Page 6 - NIRF 2023

Preface

India Rankings 2023: Towards Consolidation, Improvement and Expansion

The Ministry of Education is pleased to announce India Rankings 2023. We are indeed grateful to Shri Dharmendra
Pradhan, Honourable Minister for Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship for the release of the India
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Rankings 2023 on 5 June 2023.
This is the eighth consecutive edition of India Rankings of institutions of higher education in India in five categories,

namely Overall, Colleges, Universities, Research Institutions and Innovation and eight subject domains, namely
Engineering, Management, Pharmacy, Law, Medical, Architecture & Planning, Dental and Agriculture & Allied Sectors.
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The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), launched on 29 September 2015 by the Ministry of Education,
was used for this edition as well as for all the previous seven consecutive editions of India Rankings released every year
since 2016. Unlike other rankings in the popular media, India Rankings deploys objective parameters and metrics with
factual data gathered from applicant institutions themselves as well as from third party sources such as Web of

Science, Scopus and Derwent Innovation. Several improvements in data collection formats, metrics and comparison
methodology were adopted and put in practice for India Rankings over the past eight years.

India Rankings 2023 continued with the process of consolidation, improvement, and expansion as we built upon the
NIRF parameters defined in 2015 through experience gained over the years, feedback from stakeholders and study of

practices by international ranking system. In the process, effective and efficient benchmarks have successfully been
identified and implemented to assess performance of the Indian academic institutions in the higher education space.
Changes in metrics, parameters and normalization algorithms were introduced over the years, although the basic

framework was kept intact. As a result, the ranking of institutions has largely remained consistent, especially amongst
25 top-ranked institutions, over the years, although individual ranks might have changed by a few slots for some
institutions due to performance variations across institutions on some of the parameters. This demonstrate that the

set of parameters that are being used for ranking are compact, coherent and inter-dependent. In the process, India
Rankings is successful in identifying top institutions of higher education in India in five categories and eight subject
domains mentioned above.

The practice of pre-registration of institutions that had participated in India Rankings in previous year, was continued

this year also. Moreover, new institutions were invited to participate in the ranking exercise through an open
advertisement. A total number of 5,543 unique institutions responded and offered themselves for ranking under
“Overall”, category-specific or domain-specific rankings. In all, 8686 applications for ranking were made by these
5,543 unique applicant institutions under various categories and / or subject domains.

The India Rankings has successfully instilled the culture of collection, compilation and curation of data required for
ranking of institutions and is sourced from applicant institutions themselves. Applicant institutions are now carefully
maintaining data pertaining to their faculty, students, placement, infrastructure, expenditure on library, laboratories,
equipment, operations, etc. This culture is important for institutions themselves since analysis of this data provides

the big picture of trends and patterns that can be used for evaluating and streamlining processes, creating efficiencies,

India Rankings 2023 ii