CHINA-INDIA: Scientists forge closer ties

S. Arunachalam

University World News, 14 September 2008

Indian and Chinese scientists are increasingly working together but it might take a few years before it becomes significant or sets the pace for South-South scientific collaboration. Until 2003, only a small percentage – around three-fourths of one per cent – of Indian papers were written in collaboration with Chinese authors, according to a report of a study published by Chennai-based Subbiah Arunachalam and IIT-Madras’ B Viswanathan.

Published in Current Science, a prominent Indian science publication, the study says that from 2004 onwards there has been a slow but perceptible rise in collaboration.

“International collaboration in scientific research is on the rise… The two great civilisations (of China and India) have learnt from each other for many centuries since the days of the Buddha and have had cultural and trade relations long before the well-documented travels in India by Fahian and Xuanzang,” note the authors.

But the past 50 years have seen the two Asian neighbours go through some border disputes and an uneasy peace. Yet, with doors open for improving ties, bilateral trade between the two countries has spurted in recent years.

In the study, South-South Cooperation: The case of Indo-Chinese collaboration in scientific research, Arunachalam and Viswanathan note that until a little over a decade ago, scientists in India were publishing a larger number of papers than those in China in journals indexed by the global Science Citation Index.

In 1997, China overtook India when Chinese scientists published 17,177 papers in SCI-indexed journals, as against 16,909 papers published by Indian scientists. Since then, China has accelerated the pace of R&D, and in 2007, China accounted for more than 2.76 times the number of papers from India, note the authors.

They found that in eight years from 2000, researchers from India and China have co-authored 1,807 papers. Of these, 1,682 were articles, 45 were reviews, 18 were letters, 36 were meeting abstracts and 26 concerned other issues.

“The number of Indo-Chinese papers has steadily increased over these eight years (from 124 in 2000 to 361 in 2007),” says the study.

Physics was found to be the most prominent area of India-China collaboration. Way behind came medicine. Multidisciplinary physics, physics of particles and fields, astronomy and astrophysics, nuclear physics and applied physics top the list with 468, 189, 181, 83 and 59 papers respectively
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In many cases, India and China collaborated with partners from other countries, especially in areas like experimental high physics.

Other prominent nations on the global research scene considered collaboration with China to a much larger extent than with India, said the study. It noted that the ratio of preferring China over India for different countries was 4.2 for Japan, 3.52 for the US, 2.42 for South Korea, 2.30 for Russia and 1.95 for France.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20080911161755354

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How do journals on the periphery compare with mainstream scientific journals?

S. Arunachalam and K. Manorama

Scientometrics Volume 14, Numbers 1-2 / July, 1988

Based on the premise that citations in scientific journals can tell us a lot about the journals, we have compared Indian journals in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, geology and ecology with leading world journals. The two criteria compared are the age of references and the journals often cited in each of the journals considered. Our results show that although overall Indian science is mediocre, parts of India’s scientific enterprise are cognitively better related to world science. The peripherality is not uniform across the board, but some areas like astronomy and to some extent physics are closer to the central or mainstream science than others. Although citation analysis is not normally used for cross-field comparisons, this paper demonstrates that, if used judiciously, citation analysis can yield valuable insights into issues involving many fields.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02020244

Science in India – A profile based on India’s publications as covered by Science Citation Index 1989-1992

S. Arunachalam, R. Srinivansan and Vidhyalakshmi Raman

Current Science Volume 74, Issue 5, 10 March 1998, Pages 433-441

With a view to mapping scientific research in India, we have analysed papers originating in India and indexed in the CD-ROM version of Science Citation Index (SCI) in the four years 1989-1992 With more than 10,000 papers in each year (more than 42,000 papers in about 2,300 journals indexed in SCI in the four years), India is the twelfth largest publishing nation, down from eighth in 1980. Italy, the Netherlands, Australia and Spain have published more papers than India in journals indexed in SCI in 1992. Chemistry and physics account for the bulk of the papers, followed by engineering and clinical medicine. India’s contribution to areas such as classical biology and agriculture is not properly reflected in SCI, as many journals in which Indian scientists publish are not covered by SCI. Although most Indian papers appear in low impact journals, the number of papers appearing in leading journals of the world especially in the areas of physics, chemistry and materials science is increasing, even if only marginally. Also, the number of papers appearing in foreign journals as a whole as well as the average impact factor of journals in which Indian scientists have published their work, is increasing, reflecting the increasing awareness among Indian scientists for the need to publish in high-impact journals. While the slide from the eighth to the twelfth position – from 2.8% of the world literature to about 2.0% – should be of concern, the increasing use of high impact journals is a welcome trend. In this macrolevel analysis we have looked at India as a whole and have not attempted to analyse the data at lesser levels of aggregation.

