Clarivate Analytics, National Board of Accreditation and INFLIBNET Collaborate to Provide Web of Science Data

Clarivate Analytics, formerly the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters was selected to provide research metrics from Web of Science for the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). Data from the Web of Science will be one of the multiple parameters used to analyze over 3,000 academic institutions and rank them based on a combined framework developed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). Clarivate will conduct this analysis in collaboration with the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and INFLIBNET, as formalized in a three-part Memorandum of Understanding signed here.

The Indian government plans to release its ranking in April of 2017. In addition to an overall ranking, it will include rankings within specific disciplines such as engineering, medicine, pharmacy, architecture, law and management.

A key change in the NIRF for 2017 is the inclusion of research quality metrics in granting the research score to each institute. The Category Normalized Citation Impact is one such research quality metric. This normalizes the citation count for each article for publication year and subject category. An additional research quality metric used is the number of highly cited papers as featured in the Web of Science database. This recognizes the leading papers in a particular field based on the number of citations it has received.

“The National Institutional Ranking Framework promises to catalyze academic and research excellence in Indian academic institutions. The introduction of research quality metrics in NIRF will also reward and encourage quality research,” said Arvind Pachhapur, South Asia Head, Clarivate Analytics.

The Web of Science database provides a single destination to access the most reliable, integrated, multidisciplinary research. Used by over 7,000 research organizations across the world, Web of Science consists of seven citation databases including sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities covering impactful scientific research from scholarly books, journals, conference proceedings, published data sets and patents. Web of Science data has been used in other global rankings such as Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities, Reuters Top 100 most innovative Asian universities and the CWTS Leiden Ranking.