The Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia has recently called for all public universities in Malaysia to focus more on research activities. This call is to ensure that a high-quality standard of research can be achieved in order to produce more research universities in the future. Accordingly, Malaysia University of Sabah (UMS), as the ninth public university in Malaysia, has enthusiastically answered this call by encouraging and facilitating its academic staff to actively engage in research activities. UMS, however, realizes that it will take a long process before it can be regarded as a research university. Therefore, this article has identified six pro-active actions that may be taken by UMS to achieve its vision i.e. (1) strengthen physical needs; (2) increase the number of postgraduate students; (3) acquire more highly qualified needs; (3) acquire more highly qualified academicians; (4) enhance international networking; (5) form several research leaders or “Malim Sarjana”; and (6) publish and commercialize research outcomes in highly refereed journals and commercial sectors. Especially the latest, UMS should cooperate in publishing sector with some foreign universities to make its name is acknowledged and well-known by international world. Without the effort of productive and qualified publication, this beautiful and prominent infrastructure will not contribute to establishing a pioneer and superior university in research field
