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Ranking of Indian Engineering and Technological Institutes For Their Research Performance During 1999-2008
Ranking of Indian Engineering and Technological Institutes For Their Research Performance During 1999-2008
Among the major countries, India has cal institutes are considered for first alone is shown in Table 2 for compari-
one of the largest infrastructures of engi- three years (three-year citation window) son.
neering and technological institutes (over from the date of their publications (C). Some old insights are reinforced and
2000). It also produces the largest num- This allows the average number of cita- some new insights emerge from Tables 1
ber of engineering and technology gradu- tions per paper (C/P) to be computed for and 2. It is not surprising that by number
ates (over 300,000) every year. Some of each of these institutes for the three-year (quantity) or by performance (quality and
these institutes are very prestigious and citation window. h-indices for these in- quantity combined), IISc and the IITs
even make it to the list of top universities stitutes for the same period (i.e. 1999– lead the tables among all engineering and
in the world1–3. Only a handful of insti- 2008) were also determined from the technological institutes in the country.
tutes (IISc and some IITs) among the SCOPUS database. Lower down the list, from Tables 1 and
major Indian engineering and technolo- Table 1 shows the complete raw data 2, many institutes change position. Al-
gical institutes, however, account for for 30 of the 67 Indian engineering and though the NITs have been around for a
most of the research output of the coun- technological institutes, i.e. the number long time (earlier known as RECs), and
try. Majority of the others, however have of papers published (P), the citations ob- have been upgraded to deemed university
very meagre research output, which is tained during the citation window (C), and institutes of national importance
also reflected in the poor out-turn of the average number of citations per paper status, their research performance is still
Ph Ds (less than a thousand each year) (C/P), the number of papers resulting dismal. In fact, many Indian engineering
from these institutions. So far, no rank- from international collaboration (ICP) and technological universities and pri-
ing of all the Indian engineering and and the percentage thereof (%ICP). Also vate institutes are doing comparatively
technology institutes for their research shown in Table 1 are the Hirsch h-index better in terms of performance.
performance has been undertaken. In this and the newly proposed composite per- Table 3 reveals the performance of the
regard, it is to be noted that most of the formance index (p). The ranking of the Indian engineering and technological in-
international ranking schemes are com- institutions in Table 1 has been done us- stitutions (measured in terms of p values)
plex exercises and assess for both quan- ing the p-index, which needs some elabo- when they are grouped into various cate-
tity and quality of scientific research, but ration here. Papers can be assessed for gories. It is seen that the IITs and IISc
use such elitist levels of achievement quality only when we take into account are group leads in terms of research per-
(number of Nobel Laureates; papers in the impact in terms of the citations ob- formance among these six groups. The
Nature, Science, etc.) that they cannot be tained over the period of citation win- research performance of other four
meaningfully applied to the list under dow. This problem is complex, as there groups was still far behind the perform-
scrutiny here. In the present exercise are several ways of ranking performance, ance of both IISc and IITs. In addition,
therefore, a proposal is presented for a e.g. the simplest and crudest being by the research performance of the IIITs and
ranking of research performance of quantity of output (see Table 2), impact NITs is disappointing when compared to
Indian engineering and technological in- (citations – not shown here), or by qual- that of the technological universities and
stitutes using data from SCOPUS4 inter- ity (mean citation rate = C/P; also not some select engineering colleges.
national bibliographical database, using a shown here), or by a performance index The ranking of the various institutions
recently introduced p-index, which can combining quantity and quality, e.g. the within each group defined above accord-
serve as a composite indicator that com- h-index. The insight emerging from some ing to the p-index also give an indication
bines quality with quantity5–7. recent studies which have re-visited the of how each category performs within its
A total of 67 Indian engineering and problem of ranking research performance peer group. For example, among the
technological institutes with compara- of any entity (from individuals to coun- IITs, the best performance in terms of
tively higher output of publications dur- tries) as one belonging to the domain of p-index values (39.27) is shown by IIT
ing a ten-year period from 1999 to 2008 random multiplicative processes, consid- Kanpur, followed by IIT Bombay (36.73),
were identified. These institutes together ers the best single indicator to be used IIT Kharagpur (35.37), IIT Delhi (32.51),
have published 75,166 papers during this for ranking using quality and quantity IIT Madras (29.09), IIT Roorkee (25.93)
period, according to publication data together, to be a geometric mean of C and IIT Guwahati (19.36).
