It was recently announced that the first Arab ranking of Arab universities will appear at the end of this year, through the Association of Arab Universities, which currently includes 450 Arab universities.
The association will seek to make this ranking global within two years. Its General Secretariat has already embarked on a ten-year strategy aimed at raising the level of Arab universities to world standards.
The first question in this strategy was how to raise the status and classification of Arab universities through scientific publishing. Arab universities produce a great wealth of knowledge in the human sciences, but international classification systems do not see this distinguished production of Arab universities, because the most influential papers are published by foreign journals. Therefore, the association has already signed an agreement with Elsevier, the institution that owns the Scopus database, to include scientific journals issued by Arab universities in that index.
Making Arab Research More Visible
The Association of Arab Universities has approved the establishment of an Arab Journals Platform for journals issued by Arab universities, whether in Arabic or in foreign languages. It also agreed to have an advisory board similar to the advisory board for the Scopus database to assist the journals and prepare them to comply with the index’s standards.
This board will also work on recommending the entry of scientific journals into the database, which will help Arab scientific journals achieve this goal and will also be directly reflected on the presence of Arab universities in international rankings.
The implementation of the project has already begun and a number of Arab scientific journals are on the Arab Journals Platform. Any researcher can view this platform online, which will have a very significant impact on future rankings.