Nutrition Research in India: Underweight, Stunted, or Wasted?

Abstract

Background India has experienced dramatic economic growth in the past two decades accompanied by a rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which co-exists with the unfinished agenda of under-nutrition. Tackling these dual challenges requires strong investment in nutrition research. Methods We compared India’s research output with another rapidly developing country (China) and an established developed country (USA). We analyzed trends for each country between 2000–2005 and 2006–2010, in terms of quantity (measured by number of publications in PubMed) and quality (measured by weighted impact factor, using Journal Citation Report [JCR]) of the publications identified. The number of articles in each journal was multiplied by each journal’s most recent impact factor (2009) to determine each country’s “Journal Impact Factor”. All “Journal Impact Factors” were summed to obtain the overall “Country Impact Factor”. The relative contribution of each country to the top ten nutrition journals in the world (JCR Science Edition 2009 impact factor) was also computed. Results India produced 2,712 articles (1.9% of the global total) in 2000–2005 and 3,999 articles (2.1%) in 2006–2010. In comparison, China produced 5,146 articles (4.7%) and 10,982 (5.8%), and the USA 42,089 (26.0%) and 47,408 articles (25.2%), respectively, in 2000–2005 and 2006–2010. The “Country Impact Factors” for 2000–05 and 2006–10, respectively, were 191 and 174 for India, 96 and 360 for China, and 10,675 and 11,293 for the USA. The contributions to the top 10 nutrition journals during 2006–10 were 1% (India), 1.4% (China), and 29% (USA). India’s nutrition research output remains very small, albeit modest gains have occurred in the past 5 years. Conclusions Based on the low numbers of publications from India, we suggest that India must increase investment in and attention towards quality nutrition research. Further, India should urgently address potential barriers to publish by promoting curriculum changes, training, mentorship, attractive opportunities for young investigators, and academic partnerships with developed countries.

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