Page 17 - NIRF 2023

ranking of institutions in Overall Category. However, subject/discipline-specific searches were made for all other
discipline-wise rankings in the interest of uniformity and fairness. Care was taken to design the restriction to get the
widest possible coverage of sub-disciplines within each broad discipline.

6.3.2.3 Online Perception Capturing System

An online platform was developed to capture the perception inputs from peers and employers. A large number of
peers (subject experts) were invited to submit their perception feedback on applicant institutions in a prescribed
format.

6.4 Online Feedback System

Stakeholders (that included public or other individuals or entities having an interest in one or more institutions) were
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invited to give their feedback through “Online Feedback System” from 27 February to 5 March 2023 on the data
submitted by the institutions, through a public advertisement in the newspapers and other media. The comments /
feedback so received were auto-transmitted through an email without disclosing the identity of the stakeholder to the
concerned institution(s) for taking necessary action at their end.

6.5 Data Verification

6.5.1. Scouting for Outliers: Committees of Domain Experts

Committees consisting of academic experts examined the data submitted by institutions under each of the five broad
generic groups of parameters, for every category / discipline. These Committees examined the data on various
parameters minutely and identified outliers, aberrations, and anomalies for further scrutiny. Institutions whose data
seemed exaggerated or had anomalies were contacted telephonically and via e-mail to confirm or correct the data.
Where it was felt necessary, they were asked to support their data with documentary evidence. Several e-mails were
sent, and telephonic calls were made to various institutions for verification of data on different parameters and sub-
parameters.

6.5.2. Communication with Nodal Officers

Each institution was asked to nominate one of their senior functionaries as a nodal officer for dealing with NIRF
matters. These nodal officers were contacted to clear doubts or to attend to the feedback and anomalies pointed out by
the expert committees. For increased transparency, an advisory was sent to each institution to upload this data on
their own website for dissemination to the public. For all the top-ranked institutions, the latest version of the corrected
data based on further inputs from the institutions was made visible on the NIRF portal.

While significant efforts were made to authenticate the data, the final responsibility for the accuracy of the submitted
data lies with the concerned institutions.

6.5.3. Verification of Data on Publications, Citations and Highly Cited Papers

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The data on publications, citations and highly cited papers was shared with each applicant institution from 7 to 17
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April 2023. Institutions were informed that the data was captured between 26 February and 2 March 2023 from
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Web of Science and between 20 and 25 February 2023 from Scopus. The data on highly cited publications (HCP) was
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retrieved between 23 and 25 March 2023 from Web of Science and on 20 to 24 March 2023 from Scopus.
India Rankings 2023 7