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Quantitative Analysis of IITs' Research Growth and SDG Contributions

T0 review · 4 major / 6 minor · reviewed 2026-08-12 · deepseek-v4-flash

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Pith's one-line read A Scopus-based analysis of five older IITs from 1952 to 2024 shows exponential research growth, IIT-Kanpur with the highest per-paper citation impact, and research concentrated on SDG 3, 7, and 11.

desk verdict Useful descriptive bibliometric study of five IITs, but the abstract's impact ranking is contradicted by the paper's own citation totals; fix the numbers and it's a solid policy-facing snapshot. read the letter →

arxiv 2411.15451 v1 pith:UTVZ2ZNO submitted 2024-11-23 cs.IR

Kiran Sharma , Akshat Nagori , Manya , Mehul Dubey , Parul Khurana This is my paper · ORCID
classification cs.IR
keywords IITsresearchproductivitycitationimpactSDGscollaborationanalysisScopusbibliometricsIndia
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

The paper tries to establish a quantitative picture of seven decades of research at the five older IITs: Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, and Kanpur. It claims that output grew exponentially, supported by funding and collaborations, and that IIT-Kanpur has the best citation impact per paper while IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras are more productive but less impactful per paper. It also claims that collaborations concentrate among the older IITs and with the USA, Germany, and the UK, and that research aligns most strongly with SDG 3 (health), SDG 7 (clean energy), and SDG 11 (sustainable cities). The study matters because it provides a long-window benchmark for Indian research policy and identifies gaps such as weak links with newer IITs and low focus on social SDGs.

What carries the argument

The analysis rests on a Scopus bibliometric dataset built from unique affiliation IDs for each of the five IITs, filtered to articles, reviews, and conference papers. The paper uses citation-to-paper ratios to rank research impact, collaboration counts to map inter-IIT and country networks, and Scopus's built-in SDG mapping to assign papers to Sustainable Development Goals. These three instruments carry the argument: growth trajectories, impact rankings, and SDG alignment percentages all come from them.

What would settle it

A re-analysis using Web of Science or Dimensions data, or using each IIT's own publication lists, that finds a different ranking of citation-to-paper ratios among the five IITs would disprove the paper's central impact claim; for instance, if IIT-Kanpur's Scopus affiliation ID misses a large number of zero-citation papers, its high citation ratio could be an artifact.

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Extended reading notes

Core claim

The central discovery is a set of quantitative patterns covering 243,171 papers after filtering across the five IITs. Total output per IIT grew from dozens of papers per year to thousands per year, passing 1,000 papers per year by 2008. IIT-Kanpur, despite publishing the fewest papers (38,585), has the highest citation-to-paper ratio, followed by IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Delhi; IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras show higher volume but lower per-paper impact. IIT-Madras leads inter-IIT collaboration with 317 multi-IIT papers, and the USA is the dominant international partner for all five. Across all five, about 35% of papers map to at least one SDG, with SDG 3, 7, and 11 the most common and SDG 1, 5, and 16 below 1%.

Load-bearing premise

The analysis assumes that Scopus affiliation IDs and document-type filters capture every IIT-affiliated article, review, and conference paper, and that Scopus's built-in SDG tags correctly assign papers to goals.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

  • Research funding and policy can treat IIT-Kanpur as a model for high per-paper impact rather than raw output.
  • The strong preference for collaborations among older IITs suggests that deliberate joint projects with newer IITs would expand the system's research base.
  • About 35% SDG mapping means a majority of IIT output is not aligned with SDGs, pointing to room for sustainability-focused research programs.
  • The dominance of the USA, Germany, and the UK as partners suggests that diversifying toward Asia, Africa, and South America could open new collaboration channels.
  • Thematic specialization varies by institute, so national strategy could assign niche strengths rather than expecting uniform profiles.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The citation-to-paper ranking is not normalized for field or publication age; an editorially useful extension would recompute the ratios within discipline-time strata to see whether IIT-Kanpur's lead survives.
  • Scopus coverage itself expanded over 1952–2024, so part of the measured 'exponential growth' likely reflects growth of the database, not just IIT productivity; a database-growth-adjusted series would separate the two effects.
  • Scopus's SDG mapping is keyword-based; a manual or altmetric-based validation of a sample of papers could test whether the 35% SDG-aligned figure is an artifact of mapping rules.
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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Referee Report

4 major / 6 minor

Summary. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of research output from five older Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, and Kanpur) based on Scopus-indexed publications from 1952 to 2024. It reports publication growth trends, citation impact, inter-IIT and international collaboration patterns, authorship team-size and position distributions, funding sources, and mappings of research output to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The headline claim is that IIT-Kanpur excels in research impact, while IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras show slightly lower per-paper impact.

