Prof Rezvi Sheriff, most prolific scientist

A scientometric study on “Research Productivity of Sri Lankan Universities (during 1999-2010) based on the ISI Web of Science database” by Pratheepan, T. (2011) ranked among most prolific scientist in Sri Lankan Universities Vidyajyothi Professor Rezvi Sheriff became first in Sri Lanka. He is the Director of Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo and Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo.

Prof. Rezvi Sheriff has made a large contribution to Medicine in Sri Lanka as a Medical Teacher, astute and sought after Clinician, Researcher, Postgraduate Trainer and Examiner, Administrator and has been a Pioneer and Entrepreneur in Medicine locally. He is considered the “Father of modern nephrology and dialysis” leading to Kidney Transplants in Sri Lanka.

Productivity growth is a crucial source of growth and its measures are often used to indicate the capacity of a nation. They are key indicators of economic performance. Also there is strong interest in comparing them internationally. For instance research productivity and citation ranking have been major indicators of the scientific worth of a country as well as a university.

Productivity studies analyze scientific or technical processes and engineering relationships such as how much of an output can be produced in a specified period of time. It can also determine to a large extent the career of individual scientists.

It depends on the production function. It is a simple description of the mechanism of economic growth. Economic growth is defined as any production increase of a business or nation. It is the same case with scientific products of each country which are indexed in international indexes. Those will highlight scientific activities of that country at international level. In the most immediate sense, productivity is determined by the available technology or know-how for converting resources into outputs desired in an economy.

Therefore it has always been crucial for the research administrators to consider those conditions to evaluate their scientific activities, productively.

Munasinghe P.P. Dilhani
Assistant Librarian 
Postgraduate Institute of Medicine 
University of Colombo

source – dailynews.lk