Assessment of Mechanical Engineering Research Output using Scientometric Indicators: A Comparative Study of India, Japan, and South Korea

Abstract

This study examined the mechanical engineering research output from India, Japan, and South Korea on different parameters including growth, collaboration indices, and activity index. The purpose of the study is to understand the overall development of mechanical engineering through analytical approaches applied on the scholarly outcome of the countries considered for the study. The study focuses on analysing the articles published by India, Japan, and South Korea, and is restricted to articles indexed in the Science Citation Index - Web of Science for the period 2000 to 2014. The ratios of number of paper to citations for India, Japan, and Korea are 20,836: 1,97,679; 24,494: 2,04,393; and 30,578: 2,66,902 respectively for the period 2000-2014. The findings show that there is a decline in Japanese publications in mechanical engineering, whereas other two countries have recorded an increasing trend. While India has tripled its publications in a span of 15 years, South Korea, on the other hand, has doubled its publications in the same span of time. There has been an increasing trend towards collaboration in almost all fields of science and technology. However, the extent of collaboration and their rate of growth varied for one subject to another, one branch to another branch of the same subject, and from one country to another country. The present study analyses the growth of research publications of the mechanical engineering domain including authorship distribution, collaboration indices, prominent journals, and activity index.