........

[zydeco]

Obvious. Singapore and Malaysia use English. Thailand can't compete with that. BTW, Malaysia appears to be in real trouble right now. Money has become a problem and research institutes are actually not renewing contracts. As for Elsevier, btw, they have become something of a problem themselves, a monopoly that many people in the sciences actually think is retarding the dissemination of knowledge because of the exorbitant prices they put on journals or online journal access. And the fact that they have fostered a very incestuous peer review process that is also stifling.

As far as I know Elsevier is a Dutch company and I use their services too as they are also on the forefront of Dutch tax law information. They are quite expensive.. but if you want to keep updated they are the one.

Your remark on English is spot on.. Thais are in general not good at English.. though one would imagine many researchers would have to be good to access the information that is available already.

I urge you to google up "Elsevier monopoly." Much more than just expense and costs are at issue, here. The peer review process is fatally infected. As for Thais, many are much more creative and imaginative than they are usually given credit for. But discipline is lacking and English, even at the two top universities in the country is poor, especially among admin and assoc. and full professors. Students' English is actually better.

[teacherofwoe]

Thailand is number one in the world for research because they recently found the cure/vaccine for Ebola.

[Rhys]

many could be busy teaching...

[mango66]

malaysia reducing funds,

propably they found out,

of papaers, articles you get nothing !!

more papers, less people will read all !!

[geriatrickid]

So need to be careful about this comment "Thais are in general not good at English" as it really doesn't apply in the academic community. But in the general population, I will agree, at least in comparison with some of its' Asian neighbors.

Accurate (as usual).

All of the top public health researchers are fluent in a language other than Thai. Many researchers are fluent in French, or Japanese or German. Some sectors do not necessarily need English. French is an official language of WHO. I am surprised by the number of Thais from all walks of life who are able to converse in German, French, Japanese and Mandarin.

[AyG]

I've done a fair bit of academic proof reading (Ph.D. theses, papers) for non-native English speakers (mostly Malaysian and Indian). My one foray into do the same for Thai people was to agree to proof read the thesis abstracts for a class of MBA students (the theses themselves were in Thai). Never again! Most of them were utterly incomprehensible. To make any sense of them I ended up having to refer to the Thai originals.