Research Productivity of Agricultural Faculty Members with Special Reference to Maharashtra, India: A Scientometric Study

The study presented in this paper has examined the research productivity, for the period 2004–2019, of four agricultural universities located in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The 4,120 research publications of these agricultural universities, as reflected in the publications-related output of the Indian Citation Index, were analysed to ascertain the growth and patterns in agricultural research. This study presented, among other things, the year-wise distribution of research productivity, co authorship index, and collaborative index, degree of collaboration, most prolific authors and top-ranked sources preferred by the agricultural faculty members for publishing their research output. It was found that there was no consistency in the growth of research productivity of the four agricultural universities. Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University, Akola and Mahatma Phule Agricultural University, Rahuri contributed to more than 70 percent of the total research output. The co-authorship pattern was found to be more popular among the agricultural faculty members as 64 percent of the total research output was in the form of three- or four-author studies, whereas single-author studies comprised only 1.21 percent of the total research output. Ghorade, R.B. from Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University, Akola was found to be the most productive author with 47 publications. Annals of Plant Physiology, Journal of Soils and Crops and Trends in Bio Sciences were found to be the most preferred journals. The collaborative index of 3.55 in 2004 increased to 3.86 in 2019. The average degree of collaboration was 0.99, and the average modified collaboration coefficient was 0.69. The research article was found to be the most preferred type of research document among the agricultural faculty members as against a conference paper, report or short communication. Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University, Akola and Mahatma Phule Agricultural University, Rahuri received the highest number of citations for their research publications during the said period of the study

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This paper explores a webometric study of the top25 institutions in India as ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), a nodal ranking agency of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. Efforts were made to establish a sort of ranking among these institutions’ websites by applying various webometric indicators, the important ones being web impact factor, WISER index, Alexa traffic rank, search engine optimisation, the security rank of website, the number of social media followers, and external backlinks. Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, ranked first regarding web impact factor (WIF) (8.678343949), whereas Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee ranked first regarding search engine optimisation. Eleven institutions\u27 (44 percent) websites had very strong security ranks. Anna University, Chennai, ranked first in Alexa traffic rank, with a loading time of 0.693 seconds, and was followed by the University of Delhi, Delhi, and Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. University of Delhi, Delhi, ranked first in the WISER index, with a value of 23.8984, and was followed by Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, and Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi