Last Friday the program directors, department and committee chairs and a number of senior researchers from the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research met at ‘The Tides’ in Overveen. Based on SWOT analyses of EMGO+ and its research programs, with this day we were aiming to finalize the 2010 policy plans for the four EMGO+ research programs, and to discuss EMGO’s performance and ambitions in a perspective of further internationalization of research related to EMGO’s mission. The internationalization topic was introduced by Professor Jaap Seidell who argued, based on analyses of the times higher education world university rankings and the academic ranking of world universities (‘Shanghai University Ranking’) that the VU University and the VU University Medical Center do not do very good in these rankings, despite good publication and citation indexes, and that lack of true internationalization, indicated by international staff, students, and established and formal collaborations with universities/research centers in other countries is an important determinant of our lower ranking. The policy plans that will importantly aim at further internationalization will be finalized in the next few weeks and then published on the EMGO+ website.
