Research output of Indian institutions during 2011-2016: quality and quantity perspective

The publication output from Indian institutions has been steadily increasing during the last few years. This may be attributed to the higher investment in research and also linking the number of publications with career advancement. There is a need to analyse the publication output of Indian institutions in terms of quality of publications. In this study, output in the top 10 percentile, as computed by SciVal (a product of Elsevier), has been used as an indicator of the quality of research output, since it reflects the percentage of an institution's publication in the top 10 percentile of the most cited articles. Out of the 15 subject areas listed in SciVal, 7 contribute to more than 65% of publications from Indian institutions. Accordingly, Indian institutions with output in the top 10 percentile greater than the national average in these 7 major subject areas have been identified to compare their research output in terms of quality.