The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) has set scientific research at the forefront of its ambitious strategic vision, where research is considered as key to institutional innovation and foresight, to create a vibrant, sustainable future for the next generation. In line with the vision, the faculty members of UAEU have produced 1077 research articles during the period January to June 2022, according to the international Scopus database.

Dr Ahmed Murad, UAEU’s Associate Provost for Research elaborated that the impact of the university’s research is a combination of the number of publications, the significance of the Journal in the research field, and the citations of publications by other researchers. He noted that the UAEU’s publications have been cited 872 times across 88 countries, and with a Field-weight impact factor of 1.70. He added, “UAEU’s focuses on the quality of the research output, which is assessed by the percentage of papers published in journals of high significance in their field. According to the Scopus database, 26 papers were published in the top 1% of journals, 28.3% of the papers were published in top 10% of journals, and 67.3% of papers were published in the top 25% of journals”.

According to the Scopus database, the distribution of publications in major fields is given as: engineering (11.3%), medicine (9.1%), computer science (7.9%), environmental sciences (7.4%), social sciences (6%), biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology (5.4%), materials and agricultural and biological sciences (4.9%), chemistry (4.8%), and mathematics (4.7%). Professor Murad stressed that the UAEU devotes more attention to teamwork, collaboration with other scientific institutions, constructive communication, transfer of expertise, and provision of excellent research facilities. “These are essential to improving research output”, he said. He noted that 76.6% of UAEU’s publications are generated in collaboration with other universities in the UAE.

Professor Murad added that the research outputs of the UAEU make a key contribution to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. 464 of the published research papers (43% of all published papers in the first half of 2022) related to the goals, including 190 papers in the area of health and quality of life (Goal 3), 84 papers in the area of clean energy (Goal 7), and 79 papers focused on reducing inequalities (Goal 10). He concluded by highlighting the importance of producing patents and new inventions as “patents represent one of the most important research outcomes of academic institutions”. During the first half of 2022, the UAEU field 10 patents and has been granted 14 patents. Overall, the UAEU has 217 granted patents.