Today, August 9, the Ministry of Education and Training held the 2024 Higher Education Conference. Reporting at the conference, regarding scientific research content, the Director of the Department of Higher Education said that the research results and international publications of the Vietnamese higher education system in recent years have tended to increase steadily and sustainably, in which higher education institutions have always played a leading role in scientific publications nationwide.

Photo: Illustration

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, in the past 7 months, there were over 12,500 articles published by Vietnamese higher education institutions in international journals. Of which, the 67 institutions that published the most accounted for over 84% of the total number of articles nationwide.

However, compared to 2023, the number of publications in international scientific journals by Vietnamese higher education institutions tends to decrease as there are only 5 months left to the end of the year but the number has not reached the level of 2023.

To have an overall assessment, the Ministry of Education and Training provides specific statistics for 2022, 2023 and the first 7 months of 2024 as follows:

It can be seen that in 2023, the number of international publications by higher education institutions in Vietnam is higher than in 2022. However, the figures for the first 7 months of 2024 show that the number of publications this year may be lower than in 2023.

In addition, according to the National Agency for Science and Technology Information (2021), the total national research and development (R&D) budget accounts for 0.42% of GDP, of which the State budget accounts for 30.9%. The higher education sector accounts for 1/3 of the total number of full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers nationwide and 3/4 of the number of researchers with doctoral degrees nationwide. Regarding the number of articles published in Scopus publications in the 3 years from January 2022 to the end of July 2024, the 67 higher education institutions with the largest number of publications alone accounted for 83.5% of the total number of articles nationwide. However, R&D funding for the university sector only accounts for 6.75% of the total national R&D funding, reaching approximately VND 2,434 billion or VND 97.3 million per FTE (compared to VND 476 million per FTE of the entire system).

Nghiem Hue