India lags behind even Kenya in research

Dear All,

A recent study by Scopus database which is the world's largest abstract and citation database on scientific literature, India lags behind Kenya and Chile.

The country has only four researchers for 10,000 working people while Kenya and Chile have six and seven, respectively, according to Scopus database which is the world's largest abstract and citation database on scientific literature.

Analyzing this data, Nature magazine says Brazil, which has been growing scientifically, has 14 researchers per 10,000 working people, and China has 18. The UK and the US top the table with 79 researchers each followed by Russia with 58.

Nature Magazine, in its May 2015 report, also said: "India's publications generate fewer citations on an average than those of other science-focused nations, including Brazil and China."

It further states that relative to its size, India has very few scientists and many Indian-born researchers leave for positions abroad, while very few foreign scientists settle in India.

According to Scopus data analyzed by Nature, there are only 2 lakh fulltime researchers in India with 14% of them being women.

Principal scientific adviser to the Centre, R Chidambaram, told TOI: "I personally do not worry about numbers and ratings. But the way forward is to attract and retain talented young people. The problem is occurring at two places, one at the class 12 level, where a lot of talented people interested in pure sciences are getting into engineering and the other problem area is at the B-Tech level where a lot of good engineering researchers jump to management courses."

Dr Gajanana Birur, who had worked with Isro for two years before moving to the US and joining Nasa, says, "At one point the problem was of infrastructure. Now, as India builds up its infrastructure, there is an overall lack of environment for good research although places like Isro, IISc and IITs are doing well. This pushes people to go out."

Scopus and Nature further note that India registers far fewer applications per capita than any other top-filing nation. "It is multinationals in India that have boosted the filing rate," Nature said, indicating that research institutes are still lagging behind.

Quoting data from the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Nature says: "Domestic and foreign patents filed per 1 million population in India is at 17 compared to 4,451 in South Korea, 3,716 in Japan with even China filing 541 patents." 

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/India-lags-behind-even-Kenya-in-research-Study/articleshow/47848357.cms?