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his is a comment on a letter entitled, '€œFunds for research,'€ (The Jakarta Post, Sept. 19, p8).

The official number of researchers in Indonesia is 42,722. However, it would be good to know what the definition of a researcher in Indonesia is. In other countries, e.g. Australia and Singapore, researchers are PhD holders who have the gone through a highly competitive selection process to get a position, often a temporary one. Here in Indonesia it seems that researchers get permanent positions at universities or in state research institutes when they only hold S-1 (bachelor'€™s) degrees.

The number of papers in international journals is a convenient indicator of the output of knowledge, which is what researchers are supposed to produce. The total number of international papers produced by Australia is about 40,000 per year. Japan, the most scientifically advanced country in Asia, produces about 90,000 papers per year, but China now produces even more.

Malaysian researchers publish about 2,500 papers per year, Thailand about 5,000 and Singapore about 8,000. Indonesian researchers altogether merely produced little more than a thousand international papers a year, 80 percent of which are actually designed and written by foreigners who have been kind enough to include Indonesian '€œcounterparts'€ as co-authors.

The true output of knowledge by an Indonesian researcher is therefore between 0.005 and 0.025 percent of international papers a year, which is very weak compared to researchers abroad. For example, the average Australian researcher produces one to several papers for international journals each year '€” that is, about 100 times more than the average Indonesian researcher.

In conclusion, not only is the number of Indonesian researchers low when compared to the size of the Indonesian population, but their scientific output is on the average very weak. An in-depth reform of the Indonesian research system is necessary. Foreign researchers should also be allowed to do research more freely in Indonesia, to stimulate research conducted locally by Indonesians.

Sabar P
Jakarta