Quantitative assessment of research contributions of the Indian Statistical Institute: 1991–2010

This paper analyzes 4204 research publications produced by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) over twenty years (1991-2010) as reflected in Web of Science. The study quantifies publication data in various dimensions keeping given evaluating the growth of publications, authorship pattern, major areas of research, trends in collaboration, preferred channels of research communications, etc. The impact of research carried out by the scientists of the Institute is also examined. Findings reveal that ISI has produced an annual average of 210 publications with a maximum of 290 papers (7%) in 2009 and the least number of papers (115) published in 1993. Thus a steady growth trend over the years has been observed. Contributors of the Institute worked in a highly collaborative manner, and the increasing trend of collaboration over time is prominent. The single-authored paper counts only 20%, the rest in collaboration either by two-authors (43%) or multi-authored (three-to-five) papers consisted about 32%, and mega-authorship (5%) also found. Thus multi-authored publications are prevalent and the average authorship obtained is 2.65 for each contribution, as well as degree of collaboration (0.81) is quite significant. Most of the collaborations have emanated from leading institutions of 26 countries. It also enumerates the active areas of research viz. mathematics (including statistics), computer science, physics, economics, genetics, biomedicine, etc.; however, the researchers also pursued their interest in allied areas, covering almost 28% of the total contributions. The paper identifies top-thirty journal titles, which occupied nearly one-third of the total