Who is Funding Indian Research? A Look at Major Funding Sources Acknowledged in Indian Research Papers

Background Science and scientific research activities, in addition to the involvement of the researchers, require resources like research infrastructure, materials and reagents, databases and computational tools, journal subscriptions and publication charges etc. In order to meet these requirements, researchers try to attract research funding from different funding sources, both intramural and extramural. Though some recent reports provide macro level details of the amount of funding provided by different funding agencies in India, it is not known what quantum of research output resulted from such funding. Objective and Methodology This paper, therefore, attempts to identify the research output produced with the funding provided by different funding agencies to Indian researchers. It uses Indian research publication data as a proxy to analyze funded research output of different agencies. Results The major funding agencies that support Indian research publications are identified and are further characterized in terms of being national or international, and public or private. Implications The analytical results not only provide a quantitative estimate of funded research from India and the major funding agencies supporting the research, but also discusses the overall context of research funding in India, particularly in the context of upcoming operationalization of Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF).