Fish science research in China: How does it compare with fish research in India?

Fish and aquaculture research in the People's Republic of China over the si x years 1994-1999 has been mapped using data from six databases - three abs tracting services and three citation indexes. The results are compared with fish science research in India. During the six years China has published 2 035 papers (roughly 4.5 -5% of the world output) and India 2454. More than 95% of China's papers are journal articles, compared to 82.8% of Indian pap ers. About 78% of China's journal paper output has appeared in 143 domestic journals compared to 70% from India in 113 Indian journals. Less than one- eighth of the journal articles published by Chinese researchers are publish ed in journals indexed in SCI, compared to 30% of journal articles by India n researchers. Less than a dozen papers from each of these countries have a ppeared in journals of impact factor greater than 3.0. Fish research instit utes and fishery colleges are the major contributors of the Chinese researc h output in this area. In India academic institutions are the leading contr ibutors (61%), followed by central government institutions (> 25%). Qingdao , Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai are the cities and Shandong, Hubei and Fujian are the provinces contributing a large number of papers. As we do not have addresses of all authors in most of the papers, we are unable to estimate the extent of international collaboration. Although China's research output and its citation impact are less than those of India, China's fish product ion and export earnings are far higher than those of India. Probably China is better at bridging the gap between knowhow (research) and do-how (techno logy and creation of employment and wealth). China is pretty strong in exte nsion.