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5 Immediate Impacts If Our 5 Research Universities Were to Collaborate Under One BIG Research Consortium

By : Professor Datuk Dr. A Rahman A Jamal

I have always wondered what would happen if all the 5 research universities (UM, ¼¯ÃÀÂ鶹, USM, UPM and UTM) under one huge consortium to intensify their research collaboration and making it a must for every research project to have researchers at least from one or two partner universities. Yes we all know there is the Malaysia Research University Network (MRUN) but I am told it is more organizational or administrative in nature. Someone told me that a conscious collaborative effort like this will not happen as we would lose the competitiveness. But I asked him back, who are we really competing with? If we are competing amongst ourselves then the nation would certainly lose as none of our universities will ever make it in the top 100. I went on to tell him that even researchers from Harvard collaborate with researchers from MIT (under the umbrella of the Broad Institute) or even Oxford University. The Broad Institute evolved after years of collaboration between researchers from Harvard University and MIT. The model is there staring at us to learn from and emulate. Big medical research consortiums now not only cross state borders but across nations. Let us imagine that someone at the top makes it mandatory for the 5 research universities to work together in research and the 5 vice chancellors focus to collaborate rather than to compete. Here’s what I thought will be the immediate impact.

1. We will start thinking together for the nation first. We have spent many years competing against each other and each year we anxiously wait for the outcome of the Times Higher Education (THE) or the QS rankings to see the order of merit amongst the local universities. Yes, we do have collaboration across universities but it is the exception rather than the rule. When our research universities decided not to submit their data for THE rankings, it triggered a lot of questions from the politicians and other stakeholders. I believe that if the 5 universities were to work together in only 30% of their research projects, the impact and output will be significantly amplified. If this idea is executed well, the 5-university consortium can even challenge the top universities in Asia.

2. The number of publications and citations for each university will rise. This will be due to the effect of compounding as a paper which is co-authored by researchers from 2 or more universities will certainly be registered under and counted by each of the university. This is how it works in USA and Europe as well. A paper in Nature Genetics for example will sometime have researchers from more than 3 institutions (sometimes even more). Everyone gains from the papers and also from the experience of sharing. I am not sure how many of our current publications in Scopus or ISI has co-authorship from other local universities but I believe it is not more than 10% (perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong).

3. All 5 research universities will rise up the ranking system together. This will be mainly the result of more publications and citations but also due to the fact that all the 5 universities will be more visible together in the eyes of the international research fraternity. This will take some time to people to be comfortable with as it is our nature to always be the best. It is the nature, or even the mission, of each vice chancellor to show his/her university is ahead of the others. I believe cooperation will not reduce our competitiveness but there will an impetus for each university to be the lead institution. In the process everybody will benefit.

4. We will multiply and share our resources immediately. There will be increased access to various equipment and laboratories across universities because of the win-win approach. Every paper that comes out from one laboratory will immediately benefit the other laboratory too. Our top visiting scientists, international experts, advisors or even Nobel Laureates can be shared too. Our post-graduate students can learn from many different laboratories. We can have double-badging PhD programmes from two universities. For medical research which requires large number of patients’ samples, imagine the 3 teaching hospitals having a network of biobanks of various biospecimens as well a network of patients’ data. Combining the samples and data means we do not have to worry about insufficient sample or lack of study power.

5. It will be game-changing for research in the form of research consortiums. Many of the top publications in the high impact journals are the result of collaboration between many institutions. Even many of the high impact publications (in Nature or Science) from our local researchers are the result of them collaborating with an international group or due to our young researchers doing their PhD or post-doc in top universities. We cannot make a big impact if each of the research university were to embark on the journey alone. Research in the best sense of the word has teamwork written all over it. The nanotechnology group has shown the way in the formation of NanoMiTe consortium just recently. We are certainly proud of the initiative which also includes the top universities of the world.

I want to end with a call for us to make a game-changing decision. We researchers have been doing our part collaborating in a bottom-up manner but a top-down approach will expand and intensify the collaboration. What if our research leaders and vice-chancellors make a commitment to seriously bring collaboration between the 5 research universities to a different scale? As Steve Jobs once said ‘innovate and make a dent in this world’. Let’s change the game and push Malaysian universities up the ladder.