Annalsof Libraryand InformationStudies

Vol.53, September2006, pp. 114-125

Scientometric profile of Indian science as seenthrough Science Citation Index

K C Garg, B Dutt and Suresh KumarNational Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS),

Pusa Gate, Dr. K.S. Krishnan Marg, New Delhi 110012

Email: gargkc@nistads.res.in

An analysis of 11067 papers published by Indian scientists and indexed by Scie/lce Citatio/l!Ili!ex (SCI) CD-ROM for the year

1997 indicates that academic institutions (universities and colleges) are the major contributors to the scientific publications

output. Major contribution came from 29 institutions, which contributed about 45% of the total Indian scientific output. Based

on the values of different impact indicators (normalized impact per paper, publication effective index and relative quality

index) TIFR outperforms all other institutions on different impact indicators. Fifty seven percent of the output is concentrated

in physical sciences, chemical and medical sciences. Indian scientists widely publish their findings in journals published from

the scientifically advanced countries of the West. Based on these values of the Normalized Impact Factor (NIF), it is observed

that about two-third of the total papers have appeared in low and medium NIF journals.

Introduction

Since independence India has developed a large

infrastructure for science and technology with the settingup of several universities and academic institutions,national laboratories, and autonomous research

institutions. Presently there are more than 200universities, 400 national laboratories, 1300 in-house

R&D institutions of the industry and 200 voluntaryorganizations with S&T involvement. In almost everydiscipline, India's map is dotted with institutions thathave capability to carry out research and development'.

However, India's scientific output is constantly on thedecline. According to a study by Arunachalam, Indiamoved down from 8th position in 1980 with 14,983publications to 15th position in 2000 with 12,127publications2• At the same time, China moved upwardsfrom 15th position in 1980 with 924 publications to 9th

position in 2000 with 22,061 publications. However,these included 4307 publications from Hong Kong.Gupta and Garg have pointed out some of the reasons

for this decline3• The present study attempts to gain aninsight as to where, in fact, the decline lies besides

presenting a scientometric profile of Indian scientificoutput based on the papers indexed by SCI CD-ROM

for the year 1997.

Numerous bibliometric studies dealing with assessmentof Indian scientific output in various disciplines and sub-

disciplines of Indian S&T have been published in theliterature4• However, there have been a few bibliometric

studies looking at India's contribution to the scientificliterature based on SC1'6. It is therefore, intended to

assess the contribution of different scientific agenciesto the mainstream scientific literature in different

disciplines of science and technology during 1997 andalso to identify most prolific institutions and theircontribution in five major disciplines, besides studyingthe impact of their research output using different impactindicators.

Data and Methodology

The present assessment of Indian science is based on

the publication data indexed by Science Citation Index(SCI) published by the Institute of Scientific Information

(now part of the Thomson Scientific), USA for the year1997. However, it would have been better to use time

series data to avoid year-to-year fluctuations in thepublication output of indi vidual institutions. The year1997 for the present study has been chosen with a view

to make a comparative assessment of the basic findingswith the earlier study 7. The data for the present studywas downloaded using SCI-CD ROM, while the data

for 1987 study was processed manually resulting in

higher count of publications than actually published asthe collaborative papers were counted as many times asthe number of collaborating institutions. However, for

I II, II '" I I I

GARG K C, DUTT B & KUMAR S : SCIENTOMETRIC PROFILE OF INDIAN SCIENCE 115

type of journal, use of normalized impact factor has been

made. This is so because the papers published by Indian

scientists are scattered in 104 different sub-disciplines

and in 1621 different journals published from different

parts of the world including India.

Indicators of impact

Following indicators of impact suggested by NagpaullO

and used by Garg and Padhi" in their study for laserresearch have been used for inter-field and inter­

institution comparisons of quality.

Different authors have suggested different methods to

normalize the impact factor of the journals. According

to Sen, the impact factor of the journal of the sub­

discipline is divided by the highest value of the impactfactor in the set of journals of the sub-disciplines.However, in this procedure, one has to exclude reviewjournals as the impact factor of the review journals are

quite high as compared to research journals in the samesub-discipline. Exclusion of review journals on the basis

of relatively very high impact factor is arbitrary,problematic, and has its own methodological fallacies.Therefore this method has not been used to normalize

the impact factor. In view of the limitation of the abovemethod for calculating the normalized impact factor, wehave used another method to normalize the impact factor,

which is a modification of the method suggested byRajagopal and Kumar9• In the present procedure, wecalculated the average impact factor of the journals in

different disciplines and assigned weights as described

below. Using the different weights mentioned below, wecalculated the normalized impact factor for the different

disciplines.

comparison of the data for two periods, the publication

data for the year 1987 has been normalized.

