Page 13 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

India was at position 7 in the SCImago country ranking for 2020 with 2,128,896 cumulative
documents. This ranking, however falls drastically to position 21 when citations are considered
with h-index 691. The h-index is the largest number of h such that h number of papers are cited at
least h times. The h-index measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications.
Higher value of h-index indicates higher degree of impact. Low h-index clearly means that
majority of documents published from India remain uncited, which in turn indicates poor quality,
inadequate originality, or relevance. The United States is ranked number one with 13,817,725
documents and h-index 2577. China is ranked second with 7,454,602 documents, however it falls
to 11 with h-index 1010. Relatively smaller countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, with much
smaller number of publications than India, show impressive performances as reflected by the high
h-index of 646 and 639 respectively (Figure 1). This indicates high quality research output, which
in turn may also indicate higher levels of academic integrity. Data shown in Figure 1 indicates
that both China and India have much lower h-index as compared to other countries. This means
that a large number of publications have not been cited. The gap between number of publications
and h-index is very high in China. India has to address this issue seriously by improving quality,
relevance, and impact of research.

Figure 1. SCImago country ranking data year 1996-2000.

The University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi and the government science departments
(DST and DBT) have been rightly concerned with the proper use of these parameters noting their
application to schemes of promotions, funding, and recognitions in several countries. UGC also uses
a simpler quantitative measure: the number of publications of a scientist, as a rigorous criterion for the
appointment and certification as a research supervisor.

Regulatory actions by UGC and the science departments, while undertaken with the best possible
intentions, led to at least two unfortunate consequences in the Indian context:

1) Careless application of bibliometrics while deciding appointments, promotions, and awards. There
is now the distressing trend of appointing and rewarding people merely because they have

2 | University Grants Commission