Saudi University Policy: Meaningful Cooperation

Abstract

The New Focus story “Saudi Universities offer cash in exchange for academic prestige” (Y. Bhattacharjee, 9 December 2011, p. [1344][1]) gives the impression that King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and King Saud university (KSU) are paying researchers from prestigious institutions, most of them listed in the highly cited researcher list of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), for putting their name with their affiliation in Saudi Arabia into the ISI Web page and on their publications. The article claims that this is done regardless of whether the work involved any meaningful collaboration with KAU or KSU researchers. This impression is wrong. I am a member of the Distinguished Scientist Fellowship Program (DSFP) at King Saud University. I received an e-mail 3 years ago offering me a part-time position including a real, research-oriented, joint project with a corresponding budget for personnel and equipment. I received this project granted by DSFP a year later and now I have another project granted by King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology on the order of half a million euros. I am now a part-time professor at KSU. My KSU colleague, Omar Al-Dossary, has since participated in every experiment we have conducted at the Berlin Electron Storage Ring for Synchrotron Radiation (BESSY) of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, as well as the experiments at the Free-Electron Laser at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg. Next year, a female student of Al-Dossary's, Mashaal Al Khaldi, will join my group at the Fritz-Haber-Institute in Berlin. This is an effort to strengthen the still relatively weak scientific community in Saudi Arabia, a venture undertaken by many eminent scientists from around the world. I believe that my experience is true for many other scientists involved in cooperative activities with Saudi Arabia. We should appreciate these efforts, as they help the Arabic countries to survive. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.334.6061.1344