India's new millennium in Science

 
Christopher King
December 2008

After several consecutive years of minimal increase through the 1980s and 90s, India's output of scientific papers has risen sharply since 2000. Concurrently, the citation impact of the nation's published research in main fields has been trending upward in recent years.

Science Watch turned to National Science Indicators and Essential Science Indicators to analyze India-based science, revealing trends including:

  • Increases from the year 2000 in the number of papers listing at least one India-based institution among the author addresses, rising to more than 27,000 in 2007
  • India's largest percent share of any main field indexed by Thomson Reuters is in the Multidisciplinary category (comprising papers published in the multidisciplinary journals Science, Nature, PNAS, etc.), with 5.47 per cent of papers in that field indexed in the cumulative five-year period between 2003 and 2007. Close behind is Materials Science, in which India's 9,212 papers in the last five years constitute 5.45 per cent of the field
  • Materials Science is the field in which India displays the steepest growth in representation during the period covered by National Science Indicators. In 1981, only 432 Thomson Reuters-indexed materials papers included an India institutional address—3.68 per cent of the field. In 2007, nearly 2,300 papers with India-based authors were indexed, a share of 6.13 per cent
  • India's share of world papers, in the latest five-year period, was also comparatively high in Agricultural Sciences (5.17 per cent of the database), Chemistry (5.04 per cent), and Physics (3.88 per cent)
  • In 1981, more than 95 per cent of Thomson Reuters-indexed papers from India featured authors exclusively at India-based institutions, with no other nations listed. By 2007, the percentage of India-only papers had fallen to 80 per cent, indicating that, albeit gradually, India is moving toward greater participation in world science

Visit Science Watch
Download a PDF of the full report

Additional information

Visit Science Watch
Download a PDF of the full report

Was this article useful?

Download a PDF of all
December 2008's
KnowledgeLink articles

Register now for KnowledgeLink, our customizable email newsletter that delivers expert insight on:

  • Global innovation
  • Information professional development
  • Intellectual property
  • Pharmaceutical knowledge
  • Scientific research