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Science publication indicators for India: Questions of interpretation

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  • Aparna Basu

    (National Institute of Science, Technology & Development Studies (NISTADS))

Abstract

We comment on a letter toNature in 1996 on the long term decline of Indian science pointing out methodological reasons why the (SCI) data used by the authors do not unambiguously lead to their stated conclusions. Our arguments are based on the contention that no valid statement on change in a country's output may be made for a period in which the journal coverage from that country in SCI has changed significantly. We have suggested that for longitudinal comparisons of country level performance, it should be verified that the journals from that country in SCI remained constant within the period. This could be ensured if the country of publication of journals could be included as a field in the SCI database. We define a Visibility Index as the cumulated impact and derive a relation to estimate change in visibility combining changes in output and average impact. In the period during which Indian journal coverage remained unchanged, a detailed analysis of output for two years (1990–94) leads us to conclude that, with the exception of Agriculture, there has been an increase in publication in virtually every field, with significant increase in the overall mean Impact Factor. At least 25 subfields have been identified with statistically significant increase in mean Impact Factor and Visibility. The impact of foreign collaboration on visibility has also been considered. In conclusion we touch upon the question of citation as a performance indicator for Third World countries as high citation and relevance may be in conflict as objectives.

Suggested Citation

  • Aparna Basu, 1999. "Science publication indicators for India: Questions of interpretation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 44(3), pages 347-360, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:44:y:1999:i:3:d:10.1007_bf02458484
    DOI: 10.1007/BF02458484
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Pushpa M. Bhargava, 1998. "The cowboys in Indian science," Nature, Nature, vol. 395(6699), pages 233-234, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sujit Bhattacharya & Shilpa & Arshia Kaul, 2015. "Emerging countries assertion in the global publication landscape of science: a case study of India," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(2), pages 387-411, May.
    2. Aparna Basu & Ritu Aggarwal, 2001. "International Collaboration in Science in India and its Impact on Institutional Performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 52(3), pages 379-394, November.
    3. Grant Lewison & Ramesh Kundra, 2008. "The internal migration of Indian scientists, 1981–2003, from an analysis of surnames," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(1), pages 21-35, April.
    4. Aline Solari & Marie-Helene Magri, 2000. "A New Approach to the SCI Journal Citation Reports, a System for Evaluating Scientific Journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 47(3), pages 605-625, March.
    5. B. M. Gupta & S. M. Dhawan, 2009. "Status of India in science and technology as reflected in its publication output in the Scopus international database, 1996–2006," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 473-490, August.
    6. Aparna Basu, 2010. "Does a country’s scientific ‘productivity’ depend critically on the number of country journals indexed?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 507-516, March.

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