The ISI's Delhi campus has been rated first in the country and the city campus second in economics research.
The ISI is followed by the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Delhi School of Economics.
The Indian universities and institutes are ranked based on productivity in social science research in four categories.
"The rankings presented here are based on a limited set of variables, namely the number of peer-reviewed journal articles produced by an institution and the number of citations these articles received," said the study.
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The raw data included any article published in one of the 3015 social science journals indexed by ISI, including Indian journals as well as international journals, by an author affiliated with a university or institute located in India between 2000 and 2010.
The institutions are ranked according to their research productivity (citations and publications) in their respective categories.
In the sociology, demography and family studies category, Delhi University topped the list followed by the JNU.
In psychology also Delhi University has stayed ahead of all others followed by Allahabad University and IIT Kharagpur.