new delhi

A steady decline in the international profile of Indian science has been revealed by an analysis of research papers published in recent years. This “is a cause of concern”, says the study.

India has fallen from eighth largest publishing nation in 1989 to twelfth position, with just a 2 per cent share of the world's journal articles — a significant drop from the 2.8 per cent in 1989.

The study was carried out by Subbiah Arunachalam of the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai and R. Srinivasan and Vidyalakshmi Raman of the Central Electrochemical Research Institute in Karaikudi, and the results are presented in the latest issue of Current Science, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.

The authors analysed papers originating in India and published in 2, 300 journals indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 1989-92. Nearly a quarter of the papers from India are in chemistry, 18 per cent in physics, and 13 per cent in engineering. Biology accounted for 12 per cent.

Although India's share of the world's journal articles decreased marginally, there has been a significant increase in the number of papers published by Indian scientists in foreign journals as a whole, rising from 8, 751 in 1989 to 9, 958 in 1992. In contrast there was a 27 per cent decline in the number of papers published in the 12 Indian journals indexed in SCI.

India invested US$1, 460 million — 0.83 per cent of its gross national product — in research and development in science and technology in 1992-93, a figure that has been steadily declining from 0.93 per cent in 1989-90.