Scientific activities, and extent of collaborative efforts in the top academic institutions of India : A scientometric study using Web of Science data

Abstract

Using more than one lakh publication records from the Web of Science database, we tried to identify the scientific activity (publications, collaborations and citations), sectors of collaboration (University- Industry-Government), & subjects of collaboration in the top 10 NIRF ranked engineering institutes and universities in India. The study indicated that collaboration in different types of academic institutions has steadily increased from 2011 to 2020. Greater growth has been observed in domestic collaboration than foreign collaboration. The international collaboration network tends to be very dense with more advantageous countries. Although, international collaboration resulting in more citations, the fractional impact strength of domestic publications is better than foreign. The impact factor of the journal was observed to be a better predictor than the number of authors per article. University-University sector – mainly different departments of the same institute emerge as the predominant form of domestic collaborative research. While assessing the disciplinary output of the top 10 institutions by establishing a subject framework based on the Frascati Manual and Essential Science Indicator of Clarivate, it was observed that Civil, Mechanical & Electrical Engineering; Chemical, Material & Environmental Engineering; Chemical Sciences, and Theoretical aspects of Physics were the major fields amongst science disciplines with overall 52% of domestic and 48% of foreign collaboration.