More than 1,800 academics in the SAR belong in the latest "World's Top 2 percent Scientists" ranking published by Stanford University, leading a local think tank to say it believes the results will help Hong Kong become an international education hub as well as a leading centre in the innovation and technology sector.

Victor Kwok, deputy research director from the Our Hong Kong Foundation, noted on Monday that the government has been going all out in lure talent from all over the world in recent years.

He said the achievement showed that SAR has a significant number of high-quality talent among some 200,000 that it recruited through various schemes.

At the same time, the ranking also acts as a catalyst for international collaborations, according to Kwok.

"Because in biotech industry, for example, when we talk about having world-renowned scholars that industry like to partner with, like to work with, that actually brings more clinical trials to Hong Kong," he said.

"Because they like to have our top scholars within their ranks. And then by that, we actually help our industry grow in the longer term."

Kwok expects more scholars to come to Hong Kong, the "reason being it's a combination of a proactive policy by the SAR government, together with the current geopolitical environment.

"Because, for example, top scholars, some of them in the Western world may feel unsafe to conduct their academic activities anymore. Hence, Hong Kong would become an attractive alternative because of significant academic rigour and freedom."

However, Kwok said the SAR has to work on building an environment for academics to commercialise their findings and research into products, instead of only publishing papers.

One way of doing so is to work with the Greater Bay Area to break down constitutional barriers for scholars to also make use of the resources available there, he added.