Emerging countries assertion in the global publication landscape of science: a case study of India

Global landscape of scientific activity is changing and becoming more diverse with emerging economies particularly China redrawing the contours of scientific research in the twenty-first century. Research publications, the most cherished output of science, provides robust evidence of this changing landscape. The global publication share of advanced scientific countries is decreasing with significant rise in publication share of China and also of other emerging economies such as India, South Korea, and Brazil. Their publications though are still lagging in global reception as measured through citations. However, with increasing international collaboration and publishing in promising areas and high impact journals, the citation reception of their papers is increasing. Indian publication growth is much behind China whose growth has been dramatic! However, India’s emergence is interesting as from a leading country among developing economies in scientific publications till early 1980s, her publication growth exhibited sharp decline in the late 1980s. Only from 1995 onwards India started making an assertion in the global publication race and in some promising areas of high relevance such as nanotechnology her publication growth has been impressive. India to a large extent epitomises the scientific activity of emerging economies. Thus through the lens of India’s publication trend, the paper underscores the changing global landscape of science. To place India’s publishing activity in proper context, the paper broadly examines the publication activity of some advanced OECD countries and BRICKS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Korea and South Africa) countries. Implications of this study are discussed.