Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Abstract
Recent records of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISi) show that Iranian scientific productions in humanities are poor. Also, Shanghai University in China released a list of 500 most productive and internationally credited universities of the world in 2003. There was no mention of any Iranian university in this list. Also, recent statistics show that even the number of Iranian articles in humanities disciplines have been lessened since 1979. All these evidences are based on Iranian recorded articles in the ISi. Regarding these facts, humanities disciplines in Iran are currently facing a big challenge. Due to this challenge, the question that I want to examine and focus on in this article is "can we assess the sate of scientific production in Iranian humanities disciplines based on that criterion, meaning the article published in international journals and recoded in the ISi?" I have discussed that examining this question is theoretically and practically significant to development of Iranian humanities because it is related to some policies that· are now going on in Iranian higher education system, and it is epistemologically relevant to the nature of theses disciplines in Iran. I have argued that although publication in international academic journals is important and can show part of a country's contribution to world scientific community, it is by no means an adequate criterion to assess the overall state of humanities in Iran in particular and other non-Western countries in general. Doing so, I have argued that humanities disciplinary functions and culture are different from those of natural science disciplines. Humanities disciplines are comparatively Jess universal and more local than other disciplines. Also, there are some discourse and social differences between Western and non-Western humanities disciplines. These differences do not easily allow to non-Western academics to participate to European based knowledge discourses. In my opinion humanities disciplines are not science in the sense that we attribute this term to natural science disciplines. Therefore, we should evaluate the functions of humanities based on their role in a society's cultural dialogue, and how these disciplines help people to make sense their Iifeworld, rather than explaining and discovering universal laws. In the last section of the article I have proposed and discussed some policies and strategies such as internationalization of the higher education system, promoting academic socialization and literacy, and strengthening academic autonomy and freedom. These policies may provide an appropriate ground for promoting and advancing humanities in Iran.
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