Higher Education Commission (HEC) has provided Rs 2.615 billion to promote research in public sector universities during last five years.
Among different programmes, the main was National Research Programme for Universities (NRPU), introduced during the period to promote research in universities at the cost of Rs 1.873 billion.
Sources at Ministry of Education, Trainings and Standards in Higher Education on Friday said the other programme was INSPIRE (Phase-II) launched at the cost of Rs 0.056 billion.
The commission also introduced programmes including Under Provision of Grant to Public Sector Universities/DAls for Maintenance/Up-gradation of Scientific Equipment (Rs 0.051 billion) and Under Pak-US Joint Academic and Research Support (Rs.0.714 billion).
The sources said to ensure the proper utilisation of the said funds for research purposes, an annual report of each case undergoes a process of rigorous peer review from HEC designated focal persons who are eminent scientists/scholar of said subject and on recommendation of these focal persons next instalment of the project is released.
They said the impact of research funding is visible from the unprecedented rise in internationally indexed research publications emanating from Higher Education Institutes in Pakistan.
Scimago, an independent research organization and an international evaluation and ranking platform which analyses scientific outputs of institutions and countries and monitors over 30,000 journals, is considered one of the most 13 credible databases in the world of research has ranked Pakistan from 43 to 27 based on their past performance.
The expected output of research in Pakistan moving up 16 notches, which is the second highest increase worldwide, is primarily due to the innovative higher education policies and reforms undertaken by government, the sources added.
This is a good news. I went through SCImago site few days and delighted to see Pakistan has improved its ranking in research area.
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