The publication data used in the study included the name

of the journals with their country of origin, impact factor

of the journals as recorded in Journal Citation Reportsfor the year 1997, normalized impact factor of thejournals, disciplines of the journal based on the

classification provided by loan-Iovitz Popescu, Professor

of Physics at Bucharest University and available at http://www.geocities.com/iipopescu/jo_rankingb.htm and thename of the institution where from the paper originated.

Objectives

The data has been analyzed to study the followingaspects:

• Distribution of output according to agency;

• Identification of most prolific institutions and

to study their activity and attractivity profilesin different disciplines namely chemical,

physical, medical, biological, and engineeringSCIences;

• To examine the impact of the research output

of the prolific institutions using different impactindicators as has been described in the

succeeding paragraphs;

• Distribution of output in different disciplinesand to study the impact of their research output;and

• To examine the communication behavior of the

Indian scientists as reflected by the country of

publication of the journals and normalized

impact factor of the journals.

The impact of research has been examined using

Garfield's impact factor as a surrogate measure of qualityas examination of citations of such a huge data is not

only time consuming but also expensive. However, thecitations data would have certainly given a better picture

of impact.

Range of the Impact Factor of the Journals

~ Half the average impact factor

> Half ~ average impact factor

> Average ~ twice the average impact factor

> Twice the average impact factor

Weight

2

3

4

Normalized impact

The impact factor is an indicator of the impact of the

journal and depends upon the average rate of citations

the articles published in it receive. Since impact factor,as suggested by Garfield, varies with the discipline and

Normalized Impact Per Paper (NIMP Ipaper)

Based on the publication pattern and the normalizedimpact factor of the journals in which the research resultswere published, the normalized impact per paper for

prolific institutions and different disciplineSl1ave been,t

116 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., SEPTEMBER 2006

Table 1 - Distribution of scientific output by agency

Agency

1997 (%) Cum. %1987 (%)*Cum. %

AI

4069 (36.8) 36.84075(39.8)39.8

ENGC

1251 (11.3) 48.11229( 12.0)51.8

MEDC

1273 (11.5) 59.61123(11.0)62.8

AGRU

196 (1.8) 61.4339 (3.3)66.1

CSIR

1310 (11.8) 73.2921 (9.0)75.1

ICAR

176 (1.6) 74.8310 (3.0)78.1

ICMR

134(1.2) 76.0187 (1.8)79.9

DRDO

118 (I.l) 77.191 (0.9)80.8

DST

545 (4.9) 82.0316 (3.1)83.9

DOS

163 (1.5) 83.589 (0.9)84.8

DAE

1072 (9.7) 93.2862 (8.4)93.2

Others

760 (6.8) 100697 (6.8)100

Total

11067 10010239100

* Normalized publication data

AI: Universities/deemed universities and colleges, ENGC: Engineering colleges including IITs, MEDC: Medicalcolleges and hospitals, AGRU: Agricultural universities, CSIR: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research,ICAR: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, ICMR: Indian Council of Medical Research, DRDO: DefenceResearch & Development Organization, DST: Department of Science & Technology, DOS: Department ofSpace, DAE: Department of Atomic Energy

calculated. This has been calculated by using the formula

(LPj.Fi ) / N where Pi denotes the number of papers in i­th journal, Fj denotes the normalized impact factor ofthe i-th journal, and N denotes the total number of papers.

Number of High Quality Papers (NHQ)

Based on the average normalized impact factor in

different disciplines, those papers have been consideredas high quality papers that have been published in

journals with normalized impact factor more than twice

the average normalized impact factor.

Publication Effective Index (PEl)

The indicator is the ratio of the proportion of the impact

(TNIMP%) to the proportion of the publications(TNP%), where, TNIMP% = (Total normalized impact

for an institution or discipline / Total normalized impact)

x 100 and TNP% = (Total publications output of aninstitution or discipline / Total publication output) x 100.

The measure indicates whether the impact of

publications of an institution or a disciplinecommensurate with the publication effort devoted to it.A value of PEl > 1 indicates that the impact of

publications is more than the research effort and viceversa.

