NIRF Ranking 2025: More than half management institutes, 31% colleges publish zero research

NIRF Ranking 2025 Research: Over half the management institutions – 58.31% — and 31.47% colleges that participated in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2025 had zero research publications, show data released by the Ministry of Education.

Live Updates: NIRF Ranking 2025

“Research and professional practices”, with five indicators, is one of the most important parameters under NIRF India Rankings.

The ministry has called this a “concerning trend” and stresses on the urgent need to build on the need for “capacity building” and “research incentives”.

NIRF Ranking: Institutions with zero publications

A total of 14,163 institutions participated in NIRF Ranking 2025, across various categories – an over 200% increase since it started in 2015.

From the overall category to disciplines like management, pharmacy, engineering, there are institutions with zero publications. The Research and Professional practice (RP) parameter has the score divided into four components:

• Combined metric for Publications (PU)

• Combined metric for Quality of Publications (QP)

• IPR and Patents: Published and Granted (IPR)

• Footprint of Projects and Professional Practice (FPPP)

“The management category shows the most concerning trend with 58.31% of its institutions reporting no research publications at all, indicating a widespread lack of research engagement in the discipline. Colleges also show a high level of research inactivity,reflecting teaching-focused orientation of undergraduate colleges,” stated the report by the education ministry.

The table below shows the counts of institutions with zero publications:

NIRF 2025: Institutions with zero publications

“These figures highlight the uneven research culture across disciplines and point to the urgent need for capacity building and research incentives, especially in management institutions and colleges to foster a more balanced and inclusive research ecosystem in the country,” stated the report.

NIRF has used third party sources to extract information on scholarly output (including research publications, citations, HCP and patents) by applicant institutions.

The analysis on the report is presented from only one source, i.e., Web of Science. Data quoted is for a three-year period from 2021 to 2023.

NIRF 2025: IITs, IISc lead with publication, citation

An analysis from the top 100 institutions in the overall category, highlighted that IITs and IISc lead with 19 institutions contributing 28.70% of total publications and receiving 30.84% of the total citations.

The table below shows different institutions publication and citation percentage:

NIRF 2025: Institutions with publications, citations

NIRF 2025: Top 100 pharmacy institutes granted patents

In pharmacy, the 100 top-ranked institutions held 82% of the patents granted as compared to 18% held by the remaining 438 pharmacy institutions.

However, the 100 top-ranked universities and engineering institutions account for 65% of patents granted as compared to 35% by the remaining 406 universities and 1,389 engineering institutions.

“The figure shows a marked concentration of output within the 100 top-ranked institutions across all disciplines and categories. In overall and engineering, the 100 top-ranked institutions account for 16,351 and 17,330 patents with an average of 164 and 173 patents per institution, whereas the remaining institutions collectively published 37,717 and 32,453 patents in the respective category, but with a much lower average of 23 patents each per institution despite contributing the 70% and 65% of total patents respectively,” stated the report.