Research Productivity of Healthcare Professionals in India

By : P. Manuel Raj , A. Amudavalli

Page No: 1-8

Abstract
There are several opinions concerning the best Health Science programs and their most productive researchers. These opinion studies have originated on several criteria, of which literary productivity-–based performance analysis of an individual, institution, and country or world are largely reported. The current article is one such. To review the status of the literary productivity of Healthcare Professionals in India, a case study approach based on the research activity of the faculty and students at Christian Medical College Vellore (CMC) being one of the premier, century old and world-renowned institutions of education and research in Medical Sciences in India was undertaken. This article is the outcome of the research report which attempted to measure the magnitude of the Indian status of the Health Science programs and productivity scaling the literature emanating from the varied Departments/ Disciplines at CMC. The dataset of this analysis scores around of the publications of the CMC faculty during the period from 1976 to 2014. The research data was gathered from the online databases PubMed (National Library of Medicine USA [NLM]); EMBASE&Scopus (Elsevier); and Web of Science (Thomson Reuters). The analysis leads to the major finding that the largest amount of publications over the period in the three disciplines includes: Clinical Haematology, Genito-urinary Surgery and Microbiology. Analysis also indicates a greater growth pattern of productivity in Neurology, Gastroenterology, Microbiology, Paediatrics, General Medicine and General Surgery. It is also confirmed that Indian medical literature is reported largely in Indian medical journals (7/10) and only in three international journals amongst the top-ranked 10 source journals. All these top 10 are ascertained to have high impact factor and also core journals in the discipline. The top-ranked journals are the Lancet, and the International Journal of Leprosy and Blood. To sum up, it can be said that visibility of Indian medical literature is low in the world’s map of productivity. It is suggested that an increase in the R&D efforts by the Indian medical research group to reach more of highly ranked international journals is warranted.

Authors :
P. Manuel Raj : Lecturer & Head of Library Systems, University of Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
A. Amudavalli : Professor & Head, DLIS, University of Madras, Chennai-5. This study is an outcome of the doctoral research work of the first author under the supervision of the second author.