India is rapidly expanding its research output and policy ambitions, but how close is it to matching Mainland China’s scientific rise? This blog uses the G20 research and innovation scorecard 2025 to explore India’s progress in R&D, its policy landscape, and what the data reveal about its future as a global research leader.
Every year, the G20 research and innovation scorecard from the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate offers a powerful lens through which to view the global state of science and technology.
Representing nearly 80% of the world’s population and generating 85% of global GDP, G20 members – including the original BRICS, the G7, the African Union, the European Union, and key regional players like Argentina, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia – are responsible for the vast majority of global research activity. Together, they account for 93% of global R&D spending, employ almost 90% of the world’s researchers, and produce 92% of all research publications, including the overwhelming majority of work related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Mainland China is arguably now the world’s research powerhouse, publishing 75% more papers indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection than the United States in 2024. However, India’s population overtook that of Mainland China in 2023. While India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is currently less than half that of Mainland China’s, it still makes sense to ask how India is capitalizing on its greatest resource: people.
India’s science and innovation policy: A decades-long vision for growth
Building on earlier policies published in 1958, 1983 and 2003, India’s Ministry of Science and Technology published the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) in 2013, setting out key objectives for growth in R&D by 2020 and beyond. The report’s opening line makes clear the importance placed on R&D in driving economic change: “Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) have emerged as the major drivers of national development globally.” It laid out the government’s ambitious objectives to further develop India’s place as a world-class venue for science and position it “among the top five global scientific powers by 2020.” It also aimed to lay down longer-term changes through improvements in science education, a commitment to increasing Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD) to 2% of GDP, and tackle the gender gap in STEM, encouraging more women into R&D. The ministry’s fifth STIP, published in 2020, aims to go further and “achieve technological self-reliance and position India among the top three scientific superpowers” by 2030.
Although India’s fourth STI policy pre-dates the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SDG target 9.5 has a similar objective: “Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending.”
Open research has also been a focus, and in 2014 India’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Department of Science & Technology (DST) published an Open Access (OA) policy. All papers resulting from public funding should be freely available for anyone to read through an institutional repository, widely known as a green open access model.
Tracking India’s research performance: Output, impact and global collaboration
The G20 research and innovation scorecard 2025 from the Institute for Scientific Information provides a comprehensive set of data charting the state of each G20 member’s R&D performance on a variety of indicators. The scorecard allows us to assess how India is progressing toward achieving some of these objectives:
- Research output: InCites data show that in 2013 when India introduced its fourth STI policy, the nation was ninth in terms of the number of papers (articles and reviews) published. By 2016, it was already up to fifth, overtaking Japan, and behind the United States, Mainland China, the United Kingdom and Germany. India’s output doubled between 2015 and 2024, and in 2024 it published more papers than the United Kingdom to rank third behind Mainland China and the United States overall.
- Citation impact: While its output has increased, impact has slowly but steadily improved. Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) provides a measure of the influence of a paper, compared with other papers of the same type published in the same field and year. A value of 1.0 indicates the world average. In 2015, India’s research averaged a CNCI of 0.73. By 2024, this had increased to 0.89 – still below world average but closing the gap.
- Disciplines: Around half (51.7%) of India’s papers are published in the Natural Sciences, with about one-third (35.4%) in Engineering and Technology. Output in both fields has driven much of the nation’s overall growth, with paper counts doubling in Natural Science and increasing by 157% in Engineering and Technology over the decade. Citation impact in both areas has also increased over the last decade, from 0.79 to 0.94 in Natural Sciences and 0.85 to 0.94 in Engineering and Technology.
- SDGs: India has an above-G20-average focus on SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy and SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production. Both relate to the government’s priorities in supporting the large and growing population.
- International collaboration: India’s leading collaborative partners are the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Mainland China and South Korea. From 2015 to 2024, collaborations with Saudi Arabia grew from 1.5% of India’s total output to 6.6%, while collaborations with other countries have seen more modest growth.
- Open access: The overall percentage of OA output has grown from around 30% in 2015 to around 40% in 2023, although it has fallen slightly in 2024. This fall may be due to embargo periods for releasing the latest research into repositories. However, while the 2014 Open Access Policy and 2020 STI Policy focus on green OA, much of this growth is from gold, gold hybrid and bronze OA – papers published free-to-read on the journal’s website – rising from 11.5% of output in 2015 to 18.9% by 2023.
- Gender balance: By 2020, just under one-fifth (18.6%) of the full-time-equivalent researcher workforce was female, suggesting there is still progress to be made to reach parity here.
- GERD: While there is a long-term goal of increasing gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) above 2% of GDP (primarily through private sector investment), by 2020 it remained around 0.6% of GDP. However, GDP doubled between 2011 and 2024, so this still represents a significant increase in real terms.
India’s research trajectory in the context of Mainland China’s scientific rise
India’s output in 2024 is currently in line with Mainland China’s output from 2011. However, while Mainland China only took five years to increase from 100,000 to 200,000 papers per year, India has so far taken seven to reach 180,000. According to UNESCO, Mainland China has spent at least 1% of GDP on R&D each year since 2002, and more than 2% since 2013, while India’s spend on R&D has remained below 1% throughout. Mainland China’s GDP has grown by between 6% and 11% per year since the 1990s, while India’s growth has broadly varied between 4% and 8%. While India’s ambitions to become a leading scientific power are clear, sustained and scaled investment will be key to accelerating progress and building on the strong foundation already in place.
Lessons from BRICS: What India can learn from Brazil, Russia and South Africa
The other original BRICS members – Brazil, Russia and South Africa – offer valuable context for understanding different pathways to research development. Both Brazil and Russia have invested well in R&D, with GERD consistently just above 1% of GDP, while South Africa’s GERD has been just below 1% for many years. Over the last decade, all three have faced macroeconomic conditions and external pressures which have influenced the pace at which R&D investments translate into global research impact. Despite these challenges, research output has generally increased across all three nations, though citation impact varies. Brazil continues to build on its scientific strengths, while South Africa stands out with a Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) averaging around 1.2 – well above the global average.
While India has managed to avoid the economic difficulties of some of the BRICS nations, the message is clear: it needs to convert its growing economy into a sustained level of investment in R&D to achieve the objectives of its Science, Technology and Innovation Policies.
India’s rise as a global research leader may still be in progress, but the momentum is building. The next chapter in its innovation journey is one to watch closely.
Explore the full G20 research and innovation scorecard 2025 to learn more about the research performance of G20 member nations.
Learn more about how InCites Benchmarking & Analytics and Web of Science Research Intelligence can be used to analyze data for institutions, funders and researchers.
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