The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) today honoured faculty members whose scientific research has been published in the world s leading academic journals.

Offering his congratulations, His Excellence, Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, Cultural Adviser to the UAE President and Chancellor of the UAEU said, Your success demonstrates the excellence of our research environment and the value of the University to world scholarship. The UAEU is dedicated to producing innovative research and practice that has a global impact. In this way, the UAEU serve s the nation s vision to develop our knowledge-based economy, create sustainable societal well being, and attain a leading global role in all fields of human endeavour .

His Excellency placed the faculty members success in the context of the history and the future of the nation. He said, Your success brings great pride to the university and honours Sheikh Zayed s conviction that it was important to establish the UAEU very early in our nation s history. Sheikh Zayed said, Science is a resource that we will use to build a future . Your achievements are also central to our preparations for the next 50 years. The principles set by our wise leadership to guide us into the future demonstrate that the university is of vital to national development. A university develops human capacity, and it expands the frontiers of knowledge and practical expertise. Here at UAEU we advance digitalisation, artificial intelligence, and technological sophistication .

He continued, Today, education must prepare our children to address a future in which change, and existential challenge are global in scale. This implies that schools, universities, vocational institutes, research centres, and lifelong learning are increasingly essential. Our young people must never cease to learn, to invent, or to innovate to the highest standards. They must produce outcomes that are valuable on a global scale, just as you have produced academic publications that have global relevance and impact .

Professor Ahmed Murad, UAEU s Associate Provost for Research explained that the productivity and quality of the UAE University has improved significantly during the last two years. The total number of SCOPUS publications for the year 2020 was around 1540. In 2021, this number is expected to exceed 1900 publications. The university is committed to providing the environment and resources that faculty members need to meet the expectations of the UAE s research and innovation strategy and to contribute to areas of national priority .

The rank of an academic journal signals its value and utility to other researchers in an academic field. For the purposes of analysing which faculty members had research of this quality, the UAEU Research Office used both quantitative and qualitative measures of a journal s influence.

The first measure, SCImago Journal Rank (http://www.scimagojr.com) demonstrates the scientific influence of scholarly journals contained in the Elsevier SCOPUS research database. It accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from. The second measure, the Article Influence Score (AI) demonstrates the average influence of a journal's articles over the first five years after publication based on the number of citations of an article by other scientists. It uses Clarivate s Web of Science Journal Citations Report.         (https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/journal-citation-reports/)