Relative Quality Index (RQI)

This indicator is the ratio of the proportion of high quality

papers (NHQ%) to the proportion of the publications(TNP%), where, NHQ% = (Number of high quality

papers for an institution or a discipline / Total numberof high quality papers) x 100

The measure relates to the incidence of high quality

papers in a field or by an institution. A value ofRQI > 1

ii' II' '''1'11'1' 11111 'I I

GARG K C, DUTT B & KUMAR S : SCIENTOMETRIC PROFILE OF INDIAN SCIENCE 117

indicates higher than average value, whereas the value

of RQI <1 indicates lower than average quality.

Limitations of SCI

The use of SCI to characterize scientific enterprise in

Third World countries has been criticized on the ground

of the inadequate coverage of Third World science

journals in SCI database, as it does not cover a large

proportion of journals published from these countries.

In the present case also, only 11 journals published fromIndia have been covered as source items in the database,

while it included 3453 journals as source item in its

database in the year 1997. Thus, a large proportion ofthe papers published by Indian scientists in other journals

not indexed by SCI database remain uncovered.However, it is imperative to use SCI as no other databaseprovides information on the publication activity on the

entire gamut of science and technology of a country.Though, for studying a single discipline other secondarysources/databases are available.

Results and discussion

Distribution of output according to agency

Bulk of funding to R&D comes from the central

government. Scientific research is mainly performed at

the universities and the institutes of higher learning,besides the government funded laboratories under the

Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Department ofSpace (DOS), Department of Science & Technology(DST), Defence Research & Development Organization(DRDO), Council of Scientific & Industrial Research

(CSIR), Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR)and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Table 1 presents the data on the distribution of scientific

output according to agency. This indicates that academic

institutions (universities and colleges) are the majorcontributors (-37%) to the total output. This is followed

by output by engineering colleges including Indian

Institutes of Technology (IITs), medical colleges /hospitals and CSIR, which have contributed - 11% eachof the total output. DAE and DST contributed -10%

and -5% of the total output respectively. The

contribution by AGRU, ICAR, DOS, ICMR, and DRDOvaried in between 1% to 2% of the total output.

A comparison of the output data for 1997 with that of1987 indicates that there had been a slight increase in

the output in 1997 as compared to 1987. However, there

is a decline in the scientific output in the academic sector

(universities and colleges). Prathapl2 has also

demonstrated this fact in a study wherein he has looked

into the performance of university, industry, and the

government sector in India. The output of universities

and colleges declined from 40% in 1987 to 37% in 1997.

Output in case of AGRU and ICAR has also decreased.

However, output in case of CSIR, DST and DAE have

increased in 1997 as compared to 1987. Decline in caseof universities and colIeges is more pronounced ascompared to AGRU and ICAR.

Profile of prolific institutions

The total output came from 1101 institutions. Of these29 institutions contributed 85 or more papers (Table 2).We have chosen the cut off as 85, because, in 1987 thecut off was 100, which when normalized on the actual

output of publications for 1987 comes out to be 85. The

names of these institutions along with abbreviations usedin the paper are given in Annexure I.

On comparing the ranks of these institutions with highly

productive institutions for 1987, it is observed that thereis no change in the rank for Indian Institute of Science(lIS c), Bhabha Atomic research Centre (BARC) and

Pune University (POONU). However, in case of others

nine have moved up and eight have moved down in therank list. The institutions that have moved up in the rankare denoted by the symbol (i) and those that moveddown are shown by the symbol (J..) in Table 2.

Central Drug Research Institute (Lucknow), RoorkeeUniversity (Roorkee) now Indian Institute ofTechnology), Osmania University (Hyderabad), Punjab

Agriculture University (Ludhiana), Rajasthan University(Jaipur), and Haryana Agricultural University (Hissar)have lost their place in the list of most productiveinstitutes.

New Institutions added in the list are Indian Association

for the Cultivation of Science (lACS), Indian Institute

of Chemical Technology (lICT), Saha Institute of

Nuclear Physics (SINP), Physical Research Laboratory

(PRL), Bombay University (BOMU), Christian Medical

College and Hospital (CMCH), Sanjay GandhiPostgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPIMS)

and Regional Research Laboratory (RRLT). Following

118 ANN. LID. INF. STU., SEPTEMDER 2006

Table 2 - Publication output (activity index) of premier institutions in different disciplines

* Institutes of national importance.

Figures in bracket give Activity Index (AI). AI rounded off to the nearest whole number.

Institution

IISC*

DARC

TIFR (I)

AIIMS* (I)

l3I-IU 0·)

IITM* (I)

NCL(I)

lACS

IITK* (I)

IITl3* (I)

IITKI-I* (J-)

DU

IITD* 0·)

JADU (I)

I-IYDU Ci)

PG[MER*O·)

MADU (I)

HCT

UCAL(-1.)

