Mapping Mathematics Research in India in 1998: An Analysis Based on Mathsci

Abstract

Mathematics research in India, as reflected by papers indexed in Mathsci 1998, is quantified and mapped. Wherever possible, the findings are compared with mathematics research in India in 1994. Overall, compared to 1994, there were 30% fewer publications from India in 1998 - from 1391 in 1994 to 971 in 1998. Of these, 864 papers had appeared in 273 journals published from 3 countries. Among subfields, Quantum theory topped the list with 14 papers, followed by Statistics 85 papers; Economics, operations research, programming, games 55 papers; Fluid mechanics 45 papers; and Relativity and gravitational theory 45 papers. In all, researchers from 143 institutions located in 89 Indian cities/ towns belonging to 21 states/union territories had contributed at least one paper in 1998. ISI, Calcutta, leads the list with 65 papers, followed by TIFR, Mumbai (62 papers), IISc, Bangalore (49 papers), and Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai (41 papers). The decline is steep in Uttar Pradesh and to a certain extent Delhi. A welcome improvement is the considerable decrease in the number of papers published in lowimpact journals. There seems to be an attempt on the part of Indian mathematicians to publish their work in SCI/-indexed high impact journals. Even so, only a very small percent of papers has appeared in high impact factor journals. There is also a flight away from Indian journals. In ten subfields, including Statistics, Special functions, General topology, and Functions of a complex variable, India publishes more than twice the number of papers expected from the world average. Every third paper from India has resulted from inter-institutional collaboration; 212 papers (about 23%) have resulted from international collaboration. This report was prepared by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and was submitted to NISSAT, Department of Scientific & Industrial Research Government of India, New Delhi in October 2001.