India is emerging as a major knowledge producer of the world in terms of proportionate share of global research output and the overall research productivity rank. Many recent reports, both of commissioned studies from Government of India as well as independent international agencies, show India at different ranks of global research productivity (variations as large as from 3rd to 9th place). The paper examines this contradiction; tries to analyse as to why different reports places India at different ranks and what may be the reasons thereof. The research output data for India, along with the ten most productive countries in the world, is analysed from three major scholarly databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions for this purpose. Results show that both, the endogenous factors (such as database coverage variation and different subject classification schemes) and the exogenous factors (such as subject selection and publication counting methodology) cause the variations in different reports. This paper reports first part of the analysis, focusing mainly on variations due to use of data from different databases. The policy implications of the study are also discussed.

中文翻译：

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印度在科学研究中的排名和全球份额——来自不同数据库的数据如何产生不同的结果

就全球研究产出的比例份额和整体研究生产力排名而言，印度正在成为世界主要的知识生产国。最近的许多报告，包括来自印度政府和独立国际机构的委托研究，都显示印度处于全球研究生产力的不同等级（差异大到从第 3 位到第 9 位）。这篇论文研究了这个矛盾；试图分析为什么不同的报告将印度置于不同的级别，以及可能是什么原因。为此，我们从三个主要学术数据库（Web of Science、Scopus 和 Dimensions）中分析了印度以及世界上生产力最高的十个国家的研究成果数据。结果表明，两者，内生因素（如数据库覆盖范围变化和不同主题分类方案）和外生因素（如主题选择和出版物计数方法）导致不同报告的变化。本文报告了分析的第一部分，主要关注由于使用来自不同数据库的数据而导致的变化。还讨论了该研究的政策含义。