Page 16 - NIRF 2023

6.3.2. Publications, Citations and Highly Cited Papers (HCP): Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus

Two sets of citation databases were used as sources for retrieving data on the number of publications, citations, and
highly cited papers for the applicant institutions. These citation databases comprise of: i) Science Citation Index
Expanded (SCI-Expanded), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI),
Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (CPCI-S), Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Sciences &
Humanities (CPCI-SSH), Book Citation Index– Science (BKCI-S), Book Citation Index– Social Sciences & Humanities
(BKCI-SSH), Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and Current Chemical Reactions (CCR-Expanded) hosted on the
Web of Science platform; and ii) Scopus. These sources of publications and citations cover all disciplines
comprehensively.

These databases were searched to determine the quantitative productivity of all eligible applicant institutions that
registered themselves for ranking. The search included number of research articles published and citations received
by them in a span of three calendar years, i.e. 2019, 2020 and 2021. A common time window was used to obtain this
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data covering a short span of two weeks for all institutions to ensure fairness, i.e. between 26 February and 2 March
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2023 from Web of Science and between 20 and 25 February 2023 from Scopus. The data on highly cited publications
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(HCP) was retrieved between 23 and 25 March 2023 from Web of Science and on 20 to 24 March 2023 from
Scopus.
6.3.2.1 Search Strategy for Retrieving Research Publications, Citations and Highly Cited Papers from WoS and
Scopus
All permutations, combinations, and changes in the names of institutions were used while searching for articles
published by faculty and researchers in the databases mentioned above. Since searches were conducted using names
of institutions, articles that did not have institutional affiliations of their faculty and researchers were not retrieved.

Several universities host other research institutions within their physical premises. Care was taken to ensure that
credit for publications and citations are given to the concerned institutions. Manual checking of retrieved data was
done in cases i) where two institutions with same (or similar) names, ii) institutes that share the same physical
premises; and iii) multiple institutes having the same name in the same city, for example Government Colleges, DAV
Colleges, etc.

Some private universities have several constituent colleges and institutions (either in the same city or in different
cities) that are their integral part. Information was sought from the applicant institutes and universities about such
constituent entities. Publications and citations received by such constituent entities were credited to the applicant
institution after due verification.

Many variations in the names of universities and institutions, their physical locations and their spellings were
discovered during the searches in the databases. The NIRF has taken every care to be accurate on this count. Moreover,
the data on highly cited publications were retrieved from Web of Science and data on Field-weighted Citations was
obtained from Scopus (Elsevier Science). Data on patents granted and published for each institution in the last three
years was retrieved from Derwent Innovation.

6.3.2.2 Restricting Retrieval of Articles to a Given Discipline

Searches for publications and citations were done in the two databases, namely Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)
and Scopus (Elsevier) for applicant institutions without any subject-wise and discipline-wise restrictions for the

India Rankings 2023 6