EVALUATION OF HIGHLY CITED PAPERS IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES: A CASE STUDY OF INDIAN CENTRAL UNIVERSITIES

Objective-The paper analyzed the highly cited papers (HCPs) published by the ten major Indian Central Universities in the field of Environmental Sciences as reflected in Scopus. Methods-In Scopus, 'affiliation search' was carried out using the keyword 'University, India', which retrieved 986 affiliations. The total publications of the top ten central universities were 12,052, out of which 9723 were journal articles. The next limit applied was TC2021 ≥100 (TC2021 was the total citations since publication until 2021) retrieved 306 highly cited journal articles. Major Findings-These 306 HCPs were scattered over 117 journals, contributed by 1825 individual authors employed in 10 central universities, 550 international and 124 national institutions. Bioresource Technology, was the most productive journal, M. Agrawal, BHU, was the most prolific author. The mean author per paper was 5.96, average paper per author 0.168 and 7.2 co-author per paper. The central universities produced 90 HCPs in collaboration with 550 international institutes from 75 countries and 65 collaborative papers with 124 national institutes. The USA, UK, China and Saudi Arabia were the leading collaborating countries. King Saud University, Mississippi State University and Ghent University were the top collaborative institutes. Conclusion-National Science Foundation (NSF) ranked India as the 3rd biggest knowledge producer in 2020. In this context, this paper will shade light on the contribution of Indian Scientists in the field of Environmental Sciences identifying the most preferred journals, prolific authors and research thrust areas. The prolific authors and their work will certainly influence the new researchers to add new dimensions to their research venture. It will be useful for the researchers and the environmentalists to know the research trend and identify the gap for further study