Status of Research in India

R&D Expenditure in India 

Despite India having better scientific research institutions, R&D and innovation capabilities are lower than other BRICS countries, according to the Economic Survey. Expenditures for research and development are current and capital expenditures (both public and private) on creative work undertaken systematically to increase knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture, and society, and the use of knowledge for new applications. R&D covers basic research, applied research, and experimental development which is lies approximately 1% of GDP (The Hindu; Feb27,13).The economic survey further pointed out that share of basic research in India’s R&D is estimated at 26 per cent, applied research 36 per cent, development research 32 per cent and other research at 6 per cent, which is low when compared to other BRIC countries (except Russia).

India S&T infrastructure 

1. more than 300 universities, 
2. 400 research laboratories, 
3. 13 institutes of national importance, 
4. and 1300 in-house industrial R&D units, besides several other government departments, private, international and non-profitable institutions. 

India ranks 12th among the top 20 productive countries in science and technology, with its global publications share of 2.11% as computed from cumulative world publications data for 1997-2007 fig 1.

 India’s Publication Growth Rate in World Context India achieved annual average growth rate in publications output at 7.76% as seen from its publications output data for 1997-2007.  China showed growth rate of 20.96% per annum, the highest amongst top 20 countries.

Growth rate of publications output by developing world countries has also changed over time. Based on publications output data for 1997-2002 and 2003-2007, it was found that Chine improved its growth rate from 15.37% to 26.54%, India from 4.31% to 11.21%,

Publications Output from India, China, Brazil, and South Korea as appearing in High Impact Journals, (47.7-10) 1997 - 2007

Share of country’s Output in High Impact Journals in the Total Country Output 0.32 0.16 0.5 0.83

High Cited Papers from India

India published a total of 100 high-cited papers in science and technology 11 years as seen from the publications output data for 1997 to 2007. Since their publication in between 1997 and 2007, these select papers received between 221 and 2995 citations per paper. These were much higher the citations their counterparts received during the same period. Of these 100 papers, 82 were articles, 16 review papers, 1 each note and short survey. All these 100 high cited papers were collaborative papers. Indian institutions were the lead authors in 42 papers and foreign institutions were the lead authors in 58 papers. In overall, Indian participation in these 100 papers was confined to 55 institutions, which included 9 institutes of national importance, 21 research institutes, 19 from universities & colleges, 2 international institutes, 3 hospitals,  and 1 was from industry.

The condition of patents filled is also not very enthusiastic as in 2012 total patents filled in Indian Offices were 814 in which sanctioned were only 52. The same trend was observed in the numbers of patent applications filed by Indians in World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). India stands at 14th rank by filing 15,717 patents but stand comes down while the grant of patents is concerned and that is 17th by receiving grant over 5168 patents in year 2012. 

Even after this appraisal on research status, there are few important questions which couldn't address in this article. Whether the research in the country is really following the requirement of the country? Is the IF alone able to justify the work going in India? What is the mandate and priorities for research in India? Moreover what is total output from the research to the country? A recent finding of the study on India's research output and collaboration conducted by Reuter states that the country had just 3.5% of global research output in 2010. The report which was recently submitted to the department of science and technology has discipline wise data on India’s terribly low research output.