1,494 Indians among top 2% scientists in world: Stanford

Twenty-two faculty members and researchers of Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT-G) and seven faculty members of Tezpur University are among 1,494 Indian scientists who featured in a list of top 2 per cent of the world scientists.

The prestigious list was prepared by a team of scientists in the US' Stanford University, officials said on Saturday.

Apart from faculty members from IIT-G and Tezpur University, the list also features faculty members from Cotton University, Gauhati University and Assam University.

According to a Tezpur University Press Release, the Stanford University list features a total of 1,494 Indian scientists. The database of the independent study has been published in one of the highly rated journals, PLOS Biology.

A spokesperson of the IIT-G said that the report prepared by experts at Stanford University has listed over 100,000 scientists, whose published research manuscripts have accelerated progress in their respective fields and influenced the productivity of other researchers' work as well.

"Led by Prof T.G. Sitharam, Director IIT-G, the faculty members have been ranked for their research publications citations for the year 2019 and their lifetime contribution to their specific fields of research," an official release of the IIT-G said.

Congratulating the 22 Scientists and their hard-work and commitment to furthering Science, Sitharam said: "This recognition of several faculty in the world's top 2 per cent of Scientists List has placed IIT Guwahati in the global map of Science and has brought great pride to the Institute. I congratulate all of them."

The release said that the database report on field specific analysis was prepared by Prof John P. A. Loannidis of the Stanford University and his team and was published in PLOS Biology.

The submitted research journals in PLOS Biology publication get a wide spectrum of readers as the publication focuses on publishing highly selective research papers across the various global research reports.

The database was created to provide updated analyses and a publicly available database of 100,000 top scientists that provide standardized information on citations, h-index (an index to measure an individual's scientific research output), co-authorship-adjusted hm-index, citations to papers in different authorship positions, and a composite indicator. Such citation metric provides a basis to measure and reflect the impact of a published journal.

The release said that the IIT-G faculty members featuring in the updated list are from various scientific fields -- the Departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Biosciences and Bioengineering, Chemistry, Electrical and Electronics.

A Press Release of Tezpur University said that all the seven scientists were classified into 22 scientific fields and 176 sub-fields.

For analyses of the citations and the composite indicators, SCOPUS data was used. Scopus is a huge multidisciplinary database with citations and abstracts from peer-reviewed journal literature, trade journals, books, patent records, and conference publications.