PANU (-1.)

PRL

SINP

CMCI-I

l30MU

AMU

SGPIMR*

POONU

RRLT

ISI*

Others

TOTAL

l3iologicalsciences

86(126)

14(32)

33(93 )

33(104)

52(173)

6(22)

24(89)

5( 19)

3(11)

9(360

1(4)

41(176)

12(52)

7(38)

20(1l1)

21(126)

25( 159)

4(26)

18(122)

15(104)

0(0)

4(34)

8(67)

2(18)

15(136)

14(129)

9(84)

4(38)

4(38)

894

1383

Chemical

sCiences

96(82)

65(103)

10(111)

0(0)

26(64)

42(113)

113(310)

94(259)

55(154)

68(201)

23(72)

37(117)

31 (99)

48(191)

55(225)

2(9)

18(84 )

94(447)

11(55)

19(97)

0(0)

11(68)

0(0)

32(210)

24(161)

0(0)

20(137

37(257)

1(7)

846

1878

Engineeringsciences

74(126)

77(208)

6(20)

0(0)

29(112)

74(314)

23(100)

4(17)

64(283)

49(230)

55(275)

5(25)

55(279)

[5(95)

1(6)

0(0)

1(7)

6(45)

13(103)

5(41)

8(78)

8(79)

0(0)

26(270)

12(127)

0(0)

9(98)

10(110)

19(209)

537

1185

Medical

sCiences

10(11)

15(26)

4(90

216(517)

38(96)

0(0)

0(0)

0(0)

0(0)

3(9)

1(3)

11(36)

2(7)

11(45)

7(30)

108(494)

33(159)

1(5)

15(77)

20(106)

0(0)

0(0)

85(544)

0(0)

3(21)

72(503)

0(0)

0(0)

1(7)

1165

1821

PhysicalsCiences

155(119)

131(159)

189(280)

0(0)

52(91)

59(113)

8(16)

86(169)

62(123)

33(70)

35(79)

62(140)

45(103)

58(165)

46(134)

0(0)

21(70)

7(24)

35(125)

43(157)

8 [(354)

68(301)

0(0)

11(51)

11(52)

0(0)

26(127)

15(74)

27(133)

1269

2635

Others

126

44

41

5

44

39

47

25

27

37

72

30

39

9

15

2

28

12

26

13

7

4

2

19

23

22

19

33

1354

2165

Total

547

346

283

254

241

220

215

214

211

199

187

186

184

148

144

133

126

124

118

115

96

95

95

90

88

87

86

85

85

6065

11067

'I 'ii' "'!HH- II I'i 'I I

GARG K C, DUTTB & KUMARS : SCIENTOMETRICPROFILEOF INDIAN SCIENCE II9

paragraphs present details about the activity and the

attractivity profiles of the most prolific institutions.

Activity profile of premier institutions

Activity profile of premier institutions has been

examined by using Activity Index (AI). AI was first

proposed by Framel3 and has been elaborated bySchubert and Braun 14. It characterizes the relative

research effort an institution devotes to a given subject

field. Mathematically,

AI = {(Nij/ Nio) / (Noj / Noo)Ix 100, where

Nij = total numberof publicationsof institutioni in disciplinej;

Nio = total numberof publicationsof institutioni in all disciplines;

Noj = total numberof publicationsof all institutionsin disciplinej;and

Noo = total Indian output in all disciplines.

The value of AI=lOO indicates that the research effort

of an institution in a given discipline correspondsprecisely to the Indian average; AI> 100 reflects higherthan average activity and AI <100 lower than average

effort dedicated to the disciplines.

The major advantage of using activity index overabsolute count of publications is that it takes into accountboth the size of the institution as well as the size of the

discipline.

For calculating the AI for different institutions, the output

for agricultural sciences, environmental sciences,material sciences, mathematical sciences and

multidisciplinary sciences have been clubbed together,as the output in these disciplines is low as compared to

the five major disciplines for which AI has beencalculated.

The absolute number of publications and the values of

AI for different institutions and different disciplines aregiven in Table 2. From the values of AI given in Table 2,it is observed that the distribution of AI is skewed. There

are certain institutions that concentrate their research

effort only in one discipline, while some otherinstitutions distribute their research efforts in more than

one discipline. In the present study 13 institutions namelyTIFR, AIIMS, BHU, IITM, NCL, PGIMER, IICT,

PANU, PRL, SINP, CMCH, SGPIMS, and RRLTmainly

concentrated their research effort only on one discipline,

while the rest 16 concentrated their research effort on

more than one discipline.

