Between 2006 and 2015, India published 19, 938 research papers in the domain of earth system sciences, nearly twice what it published in the previous decade. However in terms of high quality publications, it improved its share from 4.7% in the previous decade (1996-2005) to 5.7% across the two comparative periods, says a report commissioned by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and prepared by analytics firm, Clarivate Analytics.
This, even as the global research output in the field increased from about 3,40,000 to 5,70,000 of which high quality publications comprised 11% in both decades.
The analysis included publications in six major areas of earth-science research: Geo research, atmospheric research, Ocean research, Arctic research, Antarctica research and Himalayas research. Of these the majority of Indian publications were in the geo sciences. Particularly, Himalayas-related research nearly tripled across the two periods but the citation impact—a proxy for the quality of the paper among peers—was the lowest among all research areas.
The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France led the world in the number of high quality research publications.
The report was made public by earth sciences minister, Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday who said that India was now placed 9th among the world’s countries in terms of the number of research publications related to earth sciences.
Given the impact of climate change and its disproportionate impact on different regions in the world, governments have upped funding in a variety of earth-science disciplines. In the sub-domain of Antarctica-related research, for instance, India had only 3 top papers in 1996 and this had risen to 34 in 2015 and top papers, in Arctic research had gone from 1 to 8 during the same period. The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and the India Meteorological Departments were the leading sources of top research publications.
