Increase in India’s Scientific Research Output
Chaitanya Saxena
Monday, 12 October 2009 15:59 UTC
Here is some food:
India’s Scientific Research Output Increases Eighty Percent Since 2000
Report available at
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/m/pdfs/grr-India-oct09_ag0908174.pdf
What can be discussed here is that how can we increase the percentage contribution and sustain the rate of increase.
Updated 12 October 2009 16:38 UTC
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It is good news but not great news. Increase in output in number (of publications) does NOT indicate increase in quality of average of Indian publications. India is always among the top 10 so far quantity is concerned, but the quality is going down. That’s the main concern, even for our Prime Minister.
More and more routine research works are shifted to India and more number of university and institutes are established, we can expect some increase in output in form of publications. But that is of no good, so far science education and research is concerned.I just managed these two below for quick reference:
Jayaraman, K. S. (2007). Indian science is in decline, says prime minister. Nature 445, 134-5.
Lavania, U. C. (2007). Five-point plan to revive and reform Indian science. Nature 445, 484.Moreover, try to quote a reputed journal to substantiate your claim, not a web site advertisement by an industrial info database which has its own a huge BPO operation in India (it does not go well with “conflict of Interest” nrom).
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I managed ranking of countries based of total number of publication and quality of average publication.
So far quality is concerned; India comes at 177 (with 5.42 points), out of 229 countries, but for total number of publications India is ranked 12th with 3,40,553 publications (as of 2007, in all branches of science).Highest in quality is Switzerland with 27.06 while US is close second with 26.06.
Countries like Chili, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ghana has a better quality of average publication as compared to India.
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Thanks for pointing at a good website. I was wondering how did you calculate the quality of science data from the website. Also it is worthless to calculate how well India is doing compare to USA or Switzerland based on the simple fact that US and Switzerland budget contribute more than 2.6% of its GDP in R&D compare to India which contributes only 0.8% of its GDP in R&D. And ofcourse US GDP is much more compare to India even after Purchase Power Parity (PPP) calculations. In case of Switzerland it is impressive that they are doing great. For the sake of argument if we use PPP calculations than India is doing far better than USA on ‘publication per dollar spent’ terms.
However the goal of the post is to show
a) That India is showing impressive growth (at least in terms of numbers, as can be seen).
b) To discuss how can we increase Indian contribution in world science.and would apprecaite readers comments on that.
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The “quality” of publication is calculated on the basis of “citations per publication”.
It seems that you missed my last part of the message, “Even Chili, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ghana has a better quality of average publication as compared to India”. Your explanation of “PPP” does not fit to explain India’s ranking for quality.Publications of almost all the countries in that list has grown. I have not checked the percentage of growth of each country. But I compared Indian growth in publications with that of China (figures below).
Country Year Ranking Total publications
China 1996 9 26,922
2000 6 42,801
2007 2 1,98,724India 1996 13 20,222
2000 12 23,051
2007 10 45,034
In 1996, India and China was almost at per, but Now China is far ahead of India, so far total publications are concerned.
Contribution of Indian science to the world can not be calculated on the basis of total publication but by quality of average publications, i.e average quality of research in the country (that’s how “quality” is judged and accepted worldwide). -
Your earlier statement that India doing good is also not consistence with your next statement, “it is worthless to calculate how well India is doing compare to USA or Switzerland based on the simple fact that US and Switzerland budget contribute more than 2.6% of its GDP in R&D compare to India which contributes only 0.8% of its GDP in R&D”.
Low allocation of GDP in education and research is a major problem for India. Even then, most of that money is mopped up by our worthless higher education and baseless research sector. That poor performance is reflected in India’s global ranking in quality of research (and also in basic education).*Percentage of GDP spent does not gurantee quality eitehr for research or education.
