Here’s good news for Indian physical sciences.

The National Science Indicators of Thomson Reuters show that the number of papers indexed from India has grown from about 20,000 in 2003 to 27,000 in 2007. Of this, the main field indexed is the multi-disciplinary category (papers published in multidisciplinary journals Nature, Science, PNAS etc) – 5.47 per cent. Close behind is Materials Science — 5.45 per cent.

Materials Science has had the steepest growth from 432 papers in 1981 to 2,300 papers in 2007 with India-based authors. India’s share of world papers, in the latest five-year period, was also comparatively high in Agricultural Sciences (5.17% of the database), Chemistry (5.04%), and Physics (3.88%).

Overall, all but three of the top ten research fronts with the highest representation of India institutions were in high-energy or theoretical physics.

Kudos to the physical scientists of this country!