Research performance of the National Institutes of Technology in India

Abstract

This article presents a bibliometric assessment of research performance of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) in India. While many of these institutes were originally established in 1960s as Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), they were upgraded to NITs around 2002 and later. Initially NITs offered only undergraduate programmes in engineering. However, during the last decade, several NITs have started postgraduate teaching and are focusing more on research activities. It is in this context that this article assesses the research performance of NITs during 2005-2016. The performance assessment uses research publication data obtained from the Web of Science index. The data collected are computationally analysed to identify productivity, productivity per capita, rate of growth of research, international collaboration pattern, citation impact and discipline-wise distribution of the research output for the NITs. The performance of NITs is also viewed vis-à-vis two top-performing Indian institutions, namely Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. A simple single-value composite ranking of research performance of NITs is also presented by combining quantity and quality factors. The study presents an informative and useful account of assessment of research work in the NITs.