Dementia research in India: A scientometric analysis of research output during 2002-11

Abstract

The study analyses the dementia research output from India during 2002-11 on different parameters including the growth, global publications share, citation impact, share of international collaborative papers, contribution of major collaborative partner countries, contribution of various subject fields and by type of dementia, productivity and impact of most productive institutions and authors and patterns of research communication in most productive journals. SCOPUS Citation Database has been used to retrieve the data for 10 years (2002-11) by searching different relevant keywords in its combined title, abstract and keywords fields. Among the top 20 most productive countries in dementia research, India ranks 16^th (with 1109 papers) with a global publication share of 1.24% and an annual average publication growth rate of 25.58% during 2002-11. Its global publication share has increased over the years, rising from 0.54% in 2002 to 2.20% during 2011. Its citation impact per paper was 5.11 during 2002-11, which decreased from 7.29 during 2002-06 to 4.33 during 2007-11. Its international collaborative publications share was 24.54% during 2002-11, which decreased from 28.57% during 2002-06 to 23.07% during 2007-11. India’s publications efforts are quiet low considering that to 3.7 million people suffering from dementia in India. It, therefore, needs to increase its output and bring about improvement in the quality of its research efforts. Indian medical and social research funding agencies must establish a more ambitious funding program into the causes, prevention, cure and care of dementia. At the national level, there is a need to have a consultation for evolving research strategies and for delineating specific directions to investigate the etiology, treatment and care provisions for persons involved in dementia.