Workshop highlights importance of high-impact R&D

RIYADH: King Saud University (KSU), which is in the vanguard of academic excellence in the Kingdom, organized a workshop highlighting the importance of conducting and publishing high-impact research to achieve goals set under Saudi Vision 2030, and help transform the Kingdom into a knowledge-based economy.
The workshop titled “Forefront of scientific publishing: Impact on achieving Saudi Vision 2030,” was organized at the KSU’s College of Dentistry with the KSU Journals Unit hosting it in collaboration with Elsevier, a leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress.
“The main objective of this workshop was to highlight the importance of conducting and publishing high-impact research for achieving the goals of Vision 2030,” a key speaker at the workshop, Muhammad Khurram Khan, said Monday.
He said that Salem Al-Ghamdi, director of the KSU Journals Unit, opened the workshop with his welcome speech underlining the importance of conducting world-class scientific research and publishing results in high-quality journals.
Al-Ghamdi said that KSU will publish all of its journals in electronic format and all editors in chief of KSU journals are trying to achieve high quality contents for their journals.
Keynote speaker Ahmed Al-Amri underscored the importance of Vision 2030, which is aimed at transforming Saudi Arabia into a knowledge-based economy.
He stressed the value of self-reliance by promoting indigenous Research and Development (R&D), innovation, entrepreneurship and human capital building for prosperity and sustainable development in the Kingdom.
Remco De Boer, Elsevier executive publisher for MENA region, delivered a lecture focusing on the global key performance indicators in R&D.
He said that the research performance in terms of publications of Saudi Arabia is very attractive as the Kingdom has published around 73,000 papers from 2011-2015, giving a lot of weight to R&D in order to achieve greater academic excellence.
He said the collaborative output of KSU is very promising with Europe, East Asia and North America. KSU has been the top institution in the Kingdom and shares around 20,000 publications.
Khurram Khan, who is a faculty member at KSU, highlighted new strategies in scientific publishing and presented new publishing models and strategies to publish high-quality papers in scientific journals, wherein he focused on how open-access journals are changing the publication landscape and making a positive impact on society and overall performance of the researchers.
Khan highlighted the importance of academic social networks on establishing fruitful research and academic collaborations with interested researchers, either in academia or industry, and praised Vision 2030 as a key economic plan to transform the Kingdom into a knowledge-based economy.



Tahar Boutraa of Taibah University, Madinah, presented a paper on contemporary issues in the ethics of modern scientific publishing, wherein he outlined the importance of paying attention to the ethics of scientific writing.
The workshop was organized under the sponsorship of KSU Rector Badran Al-Omar.
KSU is listed among the top 50 worldwide universities granted US utility patents in 2015.