Biodiversity research in India: a bibliometric overview

As one of the ‘megadiverse’ countries, biodiversity research in India is not only important, specifically for India, but also for the world. To investigate the condition of biodiversity in the Indian academic literature, bibliometric analysis was employed. The Web of Science Core Collection provided data (2000–2023). Out of a preliminary set of 1090 publications, 223 were finalised with a focus solely on the Indian context. The characteristics, clustering, networks, and trends within the field—published works, publishers, authors, journals, institutions, funding agencies, collaborations, and so on —were analysed and visualised using R and VOSviewer. Additionally, co-authorship, co-citation, co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling, etc., pertaining to Keyword Plus, authors, journals, organisations, etc., are the subject of the analysis. The three most relevant sources were ‘Current Science’, ‘Biodiversity and Conservation’, and ‘Indian Journal of Animal Sciences’. The best-performing affiliations were the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Wildlife Institute of India (WII), and the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC). A significant portion of the research was focused on environmental science ecology (52.46%), Biodiversity Conservation (15.69%), Science Technology (15.24%), and agriculture (7.17%). Based on this study’s findings, we propose six important policy recommendations. We anticipate that this study will provide policymakers with important information on the research needs of emerging nations such as India, as well as recommendations and insights.