Evaluation of Indian Research Performance in the Emerging Fields of Environmental Sciences

Abstract

Scientific discoveries, new techniques and improved approaches have rapidly expanded every field of science including environmental science. Like all other discipline, the field environmental science too has matured through number of major phases. The subject which earlier was largely discipline oriented are now changed to system-oriented phenomena. Issues like global warming, climate change are become common theme of research for every nation. The purpose of the present study is to assess the research performance on the emerging research fronts of environment sciences in India from both national and international perspectives, through application of bibliometric indicators and techniques. For comparative purpose, the results are benchmarked against the findings from three other major nations in the field of environmental sciences: USA, UK, & Japan. The results of the study indicate that the number of Indian papers in emerging research fronts in environmental science has been increasing during 2000–2009. Indian scientists closely follow the trend of the Japan, with a large proportion of papers appeared in international journals originated from the scientifically advanced occident countries. Like most of the disciplines there is clear trend of joint authorship in emerging fronts of environmental science. However, the collaboration patterns according to institutional collaboration change from “local papers” via “domestic papers” to “international papers”. Although, India scientists have been integrating into the mainstream science, the articles published by Indian authors suffer from a low international visibility as compared to other countries.