Significance. If the reported data were internally consistent, the study would offer a useful descriptive reference for policymakers, bibliometricians, and institutional planners. Its long time window, explicit Scopus affiliation-ID-based data collection, and combination of growth, collaboration, funding, and SDG analyses go beyond several earlier studies. The paper also explicitly acknowledges limitations such as reliance on Scopus and exclusion of newer IITs. However, the central impact ranking is not supported by the numbers as reported because of internal contradictions in the citation totals and ratios.

major comments (4)
  1. [Section 3 and Table 3/Table 4] The paper's central impact claim is undermined by an internal contradiction. Section 3 states that IIT-KGP has the highest overall citation-to-paper ratio (22.04), but Table 3 reports IIT-KGP with 1,082,431 total citations over 53,232 papers, which gives 20.33, and Table 4 reports the same totals. Section 4.1 correctly gives the 20.33 figure and ranks IIT-K first. These two orderings are mutually exclusive and cannot both describe the same dataset. The authors must decide which citation totals and ratios are authoritative and correct the abstract, Section 3, and Section 4.1 accordingly.
  2. [Table 2 versus Tables 3 and 4] The input totals themselves are inconsistent. For IIT-K, Table 2 reports 70,731 open-access citations and 741,105 non-open-access citations, summing to 811,836, while Tables 3 and 4 report 811,476 total citations. The same discrepancy does not occur for the other four IITs. This 360-citation difference indicates a data entry or aggregation error, and it propagates into any per-paper impact comparison. The authors should audit the raw Scopus query results and ensure that all tables derive from the same underlying dataset.
  3. [Table 9 (SDG mapping)] The SDG mapping table reports total paper counts that do not match the filtered paper counts in Table 1. For IIT-B, IIT-M, and IIT-K, Table 9 lists 47,783, 50,025, and 38,584 mapped papers, whereas Table 1 reports 47,785, 50,027, and 38,585 filtered papers. The differences are small, but they suggest that the SDG analysis either used a slightly different data pull or involved additional filtering that is not documented. Because Section 4.8 uses these counts to compute SDG percentages, the source of this discrepancy must be clarified.
  4. [Section 4.6.1] The subsection titled 'Proportion of authorship position in top 3 countries' contains no text or analysis. It appears immediately before Figure 10, and the caption of Figure 10 refers to 'Distribution of authorship position for top three country collaborators,' but no results for this portion are described. Either the subsection should be completed with the relevant findings, or it should be removed along with Figure 10 if it is not intended to be part of the analysis.
minor comments (6)
  1. [Section 2] The sentence citing 'Hasan and Singh (2015)' contains the malformed number '2227%' and the text 'with a maximum of 2227% articles indexed in 2013'; this appears to be a typo, likely '22.7%'.
  2. [Section 3] The phrase 'arond 10-12%' should read 'around 10-12%'.
  3. [Section 4.1] 'demonstartes' is misspelled; it should be 'demonstrates'.
  4. [Section 4.8] 'ecah' in 'The main themes reported by ecah IIT' should be 'each'.
  5. [Appendix] The appendix repeatedly spells 'Institute' as 'Institude' in the list of IITs; this should be corrected.
  6. [References] Several reference formatting issues appear, including inconsistent use of italics and journal titles; a careful copyedit is needed.

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged · score 0.0 of 10

No circular reasoning found: this is a descriptive Scopus-based bibliometric analysis; internal numerical inconsistencies are correctness risks, not circularity.

full rationale

This paper is a descriptive bibliometric study, not a derivation with fitted parameters later relabeled as predictions. All reported metrics—publication counts, citation totals, citation-to-paper ratios, collaboration counts, and SDG percentages—are computed directly from Scopus metadata using stated affiliation IDs and document-type filters. There is no parameter fitted to one subset of data and then used to 'predict' a closely related quantity; no result is defined in terms of the claim it is supposed to establish; and no load-bearing conclusion is justified by a self-citation or by an imported uniqueness theorem. The SDG mapping is taken from Scopus as an input assumption, and the limitation section explicitly acknowledges database and coverage constraints, which further shows the authors are not presenting the Scopus tags as an independently derived prediction. The internal numerical inconsistencies highlighted by the skeptic are genuine reproducibility/correctness problems: Section 3 attributes IIT-KGP the highest citation-to-paper ratio of 22.04, whereas Table 3 and Table 4 totals imply 1,082,431/53,232 = 20.33, and IIT-K's Table 2 citation sum (70731 + 741105 = 811836) differs by 360 from the Table 3/4 total of 811476. These inconsistencies undermine the abstract's headline ranking, but they do not constitute circularity: the ranking is not forced by construction, nor does it reduce to the paper's own inputs in the sense of circular reasoning. On the circularity axis specifically, the honest finding is 'no significant circularity', with score 0.