As expected, medical colleges, namely AIIMS,PGIMER, CMCH, and SGPIMS concentrated their

research effort mainly on medical sciences. IITs

emphasized their research effort mainly on engineeringand computer sciences. IITK and IITB also emphasizedon research in chemical sciences. In addition to these

institutions, other institutions emphasizing onengineering research are BARC, BOMU and IS!. Theemphasis of IISC is evenly spread in biological,

chemical and physical sciences. The discipline ofemphasis for other institutes can be seen from Table 2.

Attractivity profile of premier institutions

Attractivity profile of premier institutions has beenexamined by using Attractivity Index (AAI). Like the

absolute publication output, the absolute impact is alsoconfounded by the size of the institution and size ofthe field. Hence, Attractivity Index, also suggested bySchubert and Braunl5 has been used. AAI characterizes

the relative impact, the publications of an institution

make in a given discipline as reflected by the citationsthey attract. However, in the present case we have usedthe normalized impact factor for calculating the AA!.

Mathematicall y

AAI = {(Cij / C io) / (C oj / Coo) J x 100 whereC ij: normalizedimpactof the country i in sub-specialtyj;C io: normalizedimpactof the country i in all sub-specialties;C oj: normalizedimpactof all countries in the sub-specialtyj;

.C00; normalizedimpactof all countries in all the sub-specialties.

AAI =100 indicates that country's citation impact in the

given field corresponds precisely to the world's average,AAI > 100 reflects higher than average, and AAI < 100lower than average.

The values of total impact and AAI for differentinstitutions and different disciplines are given in Table

3. From the values of AAI given in Table 3, it is observed

that like the activity index, medical colleges has thehighest values of AAI in medical sciences. However, incase of AIIMS the value of AAI is also high for biological

sciences. Similarly, like the AI, the highest value of AAI

for IITs is in the discipline of engineering and computersciences. Values for AAI for other institutes can be seenfrom Table 3. Based on the values of AI and AAI in

120 ANN. LIB. INF. STD., SEPTEMBER 2006

Table 3: Normalized impact (attractivity index) of premier institutions in different disciplines

Institutions Biologicalsciences

Chemical Engineering..sCiences sCiences

Medical

sciencesPhysicalsCiences

Others Total

261(114) 175(113)

156(113) 179(193)

26(19) 14(15)

0(0) 0(0)

40(54) 56(112)

84(106) 167(312)

306(319) 67(103)

236(273) 11(19)

151(171) 146(244)

184(227) 132(241)

53(81) 115(260)

59(101) 14(35)

74(108) 115(249)

99(191) 40(114)

161(261) 4(10)

2(5) 0(0)

40(113) 1(4)

231 (463) 14( 41)

20(50) 27(99)

37(89) 13(46)

0(0) 22(79)

31(75) 19(68)

0(0) 0(0)

60(168 72(298)

37(133) 22(117)

IISC

BARC

TIFR

AIIMS

BHU

IITM

NCL

lACS

IITK

IITI3

IITKH

DU

IITD

JADU

HYDU

PGIMER

MADU

IICT

UCAL

PANU

PRL

SINP

CMCH

BOMU

AMU

SGPIMR

POONU

RRLT

ISI

Others

TOTAL

222(141)

26(28)

105(112)

80(135)

88(174)

14(26)

46(70)

8(13)

3(5)

17(31)

1(2)

81(202)

22(47)

9(25)

41(97)

46(172)

42(173)

5(15)

33(120)

24(84)

0(0)

10(35)

18(9 I)

2(8)

30(157)

37(178)

18(76)

6(27)

6(32)

1694

2734

0(0)

56(162)

85(264)

1(4)

1492

3982

0(0)

20(86

26(119)

38(208)

1182

2691

24(12)

24(20)

6(5)

412(541)

64(98)

0(0)

0(0)

0(0)

0(0)

9(13)

2(30

17(33)

3(5)

20(44)

16(29)

172(501)

45(1450

1(2)

22(62)

28(76)

0(0)

0(0)

143(565)

0(0)

8(33)

137(513)

0(0)

0(0)

2(8)

2350

3505

349(106)

309(156)

566(287)

0(0)

99(93)

108(95)

14(10)

182(146)

154(121 )

58(50)

63(670

117(1390

95(96)

112(150)

99(1110

0(0)

27(53)

9(13)

69(119)

118(196)

208(352)

172(287)

0(0)

28(54)

20(50)

0(0)

55(111)

28(60)

52(134)

2619

3730

295

99

73

7

79

84

120

62

56

68

143

49

86

19

35

5

49

28

61

21

7

8

5

44

44

50

41

57

2631

4327

1326

793

790

499

426

457

553

499

510

468

377

337

395

299

356

225

204

288

232

241

237

240

166

206

161

175

199

186

156

11968

22969

Figures in bracket give Attractivity Index (AAI). AAI rounded off to the nearest whole number.

