Impact of DST-FIST Funding on Research Publications in India (2000-2020): A Bibliometric Investigation

The Department of Science and Technology-Funding for Improvement of Science and Technology (DST-FIST), the Government of India, is incessantly supporting the academic and research institutions to promote the research culture. The Government and specific funding agencies would like to know the impact of such research funding across various states, fields, disciplines, institutions, and researchers. The present study investigates the impact of DST-FIST funding on research publications in India through bibliometric analysis using the R programming and VOS viewer. Among the various other research outcomes, only research papers published during 2000-2020 by acknowledging the DST-FIST funding from the Web of Science database were considered for the present study. Regarding the impact of DST-FIST funding on research publications, we can draw reasonable conclusions based on bibliometric analysis. The investigation resulted in 7289 documents. The research collaboration worldwide is investigated with the help of explosion and growth patterns in scientific research outcomes. The most dominant document type is research articles, which accounted for 95.80% (6983). Research articles published under DST-FIST grants during 2000-2020 have received 76031 citations. The research publications in the field of Chemistry alone accounted for 47%, with 3437 articles. It implies that research in the chemistry domain (Crystallography, electrochemistry, polymer science, organic and inorganic, analytical, etc.) is the largest beneficiary of the DST-FIST funding scheme. The Annual Percentage Growth Rate in research publication was 25.6 %, and the compound annual growth rate for the period 2000-2020 is 45.94%. The Country Collaboration Network indicated that India collaborates with significant countries like the USA, Spain, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc. The maximum numbers of publication are in collaboration with the USA (227 publications), Spain (128 publications), Saudi Arabia (128 publications), and South Korea (121 publications). Overall, the study results projected a significant impact of research grants on the quality and quantity of research publications providing a wide-country collaboration network.