The share of India’s top 100 educational institutions in producing highly cited publications has been reducing since 2020. This is based on businessline’s analysis of the recently released National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) by the Ministry of Education.
Papers that receive higher number of citations in other research publications, compared to other papers published in that particular field, are referred to as highly cited publications.
This year’s report shows that only 64.4 per cent of the total highly cited publications are from the top 100 institutes. Of the 85,684 highly cited publications in 2023, 35.61 per cent was the share of the remaining institutions.
Also read: Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani donates ₹315 crore to alma mater IIT Bombay
In 2020, the top 100 institutions took up a major share of highly cited publications — 76.45 per cent. This number has been coming down over the years. In 2021, it was 72.82 per cent; in 2022, it came down further to 68.96 per cent and, in 2023, it stands at 64.39 per cent. On the other hand, the share of the remaining institutions has come up from 23.55 per cent in 2020 to 35.61 per cent in 2023.
Rank list
One of the parameters used to rank these institutes is the ‘quality of publications’, based on which an institute could get a maximum score of 35. businessline’s analysis showed that most of the the top 20 colleges in the overall category had seen an improvement from 2020 to 2023, albeit marginally.
Among the top 20 institutes, IISc ranks first in this component with a score of 33.9, followed by IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Madras, with scores of 32.56 and 32.26, respectively. However, IISc and IIT Delhi saw their scores come down from 2022 to 2023. IISc’s score had come down from 35 (100 per cent) in 2020 to 33.9 in 2023, and IIT-D’s score slid down from 31.43 in 2020 to 29.53 in 2023.
The NIRF Report is an annual document published by the Ministry of Education that ranks colleges based on various categories, including teaching, learning and resources (TLR); student strength; and research and professional practice (RP).
The 2023 report was released on June 5. IIT-Madras was ranked first for the fifth consecutive year in the overall category. IISc bagged the second position. Following the top two institutes were IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, and AIIMS Delhi. Three other IITs-Kharagpur, Roorkee and Guwahati took up the subsequent spots. Jawaharlal Nehru University bagged the tenth place.