,1,1 I itl I II

GARG K C, DUTT B & KUMAR S : SCIENTOMETRIC PROFILE OF INDIAN SCIENCE

Table 4 - Institutions with AI > 100 and AAI > 100 in different disciplines

121

Disciplines

Chemical

Sciences

PhysicalSciences

Medical

Sciences

Institutions with AI > 100 and AAI >100

IISC, BARC, IITM, NCL, lACS, IITK, IITB,DU, JADU, HYDU, IICT, BOMU, AMU,

POONU,RRLT

IISC, BARC, TIFR, lACS, IITK, DU, JADU, HYDU,UCAL, PANU, PRL, SINP, POONU, ISI

AIIMS, PGIMER, MADU, CMCH, and SGPIMR

Remarks

HYDY has less effort, but more impact.BOMU,AMU and POONU have less impact, but more effort.

PANU has less effort, but more impact.

AIIMS and CMCH have more impact and less effort.

Biological IISC, AIIMS, BHU, DU, PGIMER,effort, but more impactSciences MADU, UCAL, AMU, and SGPIMR

AIIMS, DU, PGIMER, AMU and SGPIMR have less

EngineeringSciences

IISC, BARC, BHU, IITM, IlTK, IITB, IlTKH,IITD, BOMU, AMU, RRLT and ISI

IIITK and IITD have more effort, but less impact.BOMU has less effort, but more impact

different disciplines, we identified institutions for whichthe values of AI and AAI are more than 100. The names

of such institutions are given below in Table 4.

Impact of output of prolific institutions

The 29 institutions (Table 5) account for 45% of all

publications, 48% of the total impact, and 46% of all

high quality papers published by India. Majority of the

papers published by these institutions have appeared injournals originating from the scientifically advancedcountries of the west. This indicates that the research

performed at these institutions evoke considerable

interest among the western scientific community, besidesthe Indian scientists preferring to publish in overseasjournals.

Table 5 provides information about various impactindicators, such as normalized impact per paper,

publication effective index and relative quality index.

The average NIMP/paper for Indian publications is 2.1.Of the 29 institutions (Table 5), 13 institutions have

NIMP/paper more than the Indian average and for seven

institutions the NIMP/ paper is less than the Indianaverage. For the remaining nine, the NIMP/Paper is equalto the Indian average. Further analysis of the dataindicates that TIFR had the highest NIMP/ paper (2.8)

followed by NCL (2.6) and HYDU, PRL and SINP eachbeing 2.5. Like the NIMP/paper, the value of PEl is also

highest for TIFR closely followed by IISC, NCL, IlTK,HYDU, PRL, and SINP. Other institutions for whichthe value of PEl> 1 are BARC, IITB, IICT, BOMU,

and POONU. It implies that these institutions earn more

impact than that is commensurate with their publicationeffort. The impact of IITM, IITD, JADU, PANU,SGPIMR, and RRLT is just commensurate with theirpublication effort. The standing of different institutions

on the basis of incidence of high quality papers can be

judged from the values of RQI. Here also TIFR had thehighest value (3.4) for RQI, followed by SINP (1.9),AIIMS, NCL and PRL each being 1.6 and SGPIMS(1.5). HYDU, PANU, CMCH, IISC, and PGIMER have

also RQI > 1. This implies that these institutions havemore than average incidence of high quality papers andthe rest have less than average incidence of high quality

papers.

Distribution of output according to discipline and their impact

SCI includes about 3500 journals in its database as

source items covering a wide range of subjects.However, for the sake of convenience, we have grouped

them into seven major disciplines excluding others. Thescheme suggested by loan-Iovitz Popescu, Professor of

Physics at Bucharest University has been used for

classification of the output d~ta.