GDP spend on higher education remains at 0.37%. Despite all possible efforts and initiatives by the central government to promote spread of higher education in India, the percentage of its GDP spending on higher education in the last couple of years has remained stagnant at around 0.37% against 1.41%, 1.07% and 0.50% of US, UK and China respectively, according to industry body Assocham. A paper on Future of Indian Higher Education brought out by Assocham also reveals that economies such as Japan and Korea also spends less than 0.40% of their GDP on higher education. (Source: education for India (compiled from different sources) -
Check the following web site for a better and simplified analysis on how spending on education is reflected on total publications and quality of research in a country:
http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/images/edpercent.swf
http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/economic/educationlibraryspending.htmSaudi Arab spends 9.5% of its GDP in Education!!!!
while Norway- 6.8, USA-4.8, India- 4.1; China- 2.2, Ffrance- 5.8, Brazil- 3.8 etc.Data in this regard are contradictory. But one thing is clear: spending on Education (as % of GDP) does not gurantee quality of education or quality of research.
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I got the zest of the iterative rambling that Indian Science (in your terms) is not doing good. Again as per post # 3 the goal of the post is to show
a) That India is showing impressive growth (at least in terms of numbers, as can be seen, may not be in terms of so called ‘quality’…..its understandable that increase in number is natural phenomenon, but the trend shown in initial posting emphasizes that this growth for India is far much steeper ).
b) To discuss how can we increase Indian contribution in world science.And would apprecaite readers comments on that.
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Anonymous
Ranking of india 177 out of 233 is based on number of citation per document. In that list British Indian Ocean Territory is on top with total two papers, total citations 76. All country on top are islands where few papers and they got citation . USA is on 11th position despite lot of contribution. This type of ranking have no meaning at all, This is unfortunate that guel used nonsense criteria of ranking, just to downgrade india. Any kid can see this can not be criteria for ranking countries. This criteria have been discuss long time back on this thread and found meaningless. If you wants to rank any country based on quality than compare total citations.
Whatever india have is OK, challenge is how to increase the productivity. We need to attract more and more talent towards science as well as try to minimize brain-drain. At end of the day we need trained manpower to do science, money can only help in attracting and retaining talent.
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Anonymous
Don’t be so naïve. Who cares about increase in number if that is not matched with increase in quality. You can put millions of farmers to cultivate but you need some real scientists to make green revolution a reality. You may be discovering new criteria to rank different countries but that’s not what experts in that field believe. For more info you can consult ex-IISc director, P Balram’s article in Current science.
Balaram, P. (2002). Science in India: Signs of Stagnation. Current Science 82, 193-194.
There is another thread where we discussed and concluded that increase in number of institutes and universities are nothing but an eyewash and will not serve any real purpose to uplift the country. Only idiots and some politicians + bureaucrats (and some scientocrates) will feel elated with such nonsense statistics (of increase in number), which has no bearing on scientific progress of a country.
No sane person will agree with your comment that whatever India has is OK. In fact, that attitude leads us where we are now today, in science and in other aspects of life. Such conceited attitude is the main reason of India’s downfall.
It’s proven that money alone can not do much. Otherwise rich Middle Eastern countries could have accomplished great feats in research. In India, research is comparatively well paid. And that is attracting many idiots and mediocre people into it. Now higher education and research in India is used just to minimize some of its huge unemployment problem. Nothing more.If you really want to highlight some positive aspects of India, look somewhere else. I am sure you will find so many. But do not use your energy on such useless rhetoric.
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I do agree that quality is also important along with the quantity. Again my goal with the post was not to start a discussion on scientometry (or for that matter to show how great India is doing) but to initiate a discussion that what bullet point issues readers think can increase the contribution of Indian Science in the world science by quickly highlighting that scientific atmosphere is changing in India toward good.
Of course there are many methods of judging/ranking a country as nicely pointed out in the article cited by post # 9 and one of the method is number of publications, which increased rapidly (not on a regular natural fashion) in last couple of years. And I am seeing it as sign of change for good. And my post topic was very clear * What can be discussed here is that how can we increase the percentage contribution and sustain the rate of increase.*
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