At a public function, in February 2025, to commemorate National Science Day, the Union Minister for Science and Technology said that “India will overtake the U.S. in the number of scientific publications by 2029”. He went on to say that China with 8,98,949 publications is in the lead followed by the United States with 4,57,335 publications, followed by India with 2,07,390 papers. The Chinese research output has both quantity and quality. China’s figures are in parallel with the very heavy investments made in the spheres of education and science and technology, and are described in their impressive medium-to-long term plan (MLP) for the development of science and technology launched in several phases since 2006. Investments of a similar high order will be required in India for a significant breakthrough and difference.
An international comparison
The comparison between scientifically advanced countries and India in the matter of money spent on civilian research as a percentage of GDP is shocking. Here are the data for six countries: Israel 6.30%; South Korea 4.9%; Japan, 3.3%; the U.S., 3.46%; Germany 3.13%; China 2.4%, and India 0.67%. Can we even talk about Viksit Bharat 2047 with data like this? Releasing documents such as “India Rankings 2024” by the Department of Higher Education or “Expanding Quality Higher Education through States and State Public Universities” by NITI Aayog are just that — documents that are all sound and fury and signifying nothing.
The scholarly output of India’s total publications in all disciplines including science and engineering for 2024 (Clarivate), on February 25, 2025, stands at 1,91,703; the corresponding number for the U.S. is 6,48,905. These numbers are slightly different from those given by the Minister, but the conclusion is the same. The fact is that India cannot overtake the U.S. by 2029. Clarivate further depicts the CNCI value (quality indicator of publications) and places India at just 0.879 as opposed to 1.12 and 1.25 for China and the U.S., respectively. Out of 30 ranked countries, India stands at a glorious 28.
The Minister’s sense of delusionary self-comfort in having 5,351 Indian scientists figure in the list of the top 2% of scientists across the world in 2023 is downright bizarre. Rankings of India’s 5,351 scientists range from 163 (highest) to 68,55,948 (lowest). In contrast, in Japan, 5,608 scientists figure in the top 2%, with their ranks ranging from 79 to 26,24,763.
Similarly, Germany has 10,420 scientists in the list of top 2%, ranging in ranks from 6 to 10,80,081. The numbers speak for themselves.
The real benchmarks
Quantity is not quality. What is the quality of Indian publications when they are held up against harsh international benchmarks such as the Hirsch Index (H-Index) of our scientists and the Impact Factor (IF) of the journals where we publish? What is important is whether a paper is read widely, is useful to others, and, in the ultimate test, whether it is cited by one’s peers. When judged by these benchmarks, the Minister’s remarks smack of smug narcissism, nothing more.
There are journals and journals. Bradford’s empirical law of concentration of journal articles in scientific periodicals (1934) is applicable to the research productivity of ranked Higher Education Institutions (HEI). It states that articles in a given subject concentrate heavily in a relatively small number of highly productive journals.
One of us has been a research chemist for 50 years and a representative analysis using the ISI Thomson Web of Science, of papers published in the three top chemistry journals between 2017 and 2024 (both years inclusive) is revealing. The figures for the U.S., China and India (in that order) are: Angewandte Chemie International Edition (IF 16.60; numbers of papers: 4554, 10305, 501), Journal of the American Chemical Society, JACS, (16.38; 8503, 5521, 305), and Chemical Communications (6.22; 2553, 9820, 1347). The relative Indian contribution goes up as the impact factor (IF) of the journal goes down. In any event, India compares poorly with China and the U.S.
A more detailed look at these statistics shows that the Indian position is fundamentally flawed. Considering only papers in JACS, it is seen that the Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS, (444) has nearly 15 times the number of papers as all the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories in India put together (29). The great breadth of the Chinese output in these CAS papers is also noteworthy.
Continuing with JACS papers between 2017 and 2024 (both years inclusive), not only do the prestigious CAS and Peking University (359) have high outputs but also the next tier of universities such as Tsinghua (289), Fudan (214), Nanjing (284), Nankai (258), Jilin (145), Xiamen (241) and Sun Yat-sen (145). All the Indian Institutes of Technology taken together have only 68 papers in this journal in the above-mentioned time period. All the IITs put together are five times less than just one second-tier Chinese university. Nothing in India measures up to the Chinese yardstick. There will be a real pay-off only if India invests in training young people in the universities well. This is where China has correctly placed its money, and where India is off track.
Even as the scope and spread of the malaise in Indian science is justified through quantifiable metrics, a sense of false security has crept in, entrenched by self-deluding statements such as this one from one of the highest officials in Indian Science and Technology, the Principal Scientific Adviser, that “India is rapidly becoming a global research powerhouse”. Such statements deliberately mislead and obfuscate.
Questionable ethics and practices in India
The perverse incentives which characterise Indian science and technology have resulted in the cancerous growth of downright fraud and unethical practices. The scale of the problem has become all-pervasive, and has brought international ignominy to India. By 2020, the science and technology complex of India had degraded so rapidly that a wave of retractions, paid publications, publications in fake journals, and downright piracy began to inundate India’s science and technology output. The existence of so many fraudulent papers is only possible when the entire system is clientelist and based on trading favours.
In 2019, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a District Court decision against the Hyderabad-based Omics group arising from a suit instituted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC clinched a $50 million fine against the group for, inter alia, misrepresenting its peer review practices, its editorial board members, its journals’ impact factors, and deceptive indexing claims. All in all, around 69,000 articles were published by the Omics group with little or no peer review, polluting the global scientific corpus for years to come.
India has perfected the art of spurious, low quality, and potentially outright fabricated scientific output being accommodated in questionable journals, mostly as a means for scientists to justify their mandated minimum number of published research pieces. A study in 2018 estimated that 62% of all standalone fake journals in the world are published in India, and around 10% of the entire country’s total research output may be fake to begin with.
It is better if the Minister asks the science departments to figure out why the quality of India’s publications is so bad instead of dwelling on the quantity. As Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.”
Gautam R. Desiraju is Professor Emeritus, Indian Institute of Science. His H-index is 105. Mirle Surappa is Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, former Vice Chancellor, Anna University and former Director, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, Punjab. The views expressed are personal
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Published – March 27, 2025 12:16 am IST