Universities in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh lag behind in quality research

Hyderabad: Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh have an overwhelming 43 universities in 23 districts.

However, sadly, none of them can boast of taking the lead in quality research.

A recent analysis of research done in universities by the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST) showed that state universities fared far better in terms of quantity of research, but were among the poorest in the country when it comes to quality research.

The University of Hyderabad (UoH) and IIT Hyderabad were the exceptions.

The study also shows that only 138 universities in the country and, worse still, only four state universities have published more than 100 research papers.

The analysis carried out by Dr Gangan Prathap, Outstanding Scientist at the NIIST, factored in quality by taking into account the number of papers published in top-notch journals of the world and the number of times they were referred to by other scientists.

Only Osmania and Kakatiya universities in Telangana and Andhra and Sri Venkateswara universities in Andhra Pradesh were found to be carrying out quality research.

Meanwhile, NIT Warangal, the UoH, Gitam University, IIT Hyderabad and IIT Hyderabad also “qualified” among universities doing quality research by the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST). However, these are not state universities.

Interestingly, the worst performers among state universities was Kakatiya which ranked 132 among the 138 univeristies in the country for quality of research though the institution published 787 research papers.

The study also found Andhra University to have higher number of publications in the country but ranked a lowly 131. Osmania University also came in at 111 for quality of research though it published nearly 1,500. JNTU Hyderabad ranked 124th for quality research though it also had a higher number of papers published.

Prof. L. Venugopal Reddy, chairman, Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE), said, “Funding is a very basic problem state universities face. There is also the problem of faculty shortage. When there is less faculty, they have more pressure to teach. Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology ) are funding basic sciences but for social sciences there are hardly any grants.”

He further added, “The quantity of publications are there because universities are showing interest but quality is lacking.”

Academics also say that a lot of professors in universities look to get more number of publications against their name but hardly do quality research.

“There is a lot of repetitive research where professors repeat earlier work with minor variations. Such work gets published in ‘small-time’ journals and not the ‘high impact factor’ ones. That is why our quantity is more but quality is less,” a former Vice Chancellor said.

Even institutes like NIT Warangal and IIIT Hyderabad seem to be faltering with reducing number of publications.

The UoH and IIT Hyderabad, however, performed well in terms of quality of research.

The analysis was carried out with data publications in the last 10 years from Scopus and SIR World Reports.

SIR World Reports have data from all universities in the world which have published at least 100 scientific research papers.


RANKINGS INSTITUTION PUBLICATIONS    QUANTITY QUALITY
UoH            2223        21        16
IIT-H            156        138        18
NIT Warangal        616        94         122
IIIT-H            823        73        101
JNTU            1282        43        124
Osmania        1456        34        111
Kakatiya         787        81        132
Andhra        1716        28        131
Sri Venkateswara    1386        38        72
*Out of 138 Indian higher education institutions
*Based on analysis by CSIR NIIST