India makes impressive strides in scientific research

NEW DELHI: India’s research performance in science and technology has improved significantly over the past few years. Scholarly output in the country grew by 13.9 per cent during 2009-13, against a compounded annual growth rate ( CAGR) of 4.1 per cent for the world.

Moreover, India has also demonstrated a growing impact through its research worldwide. For instance, India’s share of world patent citations and top cited papers increased between 0.8 and 1.2 percentage points from 2009 to 2013. In 2013, India held over 3 per cent of the world’s top 10 per cent cited papers. This indicates India is not just growing scientifically, but growing aggressively at the very top end of scientific excellence.

India’s share of world patent citation, or patent cited for later papers or patents, also improved from 2.2 per cent in 2009 to almost 3 per cent in 2013. Experts said, in absolute terms, the growth was significant with India registering 109 patent citations in 2013.

The findings are part of a new bibliometric study published in international scientific journal ‘Elsevier’. The international comparative study, conducted by Department of Science and Technology, analysed India’s research performance during 2009-13 using Scopus database, the largest of peer-reviewed literature. According to the study, India’s scholarly output increased from 62,955 papers in 2009 to 106,065 papers in 2013.