The National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences advances 10 places in the SCImago ranking of centers, institutes, and research bodies in the Middle East and North Africa for 2024.

 The Remote Sensing Authority jumps to the 44th place among 322 research centers in the Middle East and North Africa.

> Dr. Islam Abu Al-Magd, President of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, witnessed the events of the announcement of the results of the third edition of the Spanish SCImago ranking as a unique classification for centers, institutes, and research bodies in the Middle East and North Africa for the year 2024 for the third consecutive year.

 The National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences came in 44^th place in the ranking, advancing 10 places compared to last year 2023 and advancing 21 places from the first edition of the ranking.

 Dr. Islam Abu Al-Magd congratulated all researchers and employees of the authority for their distinguished and fruitful efforts, which contributed to the authority's advancement to become 44^th among 322 research centers in the Middle East and North Africa from 22 countries.

 Dr. Islam Abu Al-Magd explained that the authority is working to encourage researchers and scientists to produce research outputs that can be transformed into applicable products and have an economic return that contributes to support efforts to upgrade the national economy, in line with achieving the goals of the national strategy for higher education and scientific research launched by the ministry in March 2023.

 Dr. Islam Abu Al-Magd pointed to the authority's interest in improving its ranking in the third edition of the ranking, which contributed to its advancement by 10 places in the current edition of the ranking, noting that the ranking of research centers at the regional level supports efforts to improve the quality of scientific research and contributes to enhancing innovation and scientific development in the Arab world and strengthens the position of the Arab region on the global map of scientific research, explaining that the authority is exerting all its capabilities to achieve more success and scientific and research excellence.

 The head of the authority explained that the current edition of the classification included the classification of 322 research centers and data was collected for 16 indicators divided into 3 groups, namely: research (40%), innovation (40%), and society (20%).

 The head of the authority pointed out that the current classification was keen to take into account the adjustment of the relative weights of the evaluation criteria, as is customary in the general international evaluation of the SCImago Foundation, where the relative weight of the innovation indicator was increased to become 40% of the evaluation of the performance of research centers; to consolidate the culture of transforming scientific research into applied research with high added value.

 It is worth noting that the SCImago ranking of centers, institutes, and research bodies in the Middle East and North Africa for 2024 was launched in cooperation with the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the SCImago Foundation, a pioneer in the classification of academic institutions, Elsevier, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, and with the support of the Union of Arab Research Councils, the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, and the Council of Research Centers, Institutes, and Research Bodies.