Mumbai: Indian entries in QS 2023-24 subject rankings saw an 18.7% rise making India the second most represented Asian country with 66 ranked universities and the fourth most represented country for the overall number of entries across the 54 narrow subjects.
The rankings also observed that between 2017 and 2022, India's research output grew by around 54%, taking it to the fourth position globally in producing academic papers, a recent study has found.
However, the quality and relevance of many of these papers remain questionable, as only 15% of them have been cited in top academic journals, revealed the study.
The report, released on Wednesday, was conducted by the British higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) with the help of data from the research analytics platform SciVal.
According to the report, the growth in India's research output is more than double the global average and far greater than that of its more academically established western counterparts.
However, the country trails neighboring China, which experienced a growth rate of just over 60% between 2017-22. However, the gap between the two countries appears to be closing as, between 2019 and 2022, India’s research output grew by 20% while China’s grew by 24%.
China also continues to be the World leader in the total number of research papers published ((4.5 million) in the five-year period, followed by the United States (4.4 million) and the United Kingdom (1.4 million). However, the study predicts India is poised to surpass UK in the near future, due to the country's higher growth rate.
But when it comes to citations generated by the research work, India at the ninth place globally. According to QS, this indicates that the country should focus on high-quality, relevant research and ensuring this research is disseminated among the scholarly community.
"India’s challenge of generating high-impact research is made more apparent by its percentage of research papers to receive citations in top global journals. From 2017 to 2021, India saw 15% of its publications cited in top journals. Meanwhile, its closest competitors in terms of research output volume, the United Kingdom and Germany, boast top journal citation percentages more than double that, 38% and 33% respectively," reads the report.
India’s leading field of research is Engineering & Technology, accounting for 52.6% of total research output. Within the broader faculty, the primary focus of scholarly work is evenly split between Petroleum Engineering and Computer Sciences (24% of research output within the field).
The country's next predominant research fields are split between Natural Sciences (36%) and Life Sciences & Medicine (35%).The study also found that India produces 19% of its research output alongside cross-border collaborators, in keeping with the global average of 21% and aligned with that of its closest competitors. This is one of the key indicators considered by QS in its annual ranking of higher education institutes and courses.
