TEHRAN – Jahangir Yadollahi, the dean of the faculty of entrepreneurship, at the University of Tehran, met with Angel Losada Fernandez, the ambassador of Spain to Iran, to discuss enhanced cooperation.

In a meeting on Monday in Tehran, Yadollahi said that for economic development and public welfare, it is necessary for Iran's economy to move toward the private sector.

We believe that the university in the transition of the country's economy has missions such as developing entrepreneurial capabilities, promoting entrepreneurial culture in society, helping universities become entrepreneurs, and developing social entrepreneurship in the country, he explained.

The two sides agreed to exchange professors and students, hold joint seminars and webinars, as well as entrepreneurship events.Therefore, in the educational programs of the faculty of entrepreneurship, we have given high priority to the two economic sectors of tourism and information technology because there are tourist attractions all over Iran and business development in this sector has great effectiveness in changing people's welfare and also to keep pace with global developments.

Considering that Spain is a successful country in the field of tourism business development, we are interested in using the entrepreneurial experiences in tourism of Spain, he added.

Yadollahi also announced his readiness to exchange professors and students, hold joint seminars and webinars, and hold entrepreneurship events with Spanish universities.

Fernandez also for his part pointed out the role of entrepreneurship in the private sector and its importance in the economy and wealth production, and as a result, internal stability in the country.

He insisted on signing a memorandum of understanding with the University of Barcelona and suggested holding an international Spanish language training course with the faculty of entrepreneurship.

Emphasizing the importance of tourism with an entrepreneurial approach, he considered sanctions as a serious obstacle in the development of academic and tourism cooperation in the private sector between Iran and Spain and pointed to tourism as a great area for business development.

Science diplomacy

Despite U.S. sanctions, the international activities of Iranian scientists have increased year by year, so that more than 35 percent of Iranian articles in Scopus have been multi-national projects, Peyman Salehi, the deputy science minister, has said.

In 2021, Iranian scientists published more than 77,000 scientific articles in the Scopus database, so that, Iran has been ranked 15th in science production, he said, IRNA reported.

The country also ranked 15th and 16th in the world in terms of scientific references, he added.

Data from the Scopus International Citation Database show that Iran’s scientific diplomacy has reached more than 34 percent since the beginning of 2021, the highest level in the past 20 years.

Science diplomacy is the use of scientific collaborations among nations to address common problems and build constructive international partnerships. 

It is a form of new diplomacy and has become an umbrella term to describe a number of formal or informal technical, research-based, academic, or engineering exchanges, within the general field of international relations.

In 2011, the share of Iranian articles with international participation was about 16.5 percent, which increased to 19.7 percent in 2016 and gradually in the following years, so that in 2020 and 2021, reached 30.5 and 34.2 percent, respectively, he added.

The share of Iranian articles with international participation has had significant growth of 209 percent during an eight-year period (2013-2020), becoming the Islamic world’s leading country in science diplomacy, according to the Scopus International Citation Database.

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