BWI: 99th Indian Science Congress discusses “India – A Scientific Super Power to be?”

Press release from Business Wire India
Source: Elsevier Science and Technology
Thursday, January 05, 2012 02:00 PM IST (08:30 AM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest, Economy, People; Business: Business services, Education & training, Information technology; Technology
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99th Indian Science Congress discusses "India - A Scientific Super Power to be?"


Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India, Thursday, January 05, 2012 -- (Business Wire India) -- "India - A Scientific Super Power to be? " Dr. Michiel Kolman , Senior Vice President , Elsevier, raised this thought-provoking question in his presentation on India's research performance over the last five years at the 99th Indian Science Congress. India retains its position in the top 10 nations worldwide and also shows an impressive growth of 14.3% which is exceeded only by China with 22.8% among the top 10 nations.

"India is a science powerhouse in the making, as reflected by its enormous growth. It does have a fierce competitor in China, which has an even higher growth, but India scores higher in terms of quality" stated Dr. Kolman.

The quality of the publications is determined by the citations per article, based on data in Elsevier's SciVerse Scopus database. This quality has been rising over the past 5 years (2.0 to 2.7 citations per article) outperforming China (2.2) but still below the larger science nations such as the UK and the US which are at 6 while Japan is at 4 citations per article.

One of the new metrics, developed as part of Elsevier's SciVal Spotlight research performance measurement tool, quantifies and visualises research leadership areas; these are research areas where India is outperforming other nations. Based on 2006-2010 Scopus data, India has 159 research leadership areas, which is substantially higher than last year's analysis of 130, which was based on 2005-2009 data. However the same metrics shows 885 research leadership areas for China for 2006-2010.

Overall, India publishes most in chemistry (20%), engineering (13%), biology & biotechnology (12%), math & physics (11%), medical (11%) and computer science (11%). India's "leadership articles" - articles in the 159 leadership areas as determined by SciVal Spotlight - are dominated by chemistry at an impressive 38% contribution. Other key areas are engineering (15%), biology & biotechnology (14%), math & physics (10%), while there are only 5% leadership articles in computer science and 4% in medical. China shows the same strong leadership in computer science that India shows in chemistry.

SciVal Spotlight not only provides insight into the research performance of India as a country, it also shows the relative performance of individual institutes. The key players in India, as measured in research output, are science institutes: the Top 10 is led by the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, followed by IITs, CSIRs, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Currently article growth comes typically from universities rather than from the science institutes, so the biggest players are not ones with the highest growth rates.

On the aspect of international collaboration, Dr. Kolman pointed to Scopus data that outlined that, globally, the share of articles with international co-authors is rising. For Indian research, this share is decreasing over time. This may imply that Indian authors are now relatively more inclined to collaborate with other Indian authors rather than scientists from other countries. It is noteworthy that these papers from India with non-Indian co-authors receive 80% more citations than papers with only Indian authors.

About SciVerse Scopus

Covering the world's research literature, SciVerse Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web sources with smart tools to track analyze and visualize research. SciVerse Scopus was designed and developed with over 500 users and librarians internationally. Its unique database contains abstracts and references from nearly19,500 peer-reviewed journals from more than 5,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage. In addition, SciVerse Scopus not only offers users citation information about the articles covered, but also directly integrates Web and patent searches. Direct links to full-text articles, library resources and other applications like reference management software, make SciVerse Scopus quicker, easier and more comprehensive to use than any other literature research tool.

About SciVal Spotlight and the Elsevier SciVal suite

SciVal Spotlight is a strategic tool that generates unique institutional and country maps of existing and emerging research strengths based on an interdisciplinary perspective of current performance. The tool is part of a broader range of research measurement tools, the SciVal Suite. Elsevier's SciVal suite of services supports academic and government leadership in evaluating, establishing and executing research strategies that optimize the performance of existing assets and maximize investments to enhance near and long-term productivity. SciVal tools leverage Scopus data, Elsevier's trusted source of bibliometric data, to offer innovative yet authoritative solutions. Besides SciVal Spotlight, current suite offerings include: SciVal Funding, an online solution that provides targeted recommendations on grants to pursue based on pre-populated research profiles and historical awards; SciVal Strata, a web-based research performance tool that offers users the flexibility to construct relevant contextual data to evaluate research teams or individual researchers, using a range of indicators based on Scopus data; SciVal Experts, a semantic technology-based application that enables researchers to identify and locate sources of expertise at an individual or departmental level within and across institutions.

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Dr. Michiel Kolman
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CONTACT DETAILS
Manik Sethi, Elsevier Science and Technology, +91 9910225543, M.Sethi@elsevier.com

KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, ECONOMY, PEOPLE, BUSINESS SERVICES, EDUCATION, IT, TECHNOLOGY

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