Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A scientometric analysis of Indian publications during 2003-2012

Examines 592 publications in Indian chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) research, as indexed in Scopus database during 2003-2012, witnessing an annual average growth rate of 30.38% and international collaborative publication share of 12.67%. The global share of Indian COPD research was 1.46% during 2003-2012, which increased from 1.07% to 1.72% from 2003-2007 to 2008-2012. Medicine contributed the largest publications share (77.70%) in Indian COPD research, followed by biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (16.89%), pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics (14.36%), environment science (2.87%) and immunology and microbiology (2.70%) during 2003-2012. The 10 most productive organizations and authors in Indian COPD research contributed 30.07% and 17.74% share each to its cumulative publications output during 2003-2012 and have registered an average productivity per author of 17.8 and 10.50, an average citation impact per paper of 3.57 and 5.36 and an average h-index value of 4.60 and 4.50. The authors suggest the need to increase India's research efforts, improve its research quality and increase its international collaborative research efforts. India also needs to develop a National COPD Prevention and Control Programme, with a major thrust on setting up infrastructure for early and accurate diagnosis, appropriate treatment and rehabilitation programmes, generating new knowledge in COPD and dissemination of knowledge regarding prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation to healthcare providers in India.