Research Productivity and Citation Impact of Indian institutes of Science Education and Research

The paper’s main objective is to investigate the trends of basic science research in India using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. It examines the publication patterns and impact of research productivity of five basic science institutions, i.e., “Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research” (IISER), namely IISER Kolkata, IISER Pune, IISER Mohali, IISER Bhopal, and IISER Thiruvananthapuram. The research output indexed in the SCOPUS bibliographic database of these five established IISERs was obtained from 2015 to 2019. A total number of 7329 research publications were analysed using various scientometric dimensions. This paper makes a concerted effort to present a comprehensive picture of the assessment of research outcomes at the five older IISERs, which are ostensibly India’s most active and prominent basic science research institutions. The findings reveal that these institutions are accountable for important research outcomes, such as a high number of citations, preferences towards open access (OA) publications, a rise in research publication year over year, a strong author network, a high degree of collaboration, and a high impact in terms of other scientometrics indicators. This paper discusses the findings of the research publications on the position of IISERs in basic sciences research and draws some conclusions about their effects.