The university has also signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with UK’s Macmillan Publishers, which will provide the university and its 55,000 students a range of services, including training for high-quality scientific editing and workshops on writing and publishing research papers for international journals.

“KSU is committed to taking a leadership role in developing Saudi Arabia’s knowledge economy,” said Dr. Khaled Al-Rasheed, director of KSU’s Scientific Fellowship Program.

The university, he said, is building the world-class Prince Sultan Advanced Technologies Research Institute at KSU’s Riyadh Techno Valley complex.

“The project was launched following the directives of Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense & aviation,” he added.

The university, on the other hand, has also announced plans to establish the Prince Naif Center for Health Science Research. The project, which is to be completed within next two years, will be located at Riyadh Techno Valley, KSU’s extended sprawling complex that was created to serve the needs of the Kingdom’s burgeoning knowledge-based society.

These are in addition to the 15 other faculty research centers besides a few university centers that are currently producing a bulk of scientific materials.

Spelling out the salient features of the KSU-Macmillan accord, the statement said that the MoU with Macmillan was signed last week.

This MoU, said Al-Rasheed, would ensure KSU’s access to MacMillan’s top quality content. Macmillan is a publishing giant currently operating in more than 80 countries, and employs 8,000 people, including scholars.

Al-Rasheed said KSU’s tie-up with the British publisher will help the university in researching and publishing scientific materials.

Macmillan, he said, is one of the largest and best-known international publishing groups in the world.

Meanwhile, KSU is the first institution in Saudi Arabia to have secured license access to all Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journals, providing access to the complete nature.com platform for its 55,000 faculty and students.

“To help develop KSU’s capability of publishing scientific papers in international journals, NPG editors visit KSU regularly, giving presentations on the editorial processes and expectations of international research journals,” said Al-Rasheed.

In March 2010, NPG launched Nature Middle East (www.nature.com/naturemiddleeast), which showcases scientific and medical research from the Arabic-speaking region. The King Abdullah International Medical Research Center is sponsoring Nature Middle East.

KSU, founded in 1957, was the Kingdom’s first public university dedicated to non-religious education.