A recently completed study shows that in three top journals –– Nature, Science and Cell, the IISc and the seven IITs had published only 16 papers over the five-year period between 2002- 2006.
Contrast this with a top US university such as the Massachusetts (TCK) Institute of Technology which alone has published more than 350 papers in these journals!
The paper by K P Raghuraman, Romesh Chander and Giridhar Madras that was published in Current Science says: “It was observed that the number of papers in these (high-impact journals) from India is minuscule compared to the US universities.”
The bulk of the Indian contribution comes from IISc; it accounts for nine of the 16 papers published in the high-impact journals. IIT Roorkee follows with three, IIT Kharagpur with two, IITs at Kanpur, Bombay, Madras with one each.
Asian universities, in comparison, have fared much better than the Indian universities. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has published 96 papers in these three journals. Japan’s Kyushu University has published 36 papers, while South Korea’s Seoul National University has published 24 papers.
However, Indian institutes fare much better when it comes to publications in the top three society journals in Chemistry, Physics and Biology.
The study looked at three journals –– Journal of American Chemical Society, Physical Review Letters and Journal of Biological Chemistry. The study found that Indian institutes published more than 800 papers in these journals between 2002-2006.
However, barring IISc, top Indian institutes such as the IITs do not compare favourably with their Asian counterparts. The study also found that on parameters such as publications and citations per faculty, Indian institutions lagged far behind top Asian and US universities too.