The Science Age Society has embarked on a quest to create a database of all PhD theses published by Egyptians, whether home or abroad, over the past two decades. The database will be made available on their website soon.

Egypt produces more PhDs than any other country in the Middle East. In fact, in 2009 alone, there were 35,000 people enrolled in doctoral studies. Hardly any of that research is ever put to use later on, however.

University libraries in Egypt are infamously known to have piles upon piles of theses on shelves, slowly gathering dust and ignored by all. Most researchers who embark on PhDs only do this to be eligible for the annual promotions and pay rises in their institutes.

In this setting, does the idea of a database of PhDs sounds like a worthwhile endeavour to make use of all this knowledge that is going to waste? But there is one serious drawback to the effort: quality.

Because of an attitude of indifference from many researchers who are only conducting these studies for a social status or for a work promotion, the quality can be dismal. Research papers are often plagued with plagiarism (with varying extents) and often does not include original or useful research. Many of them fail to get published in international peer-reviewed journals and opt to publish in obscure journals that’ll pick up any research paper with no questions asked.

Couple that with a serious problem of underfunding research, and you have serious question marks on how far a scientist (even if enthusiastic) can produce good research.

The next phase of the project, pending funding, will be to determine which of the papers are of good quality and can be used further. The question is, who will make that choice? And on what basis? Will they re-evaluate the thousands of papers published so far? And if so, who will do this re-evaluation?

The database may, however, serve as a nucleus for coordination and cooperation across the different Egyptian research institutes. These usually act as islands, each aware of what is happening in the other even if it is just down the road. This results in millions of wasted dollars on duplicate research – a problem Egypt has been trying to tackle for a while now.

This database can act as a starting point for a research embarking on new research to find what has been done before and where he or she needs to start from. They could also learn of other researchers working in their disciplines in other institutes, paving the way for collaborative research, which is much needed in Egypt.

I’m sure that within the thousands of papers the Science Age Society will wade through will yield a few hidden jewels, really good research that got overlooked within the myriad of papers produced and stocked on shelves, never to be looked at again. But I’m skeptical on how many of these jewels are present in that pile.

I think publicising this as a tool to link researchers for collaborative, higher quality research – coupled with a new push for quality from the new Egyptian government – could yield much better results in the future instead of focusing on the past and trying to salvage what we can from it.