The University of Hyderabad (UoH ) has added yet another feather to its cap bagging the best university status in the country for its research quality, impact of research and several other indicators. The outcome was based on a research done by Scopus, which is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources.
It pushed the Delhi University to second position, which was on top in various other studies. There is a huge gap between UoH and other universities on parameters like papers published, citations, citations per paper and papers resulting from international collaborations, according to the Vice-Chancellor, Seyed. E. Hasnain.
Twenty-five universities in India with high output of publications during a 10-year period from 1999 to 2008 were identified for the purpose and the study done put the university way ahead of other top universities in the country on several parameters.
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The university also topped on both impact and quality parameters. The study shows that the selected universities had each published more than 1,200 papers during the selected period. Together, they contributed 59,685 papers, constituting 18 per cent papers to the total cumulative research output by India during 1999–2008.
The publication share of these 25 universities to the total output by India showed an increase from 17.48 per cent (22,173 papers) in 1999–03 to 18.31 per cent (37,512 papers) in 2004–08.
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Prof. Hasnain says UoH has initiated several measures that make the university stand apart.
It has introduced web-based centralized courses schedule enabling any student to attend any class depending upon interest. Every student admitted in the university is paid University Scholarship or Fellowship irrespective of their parental annual income. All PG students get Rs.1,000 per month, M.Phil. students get Rs.3000, M.Tech. students get Rs.6,000 to Rs.8,000 and Ph.D. students Rs.5,000. It is the only University giving travel grant to all Ph.D students to attend one International meeting covering all expenses once in their fourth year of research.
Faculty members are encouraged to become entrepreneurs while retaining their jobs and facilitated through the Technology Business Incubator funded by the DST. Travel support to faculty for attending one International meeting once in two years and once a year for national meeting is given and it is the only University to provide such funds. More than 1/3rd of UoH professors in sciences are Fellows of the National Science Academies, which is unique to University.
Women enrolment
Another achievement, Prof. Hasnain is proud of is that enrolment of women students constitute about 33 per cent. With regard to research innovative and incentive driven approach for IPR protection is being adopted.
It is the only university to attract extramural R&D funding to the tune of over US $ 30 million last year. It is the only University to attract this level of national and international funding.
Last year it was declared as one of the top two institutions in Science & Technology by Government of India and got the Purse Grant from the Prime Minister.