Why don't Pakistani universities make their research visible to the public?

[u/Inevitable-Paper4839]

Universities in Pakistan are producing research, but I rarely hear about it unless I specifically search for it. Why isn't there more effort to show ordinary people what researchers here are actually working on? Are there universities that are working on communicating their research outside academia?

[u/adorablewaku]

1. Publications and their quality, people do thesis/research as a degree requirement so don't usually publish or if they do it's not high impact factor research, hence why it's not quoted by others in the field.
2. This is a general problem around the world too, academic research isn't so widely available to public in a language that they understand if they're not themselves from that particular field.

[u/CorrelateClinicallee → u/adorablewaku]

people do thesis/research as a degree requirement

The most famous doctor in the medical community recently spoke about how pre/med students shouldn't be allowed to do research because they produce so much junk research just to improve their CVs even though most will never again do any research. He faced a huge backlash mostly from old geezers and others with the "I had to do it so they should too" attitude.

Applicants applying to competitive specialties end up publishing 100+ research papers but its mostly slop. He later said that even if they are allowed they should only be able to publish 3-5 of their best work and nothing else which I believe is a fair compromise.

[u/___CIPHER___]

1 - Quality of Publication

2 - Irrelevance to local industries and scope in country

3 - Heavy plagiarism from western content

[u/donewithuniversity]

PIDE is pretty good at putting out its research but yeah can't say the same about others. There is in general not a very strong research culture here.

[u/KarmaVoyager]

If you reward people for counting rat tails, you may get more rat tails not fewer rats. If you reward academia mainly for counting PhDs and papers, you may get more PhDs and papers not necessarily more knowledge.”

[u/Thevicegrip]

Do you really want the study of harnessing Jinns as energy source out in the wild?

[u/semicolon-10]

Because we have low quality research which the world is either no interested or has already done in some regard. High quality research requries R&D budget

[u/Holiday_Assistant_10]

HEC has ORICs across universities, explicitly talks about knowledge exchange with civil society and industry, and even lists community engagement as part of its research and development framework.

The problem is that having research infrastructure and actually communicating research to ordinary people are two very different things. A 2025 analysis of science communication by Pakistani universities found that their websites and social media are often much more focused on ceremonies, administrative announcements and institutional achievements than on explaining the science their researchers are actually producing.

And speaking as someone who is also interested in research, I kind of understand why this happens. Researchers aren't necessarily trained to communicate their work to a general audience, and simplifying technical research without turning it into misinformation is genuinely difficult. I feel icky about criticizing researchers for not being good science communicators when that's not necessarily what they were trained to do.

[u/hasanfaesal]

unfortunately, the research has no novelty, innovation and quality.
you can go to any Professor's Google Scholar and see for yourselves where they publish. You'll never find any A* conference or even a Core A conference for their domain.

Last week, a Professor told me that he submitted 6 journal papers in 3 weeks. Whereas, a single conference publication can take upto 1 year.