http://www.ias.ac.in/j_archive/currsci/74/5/433-441/viewpage.html

Use of SCI-based publication counts

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 85, NO. 10, 25 NOVEMBER 2003

Recently Karandikar and Sunder 1 and Pichappan 2 have expressed some misgivings about the use of Science Citation Index-based publication counts. I would, however, like to argue that the stand that the total number of papers published from a country should not be used as a science indicator is extreme. There is, I think, a strong risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/nov252003/1391.pdf

On publication based indicators

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 5, 10 MARCH 2004

According to Satyanarayana and Jain1 ‘the scientific community is not satisfied with the existing quantitative indices like the SCI and its twin publication, the JCR’. I wonder how many scientists they polled to arrive at this conclusion. If this were the case, Thomson-ISI would have gone out of business long ago; in reality though the company is thriving and the revenue brought in by citation index databases and their derivatives is on the rise. Since the early 1990s, SCI has spawned half a dozen field-specific citation index databases (for neurosciences, biotechnology, materials science, etc.) and Thomson-ISI is now extending their database back to 1900 so one can trace the evolution of ideas over a much longer period. The idea that the cognitive link between citing and cited documents provides a far better handle for retrieving related docu-ments than mere keywords was originally exploited by Gene Garfield in the early 1960s. It has since been picked up by other database producers and new services such as CrossRef have come up. If scientists were unhappy with SCI, these developments would not have taken place. The citation databases of ISI are used widely by scientists in many countries, as evidenced by the large number of subscribers. I myself subscribe to CD ver According to Satyanarayana and Jain 1 ‘the scientific community is not satisfied with the existing quantitative indices like the SCI and its twin publication, the JCR’. I wonder how many scientists they polled to arrive at this conclusion. If this were the case, Thomson-ISI would have gone out of business long ago; in reality though the company is thriving and the revenue brought in by citation index data bases and their derivatives is on the rise. Since the early 1990s, SCI has spawned half a dozen field-specific citation index databases (for neurosciences, biotechno logy, materials science, etc.) and Thom son-ISI is now extending their database back to 1900 so one can trace the evolu tion of ideas over a much longer period. The idea that the cognitive link between citing and cited documents provides a far better handle for retrieving related docu ments than mere keywords was origi nally exploited by Gene Garfield in the early 1960s. It has since been picked up by other database producers and new ser vices such as CrossRef have come up. If scientists were unhappy with SCI, these developments would not have taken place. The citation databases of ISI are used widely by scientists in many countries, as evidenced by the large number of…….

http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/869/01/Arun_16.pdf

subscribers. I myself subscribe to CD ver-

Indian Medical Research Out of Touch?

Science 1 August 1997: Vol. 277. no. 5326, p. 643
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5326.643a

Indian biomedical scientists are focusing on the diseases of the affluent at the expense of their own country’s health problems, suggests a study published in the 25 June issue of an Indian journal, Current Science

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Low priority. Patients at a rural clinic.

A. KOCHAR/PAHO/WHO

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Subbiah Arunachalam, an information scientist at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Madras (now called Chennai), reports that, according to a review of Medline, the 10 fields in which the most papers were published between 1987 to 1994 did not include tropical medicine–infectious diseases such as malaria–or respiratory diseases. And despite India’s more than 12 million blind people, “hardly any” research is done in ophthalmology. The study showed that Indian authors are most prolific in the areas of general medicine, pediatrics, and pharmacology. In research targeted to specific diseases, cancer came first with 821 papers. There were 663 papers on cardiovascular diseases, compared with only 432 in tropical medicine.

In addition to having “lopsided” priorities, Arunachalam says, Indian biomedical research suffers from general low quality. Nearly three-fourths of some 20,000 articles by Indian authors over the 7-year period appeared in journals ranked as very “low impact” by the Institute of Scientific Information in Philadelphia, he reports. Only 58 papers appeared in high-impact journals like The Lancet or Science.

Many Indians believe the analysis is sadly on target. It reflects the fact that Indian medical research has “remained aloof from the people and continues to progress only by infusion of foreign know-how,” says cardiac surgeon Martanda Varma Sankaran Valiathan of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Gowdagere Vedanti Satyavati, director of the Indian Council for Medical Research, counters that “ICMR’s thrust areas coincide with national health priorities” and that other indices, such as the Index Medicus, show far more publications by Indian scientists than does Medline.

How relevant is medical research done in India- A study based on Medline, 1997, Current Science Vol 72, No 12, P 912-922

India among top 13 in scientific papers

The Economic Times 2007

NEW DELHI: India is among the top 13 countries in terms of published scientific research papers, according to a recent study by the Science Watch team of Thomson ISI.Thomson Scientific, also known as Thomson ISI, is a global leader in providing access to high-value, essential information for researchers and scholars worldwide for over 45 years.

