Abstract
Publication productivity, as measured by the number of papers, has been regarded as one of the main indicators of reputation of countries and institutions. Nevertheless, the relationship among research publications, economic growth and World Wide Web in ASEAN countries is still unclear. The main intention of this study was to identify publication productivity among ASEAN and the world’s top ten countries in the last 16 years (1996-2011). This study also aimed at finding the relationship among publication, gross domestic product (GDP) and internet usage. Furthermore, the publication trend in the 10 first Malaysian universities was evaluated for the same periods. Scopus database was used to find the overall documents, overall citations, citations per document and international collaboration from 1996 to 2011 for each country. The World Bank database (World Data Bank) was used to collect the data for GDP and the number of internet users. Moreover, to evaluate 10 top Malaysian universities, the number of published articles, conferences, reviews, and letters for the same periods was collected. The results of this study showed significant differences among ASEAN and top 10 countries regarding publication productivity. Moreover, a positive and significant relationship was observed between indices, GDP and internet usage for these countries. Surprisingly, international collaboration had a significant and negative relationship with economic growth. Malaysia had fewer citations per document (7.64) and international collaboration (36.9%) among ASEAN countries. In conclusion, international collaboration between academic institutes and researchers is influenced by economic growth and access to internet in the countries. Furthermore, publication trends in ASEAN countries are promising. However, policy makers and science managers should try to find different ways to increase the quality of the research publication and to raise citation per document.
Highlights
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a geo-political and economic organization including ten countries located in Southeast Asia, was formed on 8 August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand
The main tool for measuring a country's economy is Gross domestic product (GDP) that is the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time
Based on human development index (HDI), the top ten countries around the world are listed as follow: Norway, Australia, USA, The Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan
Summary
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a geo-political and economic organization including ten countries located in Southeast Asia, was formed on 8 August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. There is a relationship between economic growth and education and research publication. This relationship has not been well supported by realistic evidence (Jin & Jin, 2013; Nelson & Phelps, 1966; Lucas, 1988; Becker, 2009; Romer, 1990). In a recent research study, Jin and Jin (2013) indicated that publication productivity in different fields has dissimilar effects on economic growth. These days, publication productivity is a main task for researchers and students than in the past decades and the results of research should benefit the community (Zain et al, 2009). It is widely observed that the world’s top productive research universities are in the highly developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada et al
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