To perform a qualitative assessment of research publications coming from two premier medical institutes in India.

Research publications from AIIMS and PGIMER published during 2004 to 2008 were analyzed. The publications were categorized into five types. A year-wise analysis was done for both the institutes. Data was obtained from Scopus. The collected data included the number of papers published in a category, total citations received by a type of publication in a year, number of publications which have no citations, number of publications with only one citation, h-index, number of zero and only one citation were added to get publications with negligible citations.

A total number of 4,828 and 2,882 research publications were analyzed from AIIMS and PGIMER respectively. The original articles attracted highest no of citations that is 64 and 66% of the total citations in a year for AIIMS and PGIMER respectively. Approximately 37 to 42% of the original articles get negligible citations. The h-index for various categories of article was higher for the original articles (18/13), whereas it was very low for other category of research publications.

The original articles fetch more citations in long run. Close to 40% of the original research done in the studied institutes get negligible citations pointing toward their outcome utility and quality. More than 60% of the minor category publications remain uncited. This sort of data if periodically obtained should serve as a benchmark for quality analysis of scientific research.

Kanojia RP, Rathod KK, Rao KLN. Qualitative Assessment of Research done at Two Premier Medical Institutes in India: Some Data for Introspection. J Postgrad Med Edu Res 2012;46(1):24-33.