"Considering R&D expenditure, India spent USD 24 billion during 2007 compared to USD 102 billion by China and USD 377 billion by the USA," a team of government scientists said.
"However, India published 758 articles per billion US dollars in comparison to 557 by China and the USA," Rajesh Luthra, S A Hasan and Sushila Khilnani, of the Human Resource Development Group of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) wrote in Current Science.
They argued that data pertaining to the science and engineering (S&E) articles published and gross expenditure on R&D indicate that the number of articles published is directly proportional to R&D expenditure.
Since the number of articles published is proportional to the number of researchers, directed efforts are required to augment the number of S&E researchers in India, they said.
"Hence, an increase in R&D expenditure and quality S&T manpower is needed to help India emerge as a leading country in the knowledge-base economy of the world," they said.
The average annual growth rate with respect to publishing S&E articles was 16.2 per cent for China compared to 5.6 per cent for India during the period 1995