Research Trends in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in India

This paper attempts to highlight quantitatively the growth and development of Indian research in the field of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in terms of publication output as per Science Citation Index (1982-2008). The whole database contains 296072 records on the subject and among them USA topped the list with 84561 (28.56 per cent) followed by, China with 43393 (14.66 per cent) publications, Japan with 32431 (10.95 per cent) publications, Germany with 28065 (9.48 per cent) publications, France with 18141 (6.13 per cent) publications, and England with 13850 (4.68 per cent) publications. During 1982-2008, a total of 8326 (2.81 per cent) papers were published by the Indian scientists in the field. The yearly average number of documents published was 308.37. The highest numbers of publications (1890) were published in 2008. The premier Indian institutes engaged in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology research were: Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangaluru with 723 publications followed by IIT Kharagpur with 606 publications; National Chemical Laboratories (NCL), Pune with 589 publications; Indian Association for the Cultivation of science (IACS), Kolkata with 563 publications; and BARC, Mumbai with 434 publications. Major portion of the publications (96.36 per cent) were written in collaboration with more than one authors. India had collaboration with 67 other countries in the field. C.N.R. Rao, M. Sastry and S. Chaudhuri were the three leading researchers in the field. Researchers from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore had most number of collaborative publications. When collaboration among institutes situated in different Indian cities was taken into consideration, Bangaluru and Kolkata were found to have the highest number of collaborative publications. Karnataka and West Bengal, the parent states of these cities were the states with the most collaborative publications in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology research. USA, Germany, and Japan had more number of collaborative publications with India. The most preferred journals for publishing the articles by the scientists were: Journal of Applied Physics (293), Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (285), Applied Physics Letters (243), Materials Letters (232), Physical Review B (232), Nanotechnology (194), and Langmuir (182). The highly occurred keywords in SCI records were: Nanoparticles (1244); Particles (756); Films (589); Growth (513); Nanocrystals (501); Thin-Films (484); Nanostructures (427); Optical-Properties (410); Nanocomposites (401); etc. DOI: 10.14429/djlit.30.6