SCOPUS reflected study of selected research and higher education institutions (HEIs) of Chandigarh: a city of education and research

The purpose of this paper is to cite the statistical data reflecting the trends and tendencies in research activity undertaken by Chandigarh city affiliations. The period under study is from 1964 to the first quarter of 2014. Scopus is the source of information retrieved. Various parameters like decade-wise growth of publications, publications of individual institutions, number of patents earned by each institute of Chandigarh under study, research productivity of top five authors of seven city-based institutes, document type, highly cited papers, research output of authors of parent institute vis-á-vis their affiliations with other institutes, collaborations at national and international levels have been taken into consideration for this paper. Institutes which have come up in the past 2-3 decades have also been contributing actively. An important finding of the paper undertaken is that foreign collaborations and foreign journals have remained the epicenter of the research activity. Chandigarh has emerged as a hub of academic and scholarly activity. It also reflects that the city-based research activity is also integrated into the global research activity.

The present paper reviews the publication output of Chandigarh city affiliations from 1964 to 2014. The publication data were procured from Scopus, which is an international multi-disciplinary bibliographical database covering 53m records, more than 20,000 titles and 5,000 publishers. It is a product of Elsevier and is the considered the world’s largest indexing and abstracting database and offers citation searching. Launched in 2004, it provides access to science–technology–medicine (STM) literature with a limited coverage of social science and arts and humanities. Database search was undertaken on May 22nd, 2014, and results were downloaded under various headings like year, author, number of publications, document type, affiliations and collaborations with other nations. The whole data were exported to MS-Excel format from Scopus database. Data of 160 authors were retrieved on the basis of at least one author affiliated to a research institution in Chandigarh. The paper was conducted by focussing on top seven institutes of Chandigarh engaged in diverse fields. These are Panjab University (PU), Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Govt. Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Punjab Engineering College (PEC), University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH) and Central Scientific Instruments Organization (CSIO). Although UIPS is an integral part of PU, Scopus has treated it as a separate institution and so have the researchers. The researchers have used simple percentile method to find out the growth in research output of these institutes in six decades covering the period from 1964 to the first quarter of 2014, collaborations with other nations and affiliations with other institutes. Taking into consideration the number of publications, their citations and h index, the researchers have tried to find out the most productive authors from these institutes. Although the research process in Panjab University was started early in 1926 as revealed by Scopus, to maintain the uniformity with the research process initiated by other city-based institutes, the authors have taken 1964 as the year of initiation of data analysis for writing this paper. Each city-based institute has to its credit research publications in more than 20 diverse subject areas. Due to this diversity, data could not be analyzed under subject areas. To study the research output of Chandigarh city affiliations for the past 50 years and the current year, the authors have divided the years into five decades and additional few months of 2014.

There has been a phenomenal growth in the research productivity of city-based institutes, which was nil or negligible from 1964 to 1983, except Panjab University and PGI. The research activity gained momentum with every passing decade. PGI and PU have emerged as frontrunners in research productivity, but at the same time, IMTECH and UIPS have also performed well on this front too. As compared to PGI and PU, which came up in 1962 and 1956 (Chandigarh), respectively, IMTECH and UIPS are of recent origin, that is, 1984 and 1994, respectively. In the first decade of its establishment, UIPS generated 27 per cent of its total research output. Not only this, the institute has fetched maximum number of patents (89) in just two decades and that too with 1,259 publications only. IMTECH has also been coming up with qualitative research since its establishment in 1984. It has to its credit 37 patents from 1,290 publications. Major research findings took the form of articles and that too in journals. Another remarkable feature of UIPS and IMTECH is that their publications have fetched maximum citations as compared to other institutes. Comparing all the seven institutes, the authors have concluded that the authors of Panjab University have made maximum affiliation with the authors of with other national and international institutes in generating research output. Panjab University tops the list of city-based institutes by collaborating with 97 different nations. PGI has taken second slot by collaborating with 88 countries. From a list of 100 collaborating nations, USA has emerged as the major collaborating nation. Chandigarh has emerged as an education hub. It has many institutes of repute in different domains. Consequently, the research scenario is very encouraging. Researchers have a vision and are active in exploring the emerging horizons as is evident from the paper. National and international collaborations also form the basis of growth of research productivity. Government should provide all round support and upgrade the existing infrastructure to enhance further the research output of the city.

Various bibliometric studies have also been conducted to know about the trends and patterns in the research publications. From a single institute, journal to a state, the analysis of research activity has become an area of focus. The present paper takes into account the research productivity in seven major academic institutes of Chandigarh, the city beautiful as revealed by Scopus.