76% more papers by varsities after access to online journals

INCREASING RESEARCH The 50 universities produced 18,907 more publications in 2005-2009.

MUMBAI: Indian universities, including the University of Mumbai, finally seem to be making headway after lagging in the number of research publications in national and international journals, new data has revealed.

Data sourced from the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), Thomson Press at Philapdelphia, an international research platform, has found that there has been more than 75% increase in the number of research publications from 50 Indian universities between 2005 and 2009 as compared to the previous five years (2000 to 2004). These 50 Indian universities were among the first phase to gain electronic access to high quality national and international academic journals as part of the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium since 2004.

The number of research publications by the 50 universities between 2005 and 2009 rose to 43,768 as against 24, 861 from 2000-2004.

A three-member team from the Information and Library Network Centre at Ahmedabad and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, used found that research output is significantly higher in science as against social science and arts and humanities.

“There is a 76.05% increase in cumulative number of articles in the last block of five years in comparison to the previous block, amounting to a cumulative increase in research productivity of 163.22% over a period of 35 years from 1975 to 2009, “the team’s research paper stated.

“Today, research culture in the universities is better with the facility of providing electronic access to literature. Students and faculty can now consult literature on the subject from institutes across the world,” said Jagdish Arora, director, Information and Library Network Centre, Ahmedabad and co-author of the paper. The paper ‘ Impact of access to eresources through the UGCINFONET Digital Library Consortium on research output of member universities’ is published the latest issue of Current Science by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.

Source::::: The Hindustan Times, 13-02-2013, p.04, http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx