On Monday evening, May 28, 2018, Dr. Tarek Shawky, Minister of Education and Technical Education of the Arab Republic of Egypt, signed an agreement to establish the first International Arabic Citation Index on behalf of the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, together with Clarivate Analytics and Dar Almandumah Information Technology Company, during the signing ceremony and accompanying press conference held at one of Cairo’s hotels.
The event was attended by Dr. Inas Abdel Dayem, Minister of Culture; Dr. Reda Hegazy, Head of the General Education Sector; Dr. Dina Borai, Assistant Minister for Educational Assessment; Major General Akram El-Nashar, Assistant Minister for Financial and Administrative Affairs; Osama Heikal, Chairman of the Egyptian Media Production City; writer and politician Mostafa El-Feki; in addition to a number of media figures and members of parliament.
The Minister stated during his speech that Arab scholars had historically contributed to shaping Arab civilization across all fields. He noted that the development of communication tools and the technological boom of recent years had reduced this influence, which created the need for an International Arabic Citation Index to restore the Arab intellectual and scientific research system to its proper place.
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He added that Arabs have faced a challenge over past decades in disseminating and circulating their research globally due to the lack of English translation, which further increases the importance of launching this index. He said: “The launch of this index stems from concern for the national interest and Egypt’s civilizational image, and from the desire to strengthen the Arab presence on the global research map.”
His Excellency further explained that this index represents a true gateway to investing in scholarly research and exporting knowledge to the world. This will be achieved through the establishment of a council of specialists to set standards for research and journals and to select, evaluate, and index scholarly journals published in Arabic.
The Minister of Education continued: “There are countries that recognized the value of their research and created citation indexes, such as Russia and China, which led to an increase in the number of journals and their global influence.” He emphasized that scholarly research is the path to restoring Egypt’s leading role across all fields and making it an essential partner with other nations in the creation and dissemination of knowledge, saying: “For years, we bought ideas from other countries and circulated them through the Knowledge Bank, and now the time has come for us to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.”
During the ceremony, the agreement was signed by Dr. Tarek Shawky on behalf of the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, Ms. Viji Krishnan on behalf of Clarivate Analytics, and Dr. Ali Al-Shuwaish on behalf of Dar Almandumah.
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This tripartite partnership aims to launch the Arabic Citation Index, fully funded by the Egyptian Ministry of Education through the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, through which impact factors for Arabic scholarly journals and periodicals will be derived. Dar Almandumah’s role is to provide and prepare all bibliographic data, abstracts, and required translations according to the international standards adopted by the project, so that they can be technically processed through the Web of Science citation indexing system.
It is worth noting that this project is built upon Dar Almandumah’s services, which are based on its extensive databases containing nearly 900,000 research papers and scholarly studies. These databases have become a primary source for researchers and academics across the Arab world, and this participation further reinforces Dar Almandumah’s leading role in serving the Arab scholarly and academic community.