downloaded from the SCOPUS Interna- and C/P. However, by dimensional Similarly, among the universities, the
tional multidisciplinary bibliographical analysis5, one can show that this has the best performance in terms of p-index
database. Put together, this is more than dimensions of h3/2. Indeed, a substitute or values (30.30) is shown by Jadavpur
the output of the university sector mock h-index defined as hm = (C2P)(1/3) University, Kolkata, followed by Anna
(59,685 papers) and constitutes nearly is the best indicator for performance5–7, University, Chennai (24.54); Cochin
23% of the total cumulative research having the correct dimensionality, that of University of Science and Technology,
output from India during 1999–2008. h. We may henceforth call it the p-index. Cochin (18.67); Birla Institute of Tech-
The citations received by papers of The ranking using this is shown in Table 1, nology and Science, Pilani (18.33); Ben-
these Indian engineering and technologi- and the ranking in terms of papers gal Engineering and Science University,
%Share
Sl. no. Institution P C C/P ICP of ICP h p
Howrah (12.44); Jawaharlal Nehru Tech- har (4.37); NIT/REC, Srinagar (3.30); Mysore (8.36); Shri Govind Seksaria Insti-
nological University, Hyderabad (10.20); NIT/REC, Surat (3.15); NIT/REC, tute of Science and Technology, Indore
Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering Raipur (1.91); NIT/REC, Agartala (0.58), (6.58); R.V. College of Engineering,
and Technology, Sangrur (9.12); Birla and NIT/REC, Patna (0.58). Bangalore (6.28); Manipal Institute of
Institute of Technology and Science, Similarly, among the Indian Institutes Technology, Manipal (5.43); Sri
Mesra (8.36); Indian School of Mines, of Information Technology, the best per- Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engi-
Dhanbad (8.33); Vellore Institute of formance in terms of p-index values neering, Chennai (4.56); Madhav Insti-
Technology, Vellore (6.36); Thapar Insti- (6.55) is shown by IIIT, Bangalore, fol- tute of Technology and Science, Gwalior
tute of Engineering and Technology, Pa- lowed by IIIT, Hyderabad (6.21); IIIT, (4.30); M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Tech-
tiala (6.36); Nirma Institute of Science Pune (2.74); IIIT, Allahabad (2.70); Atal nology, Bangalore (3.52); College of En-
and Technology, Ahmedabad (5.45), and Bihari Vajpayee IIIT and Management, gineering, Thiruvanathapuram (3.39);
Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh Gwalior (1.30), and Pandit Dwarka JNTU College of Engineering, Hydera-
(4.14). Prasad Mishra IIIT, Design and Manu- bad (3.18); Government College of
Among the National Institutes of facturing, Jabalpur (0.97). Engineering, Pune (3.07); Dhirubhai
Technology, the best performance in Among the select engineering col- Ambani Institute of Information and
terms of p-index values (9.85) is shown leges, the best performance in terms of Communication Technology, Gandhina-
by Maulana Azad NIT, Bhopal, followed p-index values (18.21) is shown by Insti- gar (2.76); Madras Institute of Techno-
by NIT/REC, Rourkela (9.46); NIT/REC, tute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai logy, Chennai (2.06), and V. J. Techno-
Warangal (9.31); NIT/REC, Trichy followed by Institute of Technology, logical Institute, Mumbai (1.18).
(9.31); NIT/REC, Jamshedpur (9.02); BHU (13.28); College of Engineering, We have used a more rational proce-
NIT/REC, Surathkal (7.33); NIT/REC, Anna University, Chennai (12.34); Har- dure for ranking the research performance
Calicut (7.04); NIT/REC, Durgapur (6.57); court Butler Institute of Technology, of Indian engineering and technological
NIT/REC, Kurukshetra (6.56); NIT/REC, Kanpur (10.61); PSG College of Tech- institutes, in the country. The overall
Jaipur (6.34); NIT/REC, Hamirpur (6.25); nology, Coimbatore (9.09); Netaji Sub- ranking of top 67 Indian engineering and
NIT/REC, Nagpur (6.24); NIT/REC, has Institute of Technology, Delhi technological institutions, and ranking of
Allahabad (5.52); NIT/REC, Silchar (8.58); Delhi College of Engineering, individual institutions among the six
(5.45); Dr B.R. Ambedkar NIT, Jaland- Delhi (8.50); S.J. College of Engineering, groups of institutions give an indicative,
Table 3. Ranking of Indian engineering and technological institute groups using the
performance index p during 1999–2008 according to the SCOPUS database
Rank Institution P C p