Highly cited Pakistan

This refers to the news report, ‘Pakistan emerges as country with highest percentage of citation footprint in last decade’ (September 22). This is extremely encouraging news. According to the report, Pakistan had the highest percentage of citations compared to Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs). The report reveals that in the last decade, Pakistan’s scientific productivity increased by more than four times — from 2000 articles to more than 9000 articles in 2015. During this period, the number of highly cited papers featuring Pakistan-based articles increased tenfold — from nine articles in 2006 to 98 in 2015.

The percentage of Pakistani documents cited during 2006 to 2015 was 62.27 percent of the total published documents as against 59.73 percent of the documents published by all BRICs countries. This is a result of initiatives taken by Dr Atta-ur-Rehman and the HEC a decade back.     

Prof Dr Ziauddin

Hayatabad

Peshawar