The National Education Ministry is urging lecturers to get their names in international journals in order to promote their universities internationally.
A senior official at the ministry, Hendarman, told a discussion in Bogor on Saturday that in order to become world class institutions, universities in Indonesia must improve their quality to gain international recognition.
"Only a few of our lecturers have been cited in world class scientific journals," he said, "This is due to the small number of scientific articles that the country produces annually."
Data from the 2008 Knowledge Economy Index shows that Indonesia produced only 0.93 technical journal articles per 1 million people. This figure is far below countries such as India, which has 13.35 technical journal articles per 1 million people and Malaysia with 23.97.
The ministry has been making an effort to improve the quality of higher learning institutions in the country in a bid to see them on the lists of the world's best universities.
Indonesia is home to 82 state universities and over 2800 private universities. However, only three of them made the list of the 2008 Times Higher Education Supplement's top 400 universities.
The University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta ranked 287th, the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) was ranked 315th, while Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University (UGM) ranked 316th.
The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, which rates the level of information and communication technology as one of the main indicators of good universities, ranked UI 906th, ITB 676th and UGM 623th.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking for World Universities (ARWU), meanwhile, includes no Indonesian universities in its ranking of the world's top 500 and Asia-Pacific's top 100 universities in 2008. The ministry, Hendraman said, was seeking to cooperate with the US as part of its commitment to improving the quality of the country's higher education. (adh)
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