Which topics are India’s researchers publishing papers on?

Analysis of research trends globally and in select countries, focusing on topics like coronavirus, AI, nanotechnology, and more.

Research publications are widely used as a measure of scientific and technological progress. Analysing trends in research also helps guide policy. A brief comparative study of the most researched topics in the Web of Science, a scholarly publication database, over the last 20 years and the last five years highlights the research focus of scientists in different countries.

‘Coronavirus’ was the most published research topic in the world in the last five years and in the last two decades. The sheer volume of papers on this subject shows the capacity of the global scientific community to produce relevant scientific knowledge that will help people respond quickly to a crisis.

‘Coronavirus’ was the most researched topic in India in the last five years and among the top five research topics in the last two decades. It was the most published research topic in the U.S. over the last five years and in the last two decades. But it was conspicuously absent from China’s top research topics. This is surprising for two reasons: the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first reported from this country in late 2019; and China, which has emerged as a global scientific superpower in the last two decades, has been contributing an increasing share of the world’s papers on several research topics.

Chart 1 | The chart ranks the five topics under which the highest number of papers were published (2019- 2023) in select nations.

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Some of the other topics that are widely researched are deep learning, and clean and green energy topics such as photocatalysis, supercapacitors, and oxygen reduction reactions. Deep learning refers to a class of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms characterised by the use of multiple ‘layers’, where each layer transforms and/or manipulates the input data in specific ways. Engineers have built facial recognition on phones, speech recognition in digital assistants, and recommendation engines on streaming services using deep learning.

The focus on AI-related research worldwide corresponds to the increasing importance of AI technologies in various sectors. Chinese researchers have produced more than twice as many papers on the topic of AI as have researchers in the U.S., and more than 45% of the world’s research output on this subject in the last five years. India’s share remains low even if the topic features among the country’s top five.