The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters, US, has announced the results of a survey assessing India's growing scientific prominence. In the September/October issue of Science Watch, Thomson Reuters analyses data from its National Science Indicators and Essential Science Indicators to show India's steady increase in research output and impact since 2000. Science Watch uses unique citation data to provide rankings and reports on today's most significant science.
The survey noted that in 1985, Indian researchers accounted for 12,500 research papers indexed by Thomson Reuters. Between 1985 and 2000, this number barely exceeded 14,000 annually. Then, in 2000, India began to see a significant rise in its scientific output, reaching more than 27,000 papers indexed by Thomson Reuters, by 2007.
Along with an increase in output, the influence of India's researchers in the sciences has also risen. While India's impact (average number of citations per paper) has not yet reached the world average within most scientific fields, this survey finds that India has made the most notable gains in Physics, with an average of 3.13 cites per paper for the period 2003 to 2007 - 80 percent of the field average. During the period, India's largest percent share of any main field indexed by Thomson Reuters is the Multidisciplinary category with a percentage of 5.47. A close second is Materials Science which accounts for 5.45 percent and is the field in which India has experienced the steepest growth in the last five years.
In assessing India's research output, Science Watch identified 250 Research Fronts for which India-based institutions' papers are among the core literature, the majority of which are in the Physical Sciences field. Research Fronts are specialty areas of research defined by a core of foundational papers that have been cited together.
