As the country's first university press prepares to launch this month, some academics and experts in the UAE say they struggle to gain international recognition for their work unless they publish it in collaboration with institutions overseas.
Across disciplines, the country's peer-reviewed journals are not listed on highly visible indices used by scientists worldwide. The peer review process requires experts in a field - often other scholars - to critically examine an article before it is published.
One journal that was broadly indexed, Emirates Medical Journal, published through the Emirates Medical Association, ceased publication this year.
"There is a general feeling that there is a bias in the selection of international journals," said Dr Ghazi Tadmouri, the assistant director of the Centre for Arab Genomic Studies. "Once you try to publish as a group from the UAE and not with someone from the US or UK, you will have trouble surviving the review process."
In 2005, Dr Tadmouri conducted a review of medical journals and found there were 453 peer-reviewed journals in the Middle East. Less than 10 of those were internationally indexed.
Part of the problem is that there is not a culture of offering papers, he said. Medical scientists who practise in the field do not have time to write reports that would be competitive at an international level.
Language is another obstacle. "Whenever a scientist doesn't have English as his mother tongue, the text would not be as professional as someone else's and they would have a hard time competing for review," he said.
The University of Sharjah's two peer-reviewed periodicals, Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences and Journal of Shari'a and Law Sciences, are mostly in Arabic.
"Because the percentage of English articles in the journals is very low, it is not easy to be indexed in a way to have a high classification," said Basem Attili, the editor-in-chief of both publications. "That is an issue that needs to be addressed."
As a result, research done here rarely makes it into international indices. The popular repository of medical papers MedLine, for instance, does not have any listings for research journals from the UAE, although it does list local articles, most of which are from UAE University.
There is extreme competition from within the region to have work published abroad, especially in social sciences, said Ali Noor Mohamed, the chairman of mass communication at UAE University, who serves on the editorial board for an online journal published by University of Toronto Press.
UAE academics say international journals tend to have an appetite for only a few articles from the entire Gulf or Middle East region.
That is despite an explosion of new journals around the world.
"New journals are coming out almost every month, every year, but that in effect waters down the research itself," Mr Mohamed said. "Now there is even more competition within academic branches to be published in higher-quality, specialised journals."
Of the UAE's 13,000 research listings across different disciplines in Scopus, one of the broadest international citation databases of scholarly articles, nearly half are directly affiliated with UAE University.
The other half are from medical centres, government facilities and other universities.
In comparison, more than 46,000 come from Saudi Arabia, while more than nine million listings are from the United States and 2.4 million are from the United Kingdom.
Most research projects at local universities focus on issues that affect the country and might not be as relevant overseas, said Mohammed Yousif Hasan Baniyas, the dean of medicine at UAE University.
His department has been able to overcome that challenge by including international implications in its research of, for example, communicable diseases.
Zayed University will this month begin distributing a peer-reviewed journal and book series worldwide through an agreement with the British academic publisher IB Taurus. It will be one of the region's few university presses, alongside American University in Cairo Press and American University of Beirut Press.
Zayed University's new journal on culture and society, Encounters, will include articles from authors around the world on subjects including intellectual traditions and political systems.
"The education sector here is so young, but with growth I believe we'll begin to see more development in research meant to be read abroad and more publications coming out for different fields of study," said Rafael Reyes-Ruiz, the journal's editor.
Zayed University Press will eventually produce books for the public, including works of fiction and travel guides. Its publications will be edited and typeset in-house, printed in Dubai and then shipped to London for distribution worldwide.
econroy@thenational.ae
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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