Assumptions & free parameters 0 free parameters · 4 assumptions · 0 invented entities

No free parameters were fitted; the analysis computes aggregate counts from Scopus. The main assumptions are the reliability of Scopus indexing, affiliation ID matching, citation counts as impact proxies, and the validity of Scopus's SDG mapping.

assumptions (4)
  • domain assumption Scopus comprehensively indexes the research output of the five IITs.
    The paper uses Scopus as the only data source (Section 3), so any missing or miscounted records directly bias all counts and ratios.
  • domain assumption The affiliation IDs used to query Scopus correctly capture all papers from each IIT.
    Table 1 lists affiliation IDs, but the paper does not validate whether some IIT-affiliated papers are missing due to name variants or author affiliation strings.
  • domain assumption Citation count per paper is a valid measure of research impact.
    The paper compares IITs using citation-to-paper ratios without field normalization or time window controls.
  • domain assumption Scopus's SDG mapping accurately assigns papers to Sustainable Development Goals.
    Table 9 and Figure 12 rely on SDG tags, but the methodology never describes how these tags were derived or validated.

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Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of Quantitative Analysis of IITs' Research Growth and SDG Contributions." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/UTVZ2ZNO

@misc{pith2026241115451,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: Quantitative Analysis of IITs' Research Growth and SDG Contributions},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/UTVZ2ZNO}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2411.15451}
}
read the original abstract

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are vital to India's research ecosystem, advancing technology and engineering for industrial and societal benefits. This study reviews the research performance of top IITs-Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, and Kanpur based on Scopus-indexed publications (1952-2024). Research output has grown exponentially, supported by increased funding and collaborations. IIT-Kanpur excels in research impact, while IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras are highly productive but show slightly lower per-paper impact. Internationally, IITs collaborate robustly with the USA, Germany, and the UK, alongside Asian nations like Japan and South Korea, with IIT-Madras leading inter-IIT partnerships. Research priorities align with SDG 3 (Health), SDG 7 (Clean Energy), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities). Despite strengths in fields like energy, fluid dynamics, and materials science, challenges persist, including limited collaboration with newer IITs and gaps in emerging fields. Strengthening specialization and partnerships is crucial for addressing global challenges and advancing sustainable development.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2411.15451 by the authors.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Data downloading and filtering flowchart [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Year-wise publication trends of top 5 ITT’s: Madras, Delhi, Bombay, Kharagpur,and Kanpur [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_2.png] view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Decade-wise publication trends of top 5 ITT’s. than IIT-K and IIT-KGP. IIT-B and IIT-M have relatively lower ratios, at 18.13 and 17.09 respectively. Although they have high total citations and publication numbers, their average citations per paper are slightly lower than those of IIT-K, IIT-KGP, and IIT-D [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_3.png] view at source ↗
Figures from the paper (11 more)
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Thematic analysis of research produced by all IITs [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p008_4.png]
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Collaboration of top 5 ITT’s with other IITs [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_5.png]
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Demonstration of top IIT collaboration with other IITs. 4.4. Authors team size analysis [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_6.png]
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Collaboration network of IIT-M. (left) collaboration with two other IITs. The network has 23 nodes and 88 unique edges. (right) collaboration with three other IITs. The network has 23 nodes and 117 unique edges [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p010_7.png]
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Distribution of papers based on authorship position. 4.6. Country collaboration [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p011_8.png]
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Country collaboration of five ITTs. organization at each IIT and the total number of citations received by the papers funded by each organization at each IIT. Each IIT has different levels of support from various funding agencies, reflecting their specific research foc…
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Distribution of authorship position for top three country collaborators [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_10.png]
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: Research output distribution by continent across 5 IITs. Page 14 of 21 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_11.png]
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: Bipartite graph of SDG orientation of five IITs. Page 16 of 21 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_12.png]
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: SDG 3 and 7 word cloud. research conducted by the IITs. Across both SDGs, the USA holds the first position for all IITs, underlining its role as the most significant research partner. Page 17 of 21 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p017_13.png]
Figure 14
Figure 14. Figure 14: Country Collaboration: SDG 3 and SDG 7. 5. Conclusion The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have become the pillars of India’s research ecosystem, consistently making significant contributions to global science and technology. Their exponential growth in research…

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Reference graph

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