What Arab-Region Researchers Face?
Recently, Al-Fanar Media; it is an independent nonprofit news organization. There focus is education, research, and culture in the Arab region. All of there stories, commentary and resources are published in both Arabic and English. They report Money alone can’t break through the barriers that researchers working in the Arab region face, barriers that appear to be so frustrating that the majority of them want to leave.
In an online survey by Al-Fanar Media that 650 researchers based in the Arab region responded to, 91 percent said they would prefer to emigrate from the country they are working in. As stated in the report, it is not all about Just Money, it is Beyond funding, however, researchers face many logistical barriers. Social scientists, for instance, can find that it takes months or years to get surveys or field research approved by governments if they ever get approved at all.
Restrictions related to the cross-border flow of samples or lab equipment seem to be a common trend across the region. Even researchers working at relatively privileged institutions with good salary scales, strong Internet access, and easy access to academic journals sometimes want to throw up their hands.
Research Culture Needed; “In my opinion, funding is not the primary challenge for Arab researchers,” says Dr. Rana Dajani, a molecular biologist, associate professor at the Hashemite University, in Jordan, and a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard University. “The root cause is the environment that doesn’t support doing science.”
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