Highly Cited Publications Output by India in Computer Science 1996-15: A Scientometric Assessment

Objectives – The main objective of this research is to identify highly cited papers in India’s computer science research and to analyze their publication and citation distributions to understand what role contributing authors, research organizations as well as international collaborative countries have played in Indian computer science research. Design – The publications output of Indian computer science papers published during 1996-2015 were screened in Scopus database and highly cited papers, with at least 100 citations since publication, were identified and shortlisted for their bibliometric analysis. The statistics cover collaboration across authors, institutions, foreign participating countries in the publication of highly cited papers. To assess and compare contributions of authors/institutions, the study used Major Contributor Index (MCI) indicator. Citation trends for all highly cited papers, as well as for top papers, are presented; Results – India published a total of 406 highly cited articles in computer science, constituting 0.32% world share during 1996-15. This study covered only those papers that received at least 100 citations since publication. In recent years, top-cited articles have reached their citation peak in the early years of their citation life cycle, but have shown a more-rapid decreasing trend compared to top-cited articles from past decades. These 406 highly articles have received 104715 citations, with an average citation per paper of 257.92. The leading Indian organizations participating in highly cited research were Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata and Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi (with 46 papers each), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (42 papers), Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (33 papers), Dr S.R. University, Chennai (28 papers), Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (26 papers each), Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Jadavpur University, Kolkata (23 papers each), Microsoft Research, Bangalore (13 papers), IBM India (9 papers), etc. The leading authors were S. Vaidyanathan (21 papers), K. Deb and S. Bandyopadhyay (with 11 papers each), V. Sundarapandian (9 papers), S. Das and N.R. Pal (8 papers each), S.K. Pal (6 papers), N. Garg, P. Sarasu, S.R. Murthy, B.B. Chaudhuri and G.P.S. Raghava (5 papers each), etc. The leading international collaborative countries were USA (138 papers), U.K. (22 papers each), Canada (18 papers), Singapore (15 papers), France (14 papers), Japan (12 papers), Switzerland (10 papers), China and Norway (8 papers), Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and Germany (7 papers each), etc. MCI and citation per paper varied among leading institutions, as well as among individual authors. Conclusions- India’s productivity of highly cited papers in computer science by authors is abysmally low and so is its world share which is 0.32%. Its slow growth rate of high quality papers in computer science is a matter of concern. Bulk of the output of high quality and high impact research in computer science in India has resulted from select top academic and research organizations/institutions working in isolation and not in collaboration. The challenge before the top leadership in science in the country is how to encourage team-based/multi-institutional collaborative research in order to produce and publish high quality and high impact research work in computer science.

Keywords: Authors, Bibliometrics, Computer Science, Highly Cited Papers, India, international collaboration, major contributed organizations, Scientometrics.