India (Commonwealth Union)_ India has made a good showing in Stanford University‘s newest global ranking of the top 2% of scientists, with 6,239 Indian researchers earning a spot in the single-year 2024 group. This represents a noteworthy 16% increase over the previous year, when 5,363 Indian scientists were included. The list, released by Stanford and based on citation data until August 1, 2025, assesses scientists worldwide using a composite citation score. It includes those who rank among the top 100,000 globally or fall within the top 2% of their specific field. Two separate lists are released: one covering career-long impact and the other focused on a single year’s research performance.
While India’s presence in the single-year list has grown, its representation in the career-long category has seen a drop. Only 3,372 Indian scientists were included in this long-term group, an almost 37% decrease from last year. In 2023, 4,635 Indian researchers have made it onto the career-long list. Among the institutes, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) excelled notably, with 755 scientists named to the 2024 single-year list. The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) had over 330 researchers, while the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore had 117.
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AIIMS also had a significant presence with 80 scientists, most of them from AIIMS New Delhi (56). Outside of central institutions, Jadavpur University (50), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) (88), Amity University (80), Aligarh Muslim University (46), and Banaras Hindu University (51) also made notable contributions. One standout was Chitkara University, a private institution in Punjab, which saw 59 of its researchers included, an uncommon feat for a private university.
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In the career-long list, IIT Delhi led among Indian institutes with 105 scientists, followed by IIT Kharagpur (91), IIT Madras (75), and IIT Bombay (70). IIMs, by contrast, had only 10 researchers in this long-term category and 36 in the single-year list. Other contributors to the career-long list include NITs (140), IISc (134), ICAR (43), Jadavpur University (40), BARC (39), and Amity University (26).
Globally, the United States continues to dominate the rankings with 73,018 scientists in the 2024 single-year list and 87,859 in the career-long category. China follows with over 31,000, pushing Great Britain to third place. The rankings cover 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields, using the Science-Metrix classification system. Only scientists with at least five publications were considered.
