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Rabat – A total of 95% of Moroccan human and social science publications in the international Scopus database were written in English in 2018, up from 74% over ten years.
The Scopus database is an international platform that provides access to hundreds of academic journals.
While English-language publications from Morocco in the database increased between 2008 and 2019, French-written publications dropped from 22% to 5% in the same period, according to the Scopus database.
Morocco’s Higher Council of Education, Training and Scientific Research noted in its April report that Moroccan publications on human and social sciences, including economics and management, did not exceed 7% of total publications in 2008-2018 in the Scopus database.
The weak representation in the human and social sciences international databases is due to the prominence of Arabic in doctoral studies in Morocco, rather than in French or English, explained the council.
In addition to citing Scopus, the council relied on the data of the Web of Science (WoS) database to study the progress and distribution of Moroccan academic writings in international publications.
WoS echoed the Scopus findings while reporting different data. Moroccan publications in WoS were prominently in English, reaching 86.1% in 2008-2017, up from 65.6% in 1988-1997.
The increase in English-written publications was accompanied by a drop in French-written publications from 33.9% between 1988 and1997 to 13.5% between 2008 and 2017.
However, the language distribution varied with regard to human and social sciences publications (2008-2018) in WoS with English coming first (48.4%) followed by French (42.8%), Spanish (8.2%), and German (0.6%).
The increase in Moroccan English-written academic publications reflects a rise in the popularity of the English language in Morocco particularly among youth.
“English is expected to become Morocco’s primary foreign language in the next five years, as well as the foreign language most widely spoken among youth,” British Council in Morocco reported in April 2021.
While the country’s ranking in English proficiency increased in 2021 to 71th out of 112, the country has a so-called “low” English proficiency.
Moroccan women in academics
Another prominent point raised in the council’s report is women’s participation in scientific research in various disciplines from medicine to sociology.
According to WoS, women’s participation in scientific production in Morocco reached 23.7% in 2017.
The report further noted that women represented 25.9% of teacher-researchers in the country in 2017. As for women’s academic achievements, 36.6% of doctorate holders in Morocco were women in the same year.
The percentage of female doctorate-holders (35%) remains lower than the percentage of their male counterparts (65%) but Moroccan women have high representation in the two sectors of commerce and management (69%) and dentistry (64%), according to the council.
The low participation of women in scientific research reflects one of the numerous structural issues in Moroccan higher education.
The low investment in research and development is another prominent burden on the development of Moroccan scientific innovation. In 2016, Morocco allocated only 0.75% of its GDP to research and development despite the recommendation of the sector’s strategy for reform for 2015-2030 to increase spending to 1% in the short term to reach 1.5% in 2025 and 2% in 2030.
This is further demonstrated in the country’s low innovative capacity, the report said, adding that the country has less than 10 Moroccan origin patents per one million habitants.
