Egyptians can expect a significant event at the outset of the upcoming new year;
the date 8 January 2016 stands to witness the launching of Egypt’s Knowledge
Bank. The bank will be launched by Egypt’s Presidential Council for Education
and Scientific Research (PCESR) with the aim of providing Egyptians with an
extensive digital base of knowledge and reference resources.
According to Tarek Shawki, Secretary-General of the Secretariat of the PCESR,
the Egyptian Knowledge Bank aims at offering Egyptians access to quality
research and education material. It provides, digitally, the knowledge tools and
materials needed to launch projects or initiatives. This should be vital for
government-led projects expected throughout the coming four years, including the
development of Egypt’s basic education curriculum especially in teaching
Mathematics and science. Also in the pipeline are projects for enhancing higher
education curricula as well as implementing programmes for raising public
awareness, and making culture and continuing education accessible to all.
“The PCESR will be the largest digital library and data base in the world,” Dr
Shawki says. “It should serve 90 million Egyptians and should be instrumental in
reforming education, training teachers, and teaching children scientific critical
thinking.
“We have partnered with the biggest publishers in the world to offer Egyptians of
all ages and walks of life access to world-class publications that offer knowledge
and information not easily found elsewhere, as well as critical tools needed in
education and research. Among the publishers are National Geographic,
Discovery, Cambridge, Oxford, Britannica, Emerald, and Thomson Reuters. The
latter will offer Egyptian scientists and scholars access to Web of
Science, InCites, Journal Citation Reports and Thomson Innovation.
Researchers and institutions will be able to successfully navigate the lifecycle of
innovation, from discovery to protection to commercialisation. Through Thomson
Reuters, for instance, they will have access to the Web of Science—the premier
web-based platform for scientific and scholarly research. They will be able to
monitor the global and regional impact of their work with InCites, a research
evaluation tool, enabling universities to measure research output and impact,
monitor trends, and benchmark their performance against peers at the individual,
departmental and global levels. InCites also provides access to the Journal Citation
Reports, the most comprehensive collection of profiles and metrics, including the
Journal Impact Factor to support deep evaluation of journal attributes and
performance. Thomson Innovation, the leading Intellectual Property intelligence
platform will expedite research and provide critical insights for well-informed,
confident intellectual property decisions.
Watani International
24 November 2015