If citations by peers of research work done by scholars is a good benchmarking index, then Indian scholars rank second to China in the Asiatic region but is pushed to seventh place in the world rankings.

China had almost 36,000 citable documents in the business, management and accounting areas, while India had nearly 14,000 citations. However, in the world map, the US was far ahead with 1.6 lakh citations in the top rank.

Kulbhushan Balooni, Director-incharge, IIM Kozhikode, delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the Pan IIM World Management conference at the institute campus here, gave out these figures to stress the importance of research.

“Knowledge creation is recognition among the peers. Its benchmarking is done by the number of citations by peers of a research article. We do not have any choice but to accept the citations as an important indicator of the quality of research paper and the impact factor of the journals,” said Balooni.

Balooni said the IIMs have to collectively work towards effective knowledge management creation and raise their academic standards and also measure their own research performance effectively. While the top three IIMs, the older ones, as well as ISB, fare well in citations per document, the newer IIMs as well as other B schools, lag behind and have to catch up with their older peers, he said.

Balooni made the point that in recent years, a large number of young scholars have joined IIMs. “Those who have joined the new IIMs have an enormous responsibility on their shoulders to shape the academics of their respective institutions. The trend across IIMs is to push the research agenda and this augurs well for young research scholars,” he said.

The three-day conference will debate some of these issues confronting IIMs.

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