Mapping neuroscience research in India - a bibliometric approach

Neuroscience research in India has been mapped for the years 1992-2005 using Neuroscience Citation Index (NSCI) and PubMed. A total of 18, 138 papers, with 1.31 times citations, have been published in 1975 journals from 47 different countries. Fourteen out of the top 18 productive journals are from India; of which only 6 have Impact Factor 2009 (IF-2009). Interestingly, only 4 out of the 25 highly cited journals are Indian. And 322 papers have appeared in 28 Letters and Communication journals. The dataset has been found to be a perfect fit for the Bradford law of scattering - both verbal and graphical formulations of the law. About 20% of the papers are published in journals which are having no IF, and 61% papers in journals having IF < 3. However, only 128 papers are published in journals having IF > 10, out of which 15 papers have not been cited at all. Papers have authors from 1401 Indian institutions; but only 9.2% institutions contribute 80.1% papers. Also, papers are authored by 1 to 27 authors; multi-author papers are better cited. Collaborations have been studied for papers indexed in NSCI only and not PubMed. Indian authors have international collaborations in only 12% papers indexed in NSCI with authors from 75 different countries - predominantly G7 nations and the internationalization index is 16.14. More than 70% papers have not been cited at all and those published in 1998 have been better cited. Papers drew maximum citations 4-5 years after publication. Papers having international collaborations are cited more often.