(24 Dec 2019) In recent years, India has emerged as one of the leading countries in terms of research volume. As per Elsevier’s 2018 Research Intelligence report, the country is the fifth largest producer of research publications, only behind scientific superpowers such as the US, China, the UK, and Germany. When it comes to India’s ranking in Asia, as per the Scimago Journal and Country Rank database (which includes papers published between 1996 and 2018), India ranks among the top Asian countries in terms of research output, alongside China and Japan.
However, India’s research performance on parameters such as citation and collaboration has not been as stellar. In terms of citation, the country ranks 10th in the Elsevier report and 14th in the Scimago database. In terms of international collaboration, the country has even seen a marginal decline in recent years, as per the STM Scientific Publishing Report 2018. Additionally, in the past few years, the country has witnessed the rapid proliferation of predatory journals, putting a question mark on the quality of much of its research output.
Various stakeholders in the country – including the government, statutory bodies, and private institutions – have been working to deal with the challenges impacting the quality of the research output. In this article, we will take a closer look at these challenges as well as how the stakeholders are addressing them.
The full article is here.
