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A three-dimensional bibliometric evaluation of recent research in India

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Abstract

In this paper a three-dimensional framework to see how Indian universities and research-focused institutions fare in the world of high end research in terms of excellence and diversity of its research base is proposed. At the country level scholarly performance is broken down into three components—size, excellence and balance or evenness. A web application available in the public domain which visualizes scientific excellence worldwide in several subject areas is used. India has a presence in fifteen of twenty-two subject areas in which there are at least 50 institutes globally that have published more than 500 papers. It has no institution which can be counted at this level of size and excellence in seven areas: Arts and Humanities; Business, Management and Accounting; Health Professions; Neuroscience; Nursing; Psychology; and Social Sciences. India’s research base is completely skewed towards the Physical Sciences and Engineering with very little for Biological Sciences and Medicine and virtually none in Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities when excellence at the highest level is considered. Its performance is also benchmarked against three nations, namely Australia, The Netherlands and Taiwan which are of similar size in terms of GDP and scientific output. It is seen that although India has the highest GDP among the four countries, its performance lags considerably behind. Even in terms of diversity, its performance is poor compared to the three comparator countries.

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Acknowledgements

The author is extremely grateful to the creators of the web applications, Lutz Bornmann, Division for Science and Innovation Studies, Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, Hofgartenstr. 880,539 Munich, Germany; Rüdiger Mutz, Professorship for Social Psychology and Research on Higher Education, ETH Zurich/MUG, Mühlegasse 21, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland; Moritz Stefaner, Truth & Beauty Operator; and Felix de Moya Anegón, CSIC/CCHS/IPP, SCImago Group (Spain), Communication and Information Science Faculty, University of Granada, Granada, Spain for making the applications available in the public domain. He has also benefitted from discussions with Lutz Bornmann. He is also grateful to the reviewers for their very helpful comments that have considerably improved the presentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vidya Academy of Science and Technology, Thrissur, Kerala, 680501, India

    Gangan Prathap

  2. A P J Abdul Kalam Technological University, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 695016, India

    Gangan Prathap

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  1. Gangan Prathap
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Correspondence to Gangan Prathap.

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Prathap, G. A three-dimensional bibliometric evaluation of recent research in India. Scientometrics 110, 1085–1097 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2181-1

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