Compared to a roughly 50-per-cent increase globally, the total research output of Asean has almost tripled in the past 10 years.

However, Thailand’s output and share of the world’s research papers has increased “gradually”, with just over 7,200 papers indexed last year – or 0.48 per cent of the database.

Nevertheless, in terms of influence as indicated by the relative citation impact of research or research quality, the Kingdom tracks close to the world average since 2006, trending upward in the last two years.

In comparison, the report shows Malaysia has sharply increased its research output over the last decade, from roughly 1,900 papers in 2006 to more than 11,000 in 2015 – a spike of almost 500 per cent.

Brunei and Vietnam, meanwhile, have also sharply increased their research outputs, with each posting gains of at least 300 per cent in the same period.

The Thomson Reuters study, titled “Asean – the Emerging Research and Innovation Hub”, categorises Asean into four groups in accordance with their research and patenting capacity.

Singapore stands alone in the first category, Malaysia and Thailand are in the second, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines in the third, and Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Brunei in the fourth.

Malaysia ‘aggressive’

“It’s not so much that Thailand is doing poorly, but Malaysia in comparison is aggressively promoting its research and innovations activities,” See Diu Seng, a solutions consultant at Thomson Reuters’ Intellectual Property & Science unit, said during a media interview in Bangkok yesterday.

In terms of the percentage share of its researches registering among the world’s “Highly Cited Papers” – the top 1 per cent globally in their specific fields – Thailand made its first three entries in last year’s list, two of which came from Thai nationals, he pointed out.

Malaysia, meanwhile, made three entries last year.

“Last year was a first for Thailand. It had never made that list before,” he said.

Thomson Reuters’ senior patents analyst, Bob Stembridge, said most Asean countries had a similar focus on healthcare and chemistry technologies, with the exception of Thailand, whose focus was more on engineering technologies.

“Asean is less focused on hi-tech, although Qualcom heads the most-patented list in three Aseannations,” he said.

For Thailand to do better in research and innovation, Stembridge suggested that the Kingdom strive for more collaboration between universities and the industrial sector, and learn from the United States’ success in rewarding the involved parties for successful commercialisation.

“In terms of innovation, which is the transfer of good ideas into money, the best way is to have industry and universities working together,” he stressed.

“Research is global, not a regional competition. For that you need to globalise talent pools and collaboration networks in order to compete in the world,” See said.

Language may be one reason that helps Malaysia attract many more foreign researchers and students than Thailand, the solutions consultant said, adding that the country was also richer with resources that helped it to draw up incentives to attract global talent. That said, with the collapse in the price of oil, there has been a cut in Malaysia’s budgets recently, he said.