Data presented in Tablb'(jj'iridi6'atesthafthe share of~'.¥ _ ' .. ~., I ,.-, " '_.~' r _ " '>:, .'

physical sciences including geosciences constitute

122 ANN. LII3. INF. STU., SEPTEMBER 2006

Tab]e 5 - Impact indicatorsfor prolificinstitutions

Institutions

TNPTNIMPNIMP/ PAPERNHQPElRQ[

IlSC

54713262.4 551.21.2

BARC

3467932.3 19l.l0.7

TlFR

2837902.8 791.33.4

AIlMS

2544992.0 330.91.6

I3HU

241426 1.8 100.80.5

IlTM

2204572.1 51.00.3

NCL

2155532.6 291.21.6

lACS

2144992.3 8l.l0.5

IlTK

2115102.4 181.21.0

IlTB

199468 2.4 12l.l0.7

IITKH

[87377 2.0 30.90.2

DU

[86337 1.8 90.90.6

liTO

184395 2.1 71.00.5

JADU

148299 2.0 91.00.7

HYDU

1443562.5 171.21.4

PGIMER

133225 1.7 120.81.1

MADU

126204 1.6 I0.80.]

IlCT

124288 2.3 41.10.4

UCAL

118232 2.0 20.90.2

PANU

115241 2.1 131.01.4

PRL

962372.5 131.21.6

SINP

952402.5 151.21.9

CMCH

951661.7 II0.81.4

BOMU

902062.3 4l.l0.5

AMU

881611.8 30.90.4

SGPIMS

871752.0 II1.01.5

POONU

861992.3 51.10.7

RRLT

851862.2 51.00.7

ISI

851561.8 40.90.6

OTH

6065119682.0 4870.91.0

TOTAL

11067229692.1 9031.01.0

TNP : Total numberidfpublications; NIMP: Normalised Impact; NHQ : No. of high quality papers;

PEl: Pubijcation effective index; RQI: Relative quality index

'I "" I "'1"11'1' 111" " I Itl; I I!

GARG K C, DUTT B & KUMAR S : SCIENTOMETRIC PROFILE OF INDIAN SCIENCE

Table 6 - Distribution of output and impact according to disciplines

Discipline TNPTNIMPNIMPNHQPElRQI/Paper

Agro-sciences including environmental sciences

61814282.3351.100.70

Biological sciences

138327342.01200.951.10

Chemical sciences

187839822.11241.000.80

Engineering sciences

118526912.3641.100.66

Materials sciences

86020032.3461.100.65

Medical sciences

182135051.92480.931.67

Physical sciences including geosciences

263557302.22541.101.20

Others

6878961.3 120.630.21

123

about one-fourth of total output followed by the outputin the chemical and medical sciences. These three

disciplines together constitute about two-thirds of the

total output. Biosciences and engineering constitute ­12% and - 10% of the total output respectively. Rest ofthe 6% output is scattered in multidisciplinary sciencesincluding mathematics and has been named as others.

Analysis of data for different impact indicators indicatesthat NIMP/paper for different disciplines does not differ

significantly except for others, which is quite low ascompared to the national average (2.1). The value of PEl< 1 for biosciences and medical sciences. It indicates

that in these disciplines the impact of the research is not

commensurate with the publication effort. However, thevalue of RQI for these two disciplines as well as forphysical sciences> 1, which implies that these disciplineshave more than average incidence of high quality papers.

Communication pattern of Indian scientists

This has been examined by using two aspects i.e. the

country of origin of the journals where the Indianscientists have published their research results and the

normalized impact factor of the journals.

Country of origin of joumals

Indian researchers publish their work in journalspublished from many countries. An analysis of the dataindicates that about 89% of the papers have been

published in journals originating from countries otherthan In.dia. Of these, 4553 (41 %) papers are in journals

originating from the US and 1986 (18%) papers are in

journals published from the UK. Thus, almost 59% ofthe papers in different disciplines have appeared in thejournals from the US and the UK. A comparison of thedata with the choice of journals used by Indian scientists

with 1987 indicates that proportion of papers in journalsoriginating from foreign countries have increased from80% in 1987 to 89% in 1997. Further, the share of

publications for the US has gone up from 26% in 1987

to 41 % in 1997. However, the share of papers published

in journals from the UK has gone down. One of thepossible reasons for a steep hike in number of paperspublished from USA may be inclusion of new US

journals in the SCI database or a natural preference ofIndian scientists to publish in US journals.

