ABSTRACT
Knowledge production cannot be understood without investigating both the locus of research (institutions) and the researchers themselves. As far as Arab countries are concerned, research is very much concentrated in universities. Few countries have research centers, usually mission-oriented (agriculture), and very little research is done by private enterprises. Thus, research depends strongly on the university context, and the Arab countries in this respect are a laboratory of new globalized developments concerning higher education, where numerous new universities appear, mainly private, and where the pressures of internationalization, privatization and globalization are very strong (Romani 2012).
