Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 28 January 2020, the Ambassador of Uzbekistan to the Benelux countries, Dilyor Khakimov, met with representatives of the Dutch company Elsevier.

Elsevier is a Dutch publishing and analytics company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content.

According to Uzbek Foreign Ministry, at the meeting, Elsevier representatives noted that the company has established fruitful cooperation with a number of higher education institutions, as well as ministries and agencies of Uzbekistan, which are increasingly using the services of the company, thereby increasing the quality of scientific research and publications of Uzbekistan scientists.

One of the practical results of cooperation became the launch in March 2018 together with the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the Ilm-Fan 2020 project, within which all higher education institutions and research institutes were given access to the most cited scientific journals and books, the largest scientific and analytical platform Scopus, conducted more than 230 training workshops.

Thanks to the capabilities of Elsevier, over the past year, the level of use by Uzbekistan researchers of the ScienceDirect and Scopus scientific platforms has increased by 103 and 343 percent, respectively. In addition, two universities of Uzbekistan – Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers and Tashkent University of Information Technologies – are included in QS World University Rankings rating for the quality of teaching narrow subjects.

Speaking about the prospects for expanding cooperation with Uzbekistan, the representatives of the company emphasized that the announcement of 2020 in Uzbekistan as the Year of Science, Enlightenment and Digital Economy Development provides unique opportunities for further enhancing interaction with Uzbek colleagues.

In his opinion, the attention paid in Uzbekistan to development of science and education, as well as priorities identified by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in the Address to the Oliy Majlis, reflect the desire of the country’s leadership to use the existing potential so that scientific development and research serve the economic progress of the state and ensure the welfare of the population.

Following the meeting, an agreement was reached on development of new joint cooperation projects.