The number of papers in journals published from theNetherlands are 1295 (12%) and from Germany 509(5%). The number of papers in journals originating fromother countries is Switzerland (464), Japan (155),Denmark (134), France (105), Ireland (102), Hungary

(94), Singapore (90), Czechoslovakia (54), Sweden(47), Canada (45), Italy (42), Poland (39), Australia

(34), Israel (22), Austria (16), Spain (12) and other 11. countries, 39. If the journals published from thescientifically advanced countries of the West in various

disciplines are considered as leading science journals,

then the papers published fro~ India in these journalscould be rated as having attained the internationalstandard.

The number of papers that appeared in Ind~an journals

covered by SCI in the year 1997 is 1191 (11%). The

124 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., SEPTEMBER 2006

low number of papers in Indian journals is due to theinadequate coverage ofIndianjournals in SCI database.

In 1997, SCI covered only 11 Indian journals as source

items in its database. Besides, other important reasons

making Indian scientists to publish in foreign journals

are seeking international recognition, wider readership

offered by international journals, existing 'value system'

in Indian science giving more weight to papers published

in overseas journals and non-availability of specialist

journals in many disciplines in the country.

Distribution of output according to NIF of the journals

Based on the average value of the normalized impactfactor (2.1), the NIF has been divided into four

categories. These are> 0 ::; 1.05 (low), > 1.05 ::; 2.1

(medium), >2.1::; 4.2 (above medium) and> 4.2 (high).Based on these values of the NIF, it is observed that

about two-third of the total papers have appeared in

'low' and 'medium' NIF journals and also the proportion

of papers in low and medium NIF journals is almost the

same. Remaining one-third of the total papers have

appeared in 'above medium' and high NIF journals, out

of which, 25% are in above medium NIF journals andthe rest in 'high' NIF journals.

Findings

The study indicates that academic institutions are the

major contributors to the publications output. However,

the output for the universities as weIl as agriculturaluni versities has gone down in 1997 as compared to 1987.The output for CSIR, DST and DAE has increased in

1997 as compared to 1987. Major contributions camefrom 29 institutions that contributed about 45% of all

publications, 46% of all high quality papers publishedby India and 48% of the total impact. Based on the values

of different impact indicators (normalized impact perpaper, publication effective index and relative qualityindex) TIFR outperforms all other institutions ondifferent impact indicators. Physical sciences, chemicalsciences, and medical sciences constitute about 57% of

the total output. The output is low in mathematical andenvironmental sciences. Bioseiences and medical

sciences have more than average incidence of highquality papers, however, based on the values of PEl,

these disciplines have a relatively low impact as

compared to the publication effort. In addition to thesetwo disciplines, the physical sciences also have more

than average incidence of high quality papers.

Indian scientists widely publish their findings in journalsbrought out by the advanced countries of the West and

the proportion of papers published in journals from theWest have increased from 80% in 1987 to 89% in 1997.

However, this does not imply that these papers are also

cited frequently. Two-third of the total output has

appeared in low and medium NIF journals. Only a

minuscule portion (8%) of the papers has appeared inhigh NIF journals.

Acknowledgements

The authors are highly thankful to Dr. Gangan Prathap,Scientist-In-Charge, CSIR Centre for Mathematical

Modelling and Computer Simulation, Bangalore, for his

valuable comments and suggestions on the manuscript

that have been of immense help in improving themanuscript.

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I I III I il

GARG K C, DUTT B & KUMAR S : SCIENTOMETRIC PROFILE OF INDIAN SCIENCE

LIST OF INSTITUTIONS

1. IISC: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

2. BARC: Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (DAE), Mumbai

3. TIFR: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (DAE), Mumbai

4. AIIMS: All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi

5. BHU: Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi

6. IITM: Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai

7. NCL: National Chemical laboratory (CSIR), Pune

8. lACS: Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (DST), Kolkatta

9. IITK: Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

10. IITB: Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai

11. IITKH: Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

12. DU: University of Delhi, Delhi

13. IITD: Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi

14. JADU: Jadavpur University, Kolkatta

15. HYDU: Hyderabad University, Hyderabad

16. PGIMER: Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh

17. MADU: Madras University, Chennai

18. IICT: Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR), Hyderabad

19. UCAL: University of Calcutta, Kolkata

20. PANU: Panjab University, Chandigarh

21. PRL: Physical Research Laboratory (DOS), Ahmedabad

22. SINP: Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (DAE), Kolkatta

23. CMCH: Christian Medical college and Hospital, Vellore and other centers

24. BOMU: Mumbai University (now Mumbai), Mumbai

25. AMU: Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

26. SGPIMS: Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow

27. POONU: Pune University, Pune

28. RRLT: Regional Research Laboratory (CSIR), Trivandrum

29. ISI: Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi and Kolkata

Annexure I

125