“India published 211,063 papers as against 422,993 by China (more than twice the number of papers as India’s). India had 694 papers in the most cited 1 per cent of papers whereas China had 2,189 papers in this category (more than three times the number of such papers from India),” said Subbiah Arunachalam, a long-term campaigner for enhancing the impact of Indian research.

Only 0.33 per cent of Indian papers could get into the one per cent of most cited papers, whereas for China and South Korea the figure was 0.52 per cent, noted Arunachalam.

“Apart from encouraging our scientists to do better quality work and providing them better facilities and a conducive environment, it is necessary to increase the visibility of Indian research publications, for example through placing our papers in institutional repositories or publishing them in open access journals,” he argued.

In terms of total papers in all fields from 1996 to 2006, India ranked 11th, ahead of South Korea and Taiwan. Its share was under one-tenth of the US, the leader which had almost three million papers published in this period.

KnowledgeLink Newsletter of June 2007 noted that the May-June issue of Science Watch ranks 13 countries based on published scientific papers that reach the top one percent of most cited papers worldwide from 1996 to 2006.

The US has produced more than 2.9 million scientific papers over this period, and took the lead in both the total papers among the top one per cent and the percentage of total papers among the top one percent.

Science Watch, a subscription newsletter, uses citation data from Thomson Scientific to provide rankings, interviews and reports on what it calls “today’s most significant science”.

In its study, 13 countries are ranked based on both the volume and percentage of published scientific papers – in journals listed in Thomson Scientific’s Web of Science – that reached the top one percent of most-cited papers worldwide.

“This survey takes a different approach when ranking elite papers both overall and in specialty fields,” Chris King, editor of Science Watch, was quoted as saying.

“We examined these papers on a global scale and identified which nations are leading scientific thought across all concentrations. Considering the sheer volume of papers published by the US, it is no surprise to see it top the rankings of total number of papers among the top one per cent,” said King.

He also suggested that the US leading the rankings in percentage of papers among the top one percent “demonstrates its tremendous influence on modern scientific thought”.

Japan ranked second with 790,510 published papers, or roughly a third of the US output.

Britain also had a profound influence by placing second highest in both total number of papers, and percentage of papers among the top one per cent by having published 660,808 papers.

Thomson Scientific says: “Our goal is to increase the impact of research by empowering researchers with the information they need to accelerate discovery.”

Correspondence on “Diabetes Research in India

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 83, NO. 4, 25 AUGUST 2002

This refers to the recent article by Arun- achalam and Gunasekaran (Curr. Sci.,2002, 82, 1086–1097). This is an excel-lent summary of the current scenerio ofdiabetes research in India. The authors’ efforts in carrying out a critical and nearly-thorough analysis of the researchoutcome are highly commendable. I am sure this will form an authoritative basis on which future research (and possibly funds) can be directed. I agree com- pletely that there is enormous mismatch between the disease incidence and the quantum of research in our country. It would be important to analyse the rea- sons behind the poor performance of our country compared to Western countries.

http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/866/01/Arun%5F11.pdf

Is Science in India on the Decline?

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 83, NO. 2, 25 JULY 2002

This is a short correspondence paper that tries to use citation analysis to compare research productivities in the sciences among different countries. It draws data from the Science Citation Index. It finds that over two decades the number of research papers has risen in other countries, but it has decreased in India.

http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/858/01/Article_24.pdf

Diabetes research in India and China today: From literature-based mapping to health-care policy

S. Arunachalam and S. Gunasekaran

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 82, NO. 9, 10 MAY 2002

We have mapped and evaluated diabetes research in India and China, based on papers published during 1990–1999 and indexed in PubMed, Science Citation Index (SCI) and Biochemistry and Biophysics Citation Index (BBCI) and citations to each one of these papers up to 2000. We have identified institutions carrying out diabetes research, journals used to publish the results, subfields in which the two countries have published often, and the impact of the work as seen from actual citations to the papers. We have also assessed the extent of international collaboration in diabetes research in these two countries, based on papers indexed in SCI and BBCI. There is an enormous mismatch between the disease burden and the share of research performed in both countries. Although together these two countries account for 26% of the prevalence of diabetes, they contribute less than 2% of the world’s research. We argue that both India and China need to (i) strengthen their research capabilities in this area, (ii) increase investment in health-care research considerably, (iii) facilitate substantive international collaboration in research, and (iv) support cross-disciplinary research between basic life sciences researchers and medical researchers. As data such as those presented here should form the basis of health policy, India and China should evaluation of research.

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/1947

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/may102002/1086.pdf