Carrying out research in Nepal: perceptions of scholars about research environment and challenges

This study aims to understand the perception of academic communities—both stationed in Nepal and abroad— on various aspects of research environment in Nepal and the challenges in carrying out research here. It further seeks to explore the relationship between different levels of research satisfaction, publications, funding and work experience. Here, we present the results of online questionnaire survey of 472 researchers from 47 countries who published research articles and collaborated with Nepal based researchers. A significantly high proportion of researchers stationed in Nepal reported an unfavourable research environment compared to their foreign counterparts. There were, however, no significant differences between the proportion of respondents stationed in Nepal and abroad who had favourable and neutral views on the research environment in Nepal. Researchers who were satisfied and very satisfied with their own performance had a favourable view on Nepal’s research environment. Lack of funding was the most agreed challenge among all researchers whereas “no government policies” received the most support from researchers based in foreign countries, and “no research culture”, “research facilities” obtained more responses from Nepal based researchers. With the exception of very dissatisfied ones, the number of publications, years in research experience and total funding (median) increased gradually from ‘not satisfied” to ‘very satisfied’ in both Nepal and foreign country-based researchers. Nepal based researchers published significantly fewer journal articles as lead authors compared to their foreign counterparts. They received a high proportion of funding from international grants and often self-funded their research projects. It is crucial to address funding challenges and foster a supportive research culture to enhance the research environment in Nepal.