Guwahati

Chennai

KolkataKharagpur

New Delhi

Bangalore

Mumbai

Council of Scienti�c and Industrial Research (CSIR)The CSIR �les more international patents than any other Indian research institute or company; it boasts 38 national laboratories and 4,600 active scientists around the country.

Panjab UniversityThe country’s top-rated university in last year’s Times Higher Education World University rankings; its research is cited at 1.4 times the world’s average.

Indian Institute of Science Bangalore The university in India that produces the most papers each year.

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Specializes in physics, mathematics and astronomy; around 55% of its publications are internationally co-authored.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT; )There are 16 IITs nationwide, accepting only elite students; acceptance rates are about 2%, compared with around 6% at Harvard University.

Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science India’s oldest research institute, founded in 1876, is where Nobel laureate C. V. Raman discovered the light-scattering e�ect that bears his name.

Chandigarh

4 India

6 Kenya

7 Chile

14 Brazil

18 China

58 Russia

79 UK

79 United States

4,000

4,400

2,400

9,300

6,800

10,800

3,700

4,800

8,100

6,700

Num

ber

of pap

ers

(tho

usan

ds)

Sch

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ly c

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pac

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2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013

500

200

300

400

100

02001 2003 2005

World average

2007 2009 2011 2013

1.6

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

0.2

1.4

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1.5

2.0

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United States

Germany

Austria

Italy

Japan

France

South Korea

Brazil

China

India

Canada

UK

Spain

Hungary

Pakistan

4,451South Korea

3,716Japan

2,288Germany

910United States

748Canada

541China

237Russia

34Brazil

17India

Top 10 institutionsPanjab University, ChandigarhCitation impact: 1.4(World average=1) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai1.39 Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata1.28 CSIR Chemistry & Physics, 5 locations1.18 Indian Institute of Technology Bombay1.15 Indian Institute of Science Bangalore 1.11 Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati 1.07 CSIR Industry & Standards, 12 locations 1.07 Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur 1.06 Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 1.03

Number of papers in Scopus database 2010–14

One researcher per 10,000 labour force

Domestic and foreign patent applications �led in 2013 per 1 million people.

by the numbersI ND I A

40%

Highs and lows in the country’s

research landscape.

Indian science is a study in contrasts. With its vast population and rapidly expanding economy, the country has ramped up scientific production at an impressive rate. India started the twenty-first century well behind Russia, France, Italy and Canada in terms of yearly publications and it now leads them all by healthy margins. It is quickly closing in on Japan.

Despite those gains, India is not yet a major player in world science. Its publications generate fewer citations on average than do those of other science-focused nations, including other emerging countries such as Brazil and China. Relative to its size, India has very few scientists; many Indian-born researchers leave for positions abroad and very few foreign scientists settle in India. �e country invests a scant portion of its economy in research and development (R&D), and it produces relatively few patents per capita compared with other nations.

But there are bright spots. India boasts several world-class centres for science education, particularly the highly regarded Indian Institutes of Technology. Businesses in the country are investing more in R&D, which bodes well for future innovation. And more women are participating in science, although their numbers still fall far below those of men. ◆

BY RICHARD VAN NOORDEN�

� ◆

of Indian-born researchers were working overseas in 2011 — the largest diaspora of any of the 16 countries in a survey of

researchers (see Nature 490, 326–329; 2012).

293273

238

342

214202

181173171

157155154

12258

226

Publications Since 2000, India has almost quadrupled its scholarly output, but that rate is surpassed by Brazil’s and China’s. India underperforms relative to its gross domestic product (GDP) and population. And its scholarly impact remains low: in 2013, it was nearly 30% below the world’s average.

Patents India is one of the world’s leading �lers of patents but it registers far fewer applications per capita than any other top-�ling nation. Multinational �rms in India have boosted the country’s rate of �ling.

Grants to women More women are winning funding from competitive government grant schemes, according to India’s Department of Science and Technology.

WorkforceWith only 200,000 full-time researchers (14% of them female) in a population of nearly 1.3 billion, India ranks below Chile, Kenya, and many other countries in terms of the density of its scienti�c workforce.

R&D investment Whereas China’s research spending has shot up to almost 2% of its GDP, India’s languishes at around 0.9%, a �gure that has changed little in more than a decade and lags behind both Brazil’s and Russia’s.

IndiaChina

Brazil

UKUS

Italy Russia

IndiaChina

Brazil

UKUS

Italy Russia

Spending per researcher India spends much the same per researcher as many other countries; �gures are normalized for purchasing power and are in thousands of US dollars.

Elite research centres India’s 700 or so universities vary tremendously in quality. To identify the leading science institutions, Nature looked at the citation rates in Elsevier’s Scopus database for institutes that had produced more than 2,000 papers between 2010 and 2014.

SCIENCE IN INDIAA special issuenature.com/indiascience

Nature

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