India has traditionally seen the business and management education sector to be teaching focused. However, given the importance accorded to rankings (both national and international), this is rapidly changing. Today, the NIRF Ranking, from the Ministry of Education, gives a weightage of 30% to research and practice, that accounts for both publications and their citations (as a proxy for Impact). Similarly the QS ranking has high importance accordes to both research publications and citations. Probably these rankings have created some interventions in an ecosystem that has been traditionally more oriented towards excellence in teaching.

Today in 2022, the single year based productivity of Indian Researchers in the Elsevier’s Top 2% list, in the business and management category has today 52 researchers from Indian academia. While, this is based on a single year’s productivity in this category, it is important to notice that the representation of Indian academia in this global ranking has significantly increase over years.

 

In comparison, when one compares, the top 2% Indian Researchers (working in Indian Academia), the list has only 16 researchers. While there are very established researchers like Professor Soumitra Dutta and Professor Parasuraman, who have shifted back to India, the list has many others who have completely contributed while being based in India. Traditionally, since this list looks at probably three to four decades of research careers, the presence of Indian academia is a lot less prominent in this list. 

We keep discussing about impact of policy changes. Is this an impact of the NIRF rankings which has kind of made other rankings redundant in India, and has suddenly jolted Indian academia, to focus on research and impacts of research? A policy intervention was surely needed, if Indian academia needed to be globally competitive and this is probably the best way that we evolved and we would continue to evolve with higher and higher quality of publications and create greater visibility for Indian academic Institutions.

P.S. The above images are only for illustrative purposes, based on categories. There may be other Indians outside the Business and Management categories, that the list may have omitted, but who are contributing equally to Indian Academia in strengthening its .

One such category is economics and business, which when added, few more researchers are found in this list. A list of all this management researchers who could be identified is listed in the file given below.

All Business Researchers in India in top 2% list

Details in Ioannidis, John P.A. (2022), “September 2022 data-update for “Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators””, Mendeley Data.

Link: https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/4

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