Evolution of Interdisciplinary Approaches Among Research-Oriented Universities in Vietnam Toward a Modern Industrial Economy: Exploratory Study

A knowledge-based economy requires a country to heavily invest in science and technology in addition to receiving technology transferred from other countries. Developing science and technology based on Vietnam’s internal resources is an essential component for promoting economic growth and creating breakthroughs in productivity, quality, efficiency, and increasing competitiveness for sustainable socioeconomic development. This study reviewed the development of research performance in Vietnam in the period from 1966 to 2020, thereby identifying the trends in the development of science and technology in Vietnam, the contribution of research-oriented universities, and the discovering factors that need to be addressed to improve and enhance the science and technology capacity of Vietnam.

Principal Findings

Our results indicated that Vietnam’s research productivity has been improving significantly, especially in the recent 5 years (from 2015 to 2020). This is reflected in the number of scientific documents in 2020 (13,691 documents), which increased by nearly 50% compared to that in 2019 (9415 documents). This can be explained by the fact that during this period, specific policies and activities aimed at promoting innovation in Vietnam from the government side as well as the formation of science funds have made significant contributions to the development of science and technology. In addition, in some research-oriented universities, policies on money rewards of universities and research institutes for scientific papers in international journals increased the motivation and research performance of Vietnamese researchers. However, despite the significant progress, the knowledge contribution of Vietnamese scholars is still modest compared to those in other countries even in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region, such as Malaysia (24,423 documents in 2020), Thailand (16,697 documents in 2020), or Singapore (23,225 documents in 2020), according to statistics of the Web of Science database [19]. Furthermore, the number of scientific publications as of December 14, 2021 (12,783 publications) was almost equal to that in 2020, showing that science and technology activities in Vietnam are slowing down [19]. This phenomenon could be attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, it might be a concerning indicator showing that current policies are being saturated. Therefore, a breakthrough in the development policy is necessary for promoting Vietnam’s science and technology and the contribution of research-oriented universities in Vietnam.

With a large population (nearly 100 million people) and large socialization resources from the private sector, Vietnam’s potential for science and technology development is substantial. However, in Vietnam, the proportion of higher education (eg, undergraduate, postgraduate education) accounts for less than 30%, and the rate of the population engaged in research and development activities was only 887 people per million people in 2017, which is much lower than that in Thailand (1632 per million people in 2016) or Malaysia (2859 per million people in 2016) [8]. In addition, the results of this study showed that the role of private research institutions was not strong in the period of 1966-2020. In the top 20 research institutions with the highest scientific productivity, there were only 2 private universities. A report by the Ministry of Science and Technology showed that the innovation level of private organizations in Vietnam was lesser than expected when compared to that in other countries with similar income per capita; for example, only 53% of Vietnamese innovators informed new products in the market, while this proportion was 75% in Malaysia and 86% in Thailand [8]. This can be explained by the fact that the majority of private universities are mainly application-oriented universities, which were suitable for career guidance, while there were only few research-oriented universities [20]. However, currently, many private universities have announced the development of strong research groups with large investments. This is a model that has proven effective in other countries around the world [21-24]. Therefore, the launch of private universities in the science and technology map of Vietnam is expected to be more common in the coming period.

Findings in the analysis of journals and citations depicted those Vietnamese studies that were mainly published in middle-ranking journals. In addition, although research quality had improved with an increase in the mean number of citations per document over the years, this level is still not comparable to that in other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region [12]. Promoting interdisciplinary research is an effective way to improve research quality [25,26]. In this study, the results showed the shift in the priority research fields of Vietnam over the period of this study. In the period before 2015, research topics focused on theoretical areas such as mathematics or physics. However, in the recent period, research has been performed and published more frequently in the experimental and applied fields. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research has been becoming a trend gradually in response to the increasingly complex domestic and international contexts. The involvement of multidisciplinary fields aids to solve problems from different aspects of issues, thereby significantly improving the quality of research. For example, research related to the topic of COVID-19 in 2020 involved the fields of biomedicine, bioinformatics, and mathematics to build epidemiological models for early warnings [27]. Therefore, policies that promote multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research should also be included in science and technology policies.

International publications are contributed by major academic centers in major localities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hue, Thai Nguyen, and Can Tho. This can be explained by the low level of English literacy of scientists in other localities [28]. However, this is mainly due to limited resources being available, and most of the resources are distributed in the provinces where strong research centers are concentrated. This may lead to a lack of science and technology development in other regions, especially in the mountainous and coastal provinces. However, these are the localities with specific scientific research problems that are valuable in contributing to global knowledge. Indeed, scientific evidence on natural and sociocultural issues in these vulnerable localities in the Web of Science Core Collection database is still limited. Therefore, developing key science programs to promote research strengths in these regions should be prioritized in national science and technology agendas. In addition, the cooperation network between strong research centers and local research units should be strongly encouraged to improve the scientific productivity and scientific research capacity of research institutions in these less developed regions.

Similar to those in previous analyses, findings in this study showed that despite a gradual decline in recent years, the contribution of international collaborations to the total number of publications is huge (through the position of the first author, corresponding authors, and fundings) [7,22,23]. This is especially true in empirical research fields, which require great investment in equipment and technology as well as technology transfer activities from countries with more advanced science. In practice, international collaborations are indispensable for promoting science and technology. These partnerships facilitate access to high-quality human, financial, and infrastructure resources for conducting research [29]. This is reflected in that documents with international collaborations had a higher mean citation per document than documents with only domestic collaborations. This result is similar to that reported in some previous studies, which showed that studies with international collaborations received more attention and had more citations [30,31]. Therefore, participating in global scientific and technological networks and calling for the participation of scientists around the world is essential. Noticeably, from 1990 onwards, documents with Vietnamese as the first author and corresponding author had higher mean citations per document in comparison with documents in which international scholars were the first or corresponding authors. This interesting result further confirms that the role of Vietnamese in leading research should be promoted.