Growth of Indian Research Output

The number of papers produced by Indian scientists was more or less stagnant from 1985 to 2000 but jumped from 17,000 in 2001 to 27,000 in 2007 (see chart). Citation rates are also rising across the board—more than doubling, for example, in biology and biochemistry. The biggest gains have come in the physical sciences, especially materials science. Nobuko Miyairi, a consultant at Thomson Reuters, which publishes ScienceWatch, calls it "noteworthy" that Indian science is "fairly well balanced between life sciences and physical sciences," because most of the rest of Asia "tends to be more heavily focused on ... physical sciences."

Source: Science, 1 May 2009, "Random Samples"