'Foreigners benefit from local research'

'Foreigners benefit from local research'

The Jakarta Post, Bogor

The results of research conducted by locals often ends up
benefiting foreigners because of poor documentation here, an
official said on Tuesday.

Utari Budijarjo, an information network development assistant
to the deputy state minister for research and technology, said
that many local researchers did not really care about the
documentation of their research findings.

She said that usually researchers would make between 10 to 20
copies of their research reports. Even though they were obliged
to submit a copy to the National Library, they rarely did so.
They only felt it necessary to supply copies to the sponsors who
financed the research, Utari said.

Foreigners, who were aware of the importance of these
documents, would then come to take a look at the reports, and
later on bring these to their own countries.

"On the one hand, this is good for Indonesia as the results of
the research are well preserved abroad.

"On the other hand, however, this make us suffer because at
the end of the day, we have to buy back the results of the
research from them. This is exactly what has happened with
research that was conducted on cucumbers here," she said.

The foreigners who frequently came here to ascertain the
results of research carried out by locals were mostly from the
Netherlands, Australia, United States, Singapore and Malaysia.

"Every year, there are Malaysian librarians who come here just
to see the results of our research," she said.

Utari made her statement while handing over a software package
and a server for a digital library at the Bogor Institute of
Agriculture (IPB).

The IPB has been named as one of seven educational
institutions in the country which have been assigned the task of
developing knowledge management.

Three of the others are the Center for Documentation and
Information of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the
Association of Catholic Higher Education Institutes (APTIK), and
the Bandung National Institute of Technology (Itenas).

The ministry has yet to decide on the other three institutes.