According to the Mehr news agency, citing the Vice President for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, the introduction of the “Leap” strategic program (flowing, guiding and accelerating the quality scientific outputs of faculty members) was held in two separate meetings with the presence of the head of the National Science Foundation of Iran, today, the eighth of Bahman, at the place of the Scientific Vice. In the first meeting, university presidents and research assistants of 11 top universities of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology were present; In another meeting, the vice presidents of research and technology of 9 top universities of medical sciences of the Ministry of Health explained this program.
Mohammadreza Hormozinjad, President of the National Science Foundation of Iran, during his speech at this meeting, emphasized the strategic importance of the Leap plan and stated: This program will be the beginning of an effective movement in the top universities of our country.
He further explained the financial support of this development and added: This year, by the order of the President’s scientific deputy, he has allocated an amount of credit to start this project. This credit is specially intended to support institutions that have the greatest impact on the scientific and research outputs of the country.
By presenting new data, he evaluated the state of the country’s scientific productions and said: While the country’s scientific output trend had a jump in development in the first twenty years after the revolution, and the special support of the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Health accelerated the production, in the last four and five years, we faced a decrease in the number of outputs, which is a worrying situation.
Hormozinejad pointed out Iran’s position in the world: According to the statistics of 2024, Iran’s scientific position is 17th among the countries of the world, however, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are rapidly approaching Iran, and it is likely that if this downward trend continues in the statistics of 2025, which will be published soon, the country will experience a drop in rank. Also, it was emphasized that currently Iran’s scientific position in the Islamic world is second after Türkiye (first) and before Saudi Arabia (third).
The head of the Iran Science Foundation emphasized: by closely monitoring the number, quality and growth rate of publications in the fields where Iran has the largest share, we are experiencing a declining situation, and the supporting institutions must pay serious attention to this issue and prevent this decline from continuing.
According to Hormozinejad, this program was designed by the direct order of the Scientific Vice-Chancellor and under the guidance of the National Science Foundation of Iran, in line with the five main goals of maintaining the country’s international scientific authority, stopping the downward trend of scientific publications, improving the quality of faculty members’ outputs, increasing the motivation of faculty members, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, and raising the scientific rank of the country’s top universities on the international level.
This official, the implementation framework of this program in three main steps; He explained the selection of supported universities, the determination of evaluation indicators and the design of the implementation and monitoring method.
Regarding the first step, he explained: For benchmarking, ISC-2024, QS 2026, Times 2026, Shanghai 2025 and Nature-Index rating systems were reviewed. Looking at the ranking data of the Islamic world in the three-year period of 2022-2024, it was found that the first 20 universities publish about 80% of the country’s articles. For this purpose, in consultation with the research assistants of the ministers, these 20 universities were selected as supported universities.
Hormzhinejad continued: In the second step, the indicators are designed with the aim of periodic evaluation and compliance with the comprehensive scientific map of the country. Universities should select and implement appropriate target indicators in their proposed proposal form. Among the target indicators, the following can be mentioned: total articles published in the evaluation year, top 1% and 10% articles, number and per capita of first and second quartile articles, articles published in the Nature Index group, per capita articles indexed in WoS to full-time researchers, and the ratio of the number of articles shared in WoS with foreign researchers. Universities are expected to be able to raise up to 70% of the desired increase with different mechanisms and from their tax credits.
In the end, he pointed out that in the third step, the implementation and monitoring method of the program is designed; He pointed out: In this regard, a dashboard for monitoring the research performance of universities is being designed, which is expected to be available to the presidents and research assistants of the universities before Eid, and will provide the possibility to monitor the performance of the universities even on a daily basis.
He added: Selected universities will have three weeks to submit their executive plan in writing, and after approval, 40% of the program credit will be allocated to them. The supervision of the implementation of the program will also be the responsibility of a committee called “Leading and Monitoring Committee” in the National Science Foundation of Iran.
In the final part of this program, the presidents and vice presidents of the universities asked questions and presented their suggestions. Among the axes raised in this section, emphasis was placed on paying more attention to basic sciences, the necessity of a detailed analysis of the reasons for the reduction of scientific productions, deeper problem-finding, and the pursuit of solving these problems through announcing and planning them at the upstream levels.
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