The contribution of ethnic groups to Malaysian scientific output, 1982–2014, and the effects of the new economic policy

Abstract

Malaysia has three main ethnic communities: Chinese, Indians and Malays. At independence in 1957, the Chinese dominated commercial life, and this led to ethnic tensions and finally riots. As a result in 1969 Malaysia introduced a “New Economic Policy” (NEP) to promote Malays in all areas of activity, and in particular to assist them to obtain basic and higher education. We examined the scientific outputs from Malaysia between 1982 and 2014 and classified the names of Malaysian researchers into one of these three groups and two others. There was a major increase in Malay participation in research, which has risen from 20 % of researchers in 1982–1984 to 65 % in 2012–2014, with corresponding declines in the percentages of Chinese and Indian authors, although their absolute numbers have increased because Malaysian scientific output has increased so rapidly in the last 10 years. The huge increase in Malay researchers contrasts with their presence in the Malaysian population which has remained stable at about 50 % since 1969.

<p>Self-medication of antibiotics: investigating practice among university students at the Malaysian National Defence University</p>

“…Most of the current study respondents were unmarried reflecting that cadet officers cannot marry whilst a student, but also that most Malaysian university students are unmarried with the average age of marriage being 26–28 years 106,107. Although Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country, Malays are the largest race108 and, reflecting that, the respondents were mostly Malay.…”

Mapping cancer research across Central and Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation and Central Asia: Implications for future national cancer control planning

“…The methodological approach has been described in detail elsewhere 14 . The second aspect for specific study was the presence of cancer researchers with one or more of 2400 Russian names (ending in "-enko", "-ev", "-nin", and "-ov" and their feminine equivalents) on non-Russian origin papers, to study migration patterns, as previously described 15 .…”

Predictors of Major Bleeding Among Atrial Fibrillation Patients on Warfarin

“…It has been established earlier that ethnicity influences warfarin sensitivity. Several studies reported higher incidence of major bleeding among Asian population than in European countries and the US [27][28][29], suggesting that lower doses are needed to achieve the target PT-INR [30]. This might be due to the variability in the biological response to warfarin or the average body mass index, which is considered small for Asian population [16,17].…”