Research performance of central universities in India

This article presents the research performance of the 39 central universities in India. The research publication data, indexed in the Web of Science, for the 39 central universities for a 25-year period (1990-2014) are used for analysis. The data are computationally analysed to identify productivity, productivity per capita, productivity per crore rupees grant, rate of growth of research output, authorship and collaboration pattern, citation impact and discipline-wise research strength of these institutions. Research performance of the central universities is measured and compared with two top-ranking world universities, namely University of Cambridge and Stanford University. While older well-established big universities such as University of Delhi and Banaras Hindu University perform better than newer universities, some relatively smaller universities, such as the university of Hyderabad have impressive research performance. What is disturbing is that combined research output of all central universities taken together is less than that of either of University of Cambridge or Stanford University alone. The results also provide discipline-wise research strengths of all the universities.