Assessing Research Impact in Indian Conference Proceedings: Insights from Collaboration and Citations
Kiran Sharma, Parul Khurana
TL;DR
This study assesses the research impact of conference proceedings published under Springer LNNS that were hosted in India. Using Scopus-indexed data from 2016–2024, it analyzes 177 conferences and 11,066 conference papers, examining collaboration patterns and international participation. The findings show an average of $1.01$ citations per paper, with higher impact for papers co-authored by Indian and international authors ($1.44$) than Indian-only papers ($0.97$) or international-only papers ($1.09$); most work originates from colleges and private universities. It discusses limitations such as open-access effects, database coverage, and lack of conference themes, and argues that improving research quality and international collaboration could enhance impact.
Abstract
Conferences serve as a crucial avenue for scientific communication. However, the increase in conferences and the subsequent publication of proceedings have prompted inquiries regarding the research quality being showcased at such events. This investigation delves into the conference publications indexed by Springer's Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems Series. Among the 570 international conferences held worldwide in this series, 177 were exclusively hosted in India. These 177 conferences collectively published 11,066 papers as conference proceedings. All these publications, along with conference details, were sourced from the Scopus database. The study aims to evaluate the research impact of these conference proceedings and identify the primary contributors. The results reveal a downward trend in the average number of citations per year. The collective average citation for all publications is 1.01. Papers co-authored by Indian and international authors (5.6%) exhibit a higher average impact of 1.44, in contrast to those authored solely by Indian authors (84.9%), which have an average impact of 0.97. Notably, Indian-collaborated papers, among the largest contributors, predominantly originate from private colleges and universities. Only 19% of papers exhibit collaboration with institutes of different prestige, yet their impact is considerably higher as compared to collaboration with institutes of similar prestige. This study highlights the importance of improving research quality in academic forums.