The Problems of Social Science Research in India

Oxford Scholarship Online

The chapter analyses the quality of research in terms of quality of articles and of journals by using a quality index. It uses two-dimension indicators to judge the quality of articles, that is, citations (scholarly) and readership, which is the number of hits an article receives in a simple Google keyword search. The quality of a journal is measured in terms of three dimensions: its presence over time, its presence across space, and its depth. The study took 21351 journal articles from 1006 journals (902 journals from Scopus and 104 journals from ISID for five-year period, 2010–14. It emerged that India’s social science research (SSR) contributes more to public debates and policy formulations and relatively less in pushing the frontiers of knowledge for further research.

2015

1. Introduction South Asian economies have been evolving, experiencing a long period of robust economic growth, averaging 6% a year over the past 20 years. They have increased their economic profile on the world stage, built human capital by ensuring that the people of South Asia have access to education, health care, and social safety nets. But in their race for socio-economic development, these economies had followed different trajectories for the expansion of social sciences to achieve the levels of growth needed to meet the aspirations of all their people. South Asian countries as such have come to experience widely varying impact on their national research output in social science disciplines. There exist sharp differences between South Asia nations both in the nature of their social science institutional structures and in the pace at which these economies have grown. India leads in the number of universities, specialized research institutions, and other governmental and non-go...

International Journal of Governance & Development

Research is necessary for development in every country, research is necessary for the social and economic development of the country and also for the personal development of the citizens. Some scientific principles are used for research in social sciences, but in the present, the process of social research has become much more complicated than before. There has been a difference in all the activities from research problem to publishing research. In this research paper, challenges and expectations before social science research have been analyzed and suggestions have been given to make social science research useful to the society and for the country.

2013

The paper compares the status of social science research in four South Asian countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal for the period 1996-2011 as reflected in their publications output using various quantitative and qualitative indicators. It also looks at the similarities in the research profile of these four countries, besides looking at the priorities assigned and citation impact of different sub-fields under the five broad social science subjects, such as business, management & accounting, decision sciences, economics, econometrics & finance, psychology and social sciences-general in these three countries. The Scopus Citation Database has been used. The data covered in this study has been derived from SCImago Journal and Country Rank website ().

DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology

The paper compares the status of social science research in India, China and Brazil using various indicators. It particularly focuses on the analyses of annual average publication rate vis-à-vis global publication share; similarity in research profile of different countries; research priorities of countries as measured in terms of national publications output by sub-fields; relative share of international collaborative papers in the national output; distribution of research output by geographical regions within each country; and characteristics of high productivity institutions and highly cited papers computed on select measures.

Academia Letters, 2021

This term paper aims at understanding in general the dynamics of social science research as a career path in India. Vaidyanathan committee in its report has argued that in the South Asian region as a whole, the social sciences occupy the lowest place in terms of status and career opportunities. The social sciences are not thought to be as productive and lucrative as marketing, business and administration (Committee, 2007). From this argument I contextualize the word dignity in respect of social science research as a career path. The report further states that traditionally, engineering and medicine attracted the best students, as these professions were at the top of the occupational hierarchy and offered the best career prospects. Currently, the best minds are encouraged to acquire MBAs and computer science degrees, as the plethora of career opportunities have emerged in sectors like communication, banking, leisure and entertainment, real estate, media, finances over the last two decades. Disciplines like history and political sciences attract fewer students than before due to their limited career opportunities. From this argument I put in context the word incentive. Thus, the main context under which study has been carried out is to analyze the two aspects related with social science research as a career path. First, is the dignity aspect and the second is the incentive aspect. The focus is on to understand how these two aspects are the two sides of the same coin while analyzing the findings of the study.

Sociological Bulletin,Vol. 7, No. 2 (September 1958), pp. 148-151, 1958

Social Sciences have reference not only to the future but to the past. It is common place now-a-days to say that history should not deal with the story of kings and princes or of great wars, but should concern itself with the social and economic life of the past. This is not for just adding to our knowledge but also for unravelling and understanding the root causes of many elements of our present-day life.A central co-ordinating body of all the Social Sciences being essential, the Government should not grudge spending a few lakhs in the cause of some of the vital problems of our national and social life. This content downloaded from 14.139.211.194 on Mon, 17 Nov 2014 03:57:31 AM All use

The purpose of this study is to analyze research productivity, thrust area, new trends and most productive guide in Kumaun University during 2000-2010. Bibliographical survey method is adopted for data collection based on certain access points or aspects which are determined with the help of the guide. Bibliographical description of each thesis is according to standard format of AACR-II(R) and for classification DDC-22nd edition is used as tool and key words (subjects) considered by SLSH. The researcher and guide ratio is 1.5:1. It indicates that university research level is very low. The other reason behind that is after completion of Maters degree, young generations are not much interested in doing Ph.D. Hence, Kumaun University should encourage and motivate students for doing Ph.D. and research work. 22.41% and 17.24% of theses were awarded during 2002-03 and 2009-10 respectively. The major research areas that emerge are Political Process, Politics & Governments, and Public Administration. The study also reveals that male researchers are more interested in doing research on Political Process (20.69%), while 10.34% female are interested in Politics and Government. The most important fact that occurs in the investigation is that the male scholar’s percentage (62.07%) is higher than female researchers. In addition the medium of Doctoral dissertation is both Hindi and English.