Surge in high-quality scientific publication in India from 2012: Report

Kolkata: India's research output has grown steadily since 2012, showing stronger CAGR of 8 percent than other countries with comparable output and economic conditions, a latest analytics report said on Thursday. However, on the flip side, industry-academia collaboration is yet to take off in the country.

There has been a surge in high-quality scientific publication in India between 2012 and 2014 reveals the 'Indian Science Ascending' report from Nature Index.

Using data from the Nature Index, the report sheds light on India's place in global science, especially when compared with countries that have similar volumes of index output in 2014 and with broadly similar economic conditions (including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan).

The Nature Index database tracks the author affiliations of nearly 60,000 scientific articles published in an independently selected group of 68 high-quality science journals, and charts publication productivity for institutions and countries.

At number 13, India is among the top 15 countries globally in the Nature Index 2014, the report said.

But it also notes: "Industry-academia collaboration is yet to take off in India, but Indian academic institutions have good collaborative ties with international corporations."

Produced jointly by Springer Nature and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), it also notes that in high tier journals, Indian academic institutions co-author more papers with international companies than with domestic firms.

Further, the analysis highlights India's prowess in the broad discipline of chemistry.

The discipline shows the largest increase in CAGR of 8.6 percent among comparable countries.

It says US is India's top collaborator followed by Germany. India collaborates with 85 countries, mostly in Europe. Other strong collaborative ties include East Asia and Australia.