Relevance IN -Prelims ( all about Nature Index 2020 )
What's the NEWS

• Three of the autonomous institutions of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India have found their place among top 30 Indian Institutions including universities, IITs, IISERs, and Research Institutions and Labs as per Nature Index 2020 ratings based on the research published in the top journals, a measure of research quality.

Globally the top-rated Indian institutions in this list are
1. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a group of 39 institutions at the 160th position
2. Indian Institute of Science (IISc)Bangalore at the 184th position.
Know! about Nature Index 2020

• The Nature Index 2020 Annual Tables highlight the institutions and countries that dominated high quality research in the natural sciences in 2019 as tracked by Nature Index.
• The rankings are based on an institution's or country's share of articles published in the 82 prestigious scientific journals selected by an independent panel of experts and tracked by the Nature Index database.
• Each year, the Nature Index publishes tables based on counts of high-quality research outputs in the previous calendar year.
• The Nature Index is a database of author affiliation information collated from research articles published in an independently selected group of 82 high-quality science journals.
• The database is compiled by Nature Research.
• The Nature Index provides a close to real-time proxy of high-quality research output and collaboration at the institutional, national and regional level.

Human Resource Development
India Rankings 2020 for Higher Educational Institutions

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about India Rankings 2020 highlights + about National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) + Mains ( GS II Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.
What's the NEWS

• The Ministry of Human Resource Development released "India Rankings 2020" of Institutions of Higher Education in various categories on the basis of their performance on five broad categories of parameters.

India Rankings 2020 (Highlights)

• Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is the best educational institute in the country, as per the National Institutional Ranking Framework Rankings (NIRF) India Rankings 2020 of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
• Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru took the second spot while IIT Delhi was in the third position in this year's NIRF India Rankings.
• This year, a total of 5,805 applications have come in for participation in the process of the rankings.
• The Ministry has released India Rankings 2020 virtually in 10 categories
• This is the fifth consecutive edition of India Rankings of the institutions of higher education in India.
• In 2020, an addition to nine rankings ie one domain "Dental" has been introduced for the first time bringing the total tally to 10 categories / subject domains.

The ranking framework evaluates institutions on five broad generic groups of parameters
1. Teaching, Learning and Resources (TLR)
2. Research and Professional Practice (RP)
3. Graduation Outcomes (GO)
4. Outreach and Inclusivity (OI) and
5. Perception (PR).

• Ranks are assigned based on total sum of marks assigned for each of these five broad groups of parameters

Know! about National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)

• The Ministry of HRD has taken this important initiative of creating a National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), which is being used for past five years for ranking of institutions of higher education
• These rankings were launched in September 2015 and till now the list has been published in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. These rankings are expected to act as a guide to students looking for higher educational institutions in India.
• Apart from overall ranking, category-specific rankings are done for colleges and universities and subject-specific rankings are done for Engineering, Management, Pharmacy, Architecture, Law and Medicine.
• A new subject domain, i.e. "Dental" is introduced from 2020 onwards.

Third party sources

• Besides, sourcing data on various parameters from applicant institutions, third party sources of data have also been used
• Scopus (Elsevier Science) and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) were used for retrieving publications and citations data.
• Derwent Innovation was used for retrieving data on patents.

QS World University rankings 2021
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about QS World University rankings -highlights)
What's the NEWS

• The top five Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science have all dropped in this year's QS World University rankings
• Only the newer IITs in Guwahati and Hyderabad were able to show improvement.
• The total number of Indian institutions in the top 1,000 global list has also fallen from 24 to 21, despite the Centre's flagship Institutes of Eminence scheme(IoE), launched two years ago in a bid to boost the Indian presence in these global rankings.

QS World University rankings (highlights)

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) secured Rank 1, Stanford and Harvard universities secured the next two ranks in the list of the world's best universities.
• India performs poorest on the parameter of internationalisation while scoring well on research impact, measured through citations per faculty.
• Out of the six parameters, Indian institutions get zero score on ratio of international faculty and students.
• India also scores poorly on faculty-student ratio
• India did quite well on the research impact parameter
• IIT-Bombay still maintains its position as the top institution in India in the QS rankings, but has slipped 20 places from 152 to 172 in the global list.
• IISc overtook IIT Delhi to make it to the second place, but still dropped a rank to 185.
• IIT Delhi fell more than 10 places in the rankings to 193 rank, while IIT Madras is at 275.
• Both IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur crashed out of the top 300.
• IIT Roorkee maintained its ranking at 383, while IIT Guwahati improved from 491 to 470.
• IIT Hyderabad entered the top 1,000 for the first time.

Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU)

• The state university has made considerable progress as it was ranked among the top 700 (651-700 bracket), jumping nearly 150 positions from the 800+ bracket it was in last year.

Know! about QS World University Rankings

• QS World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
• Previously known as Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings, the publisher had collaborated with Times Higher Education (THE) magazine to publish its international league tables from 2004 to 2009 before both started to announce their own versions.
• The QS World University Rankings measures institutes on 6 factors reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, employer reputation, international faculty ratio, and student ratio.

Additional info.
Connect to the Past Current Capsules ( August 2019 and 2018)
20 Institution recommended for status of ‘Institutions of Eminence (IoE)
Public institutions (5)

• Union Human Resource Development Ministry, following the recommendation from UGC, decided to grant Institution of Eminence status to five public institutions.
• The public institutions on the list will then be eligible for a Government grant of Rs. 1,000 Cr spread over 5-years.
• They are required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry, laying out their plans to achieve the objective of becoming world class institutions.

Private institutions (5)

• Letter of Intent has also been sent to five private institutions for the IoE status.
• Government do not give any financial support to them.

• Public Institutions - Indian Institute of Science, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi
• Private Institutions - Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Manipal academy of Higher education, Jio Institute

10 Institutions granted Institution of Eminence Status now in 2019
Public Institution

• IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Banaras Hindu University , University of Hyderabad , University of Delhi

Private Institutions

• Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham , Vellore Institute of Technology , Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology , Bharti Institute( Satya bharti foundation Mohali) - These Private institutes will need to submit their readiness for commencing academic operations as IoEs

4 Institutes have to fulfil certain technical aspects

• Public Institutions - Jadavpur University ( West Bengal) and Anna University (Tamil Nadu) - the Tamil Nadu and West Bengal governments must commit themselves to contributing half of the funds required for Anna University and Jadavpur University respectively
• Private Institutions - Shiv Nadar University and O.P Jindal global university - letters were issued to the state governments to pass legislation in the state assembly to cease the status of these universities as private Universities so as to enable them to be considered as Deemed University

Know! the Salient Features of the Institutions of Eminence (IoE)

• Government Institutions to get additional funding up to Rs. 1,000 Cr.
• They will have complete academic and administrative autonomy.
• They will have complete financial autonomy to spend the resources raised and allocated, subject to general conditions and restrictions.
• Academic collaboration with foreign higher educational institutions (in top 500) would be exempt from Government approvals.
• Freedom to hire personnel from industry.
• Freedom to recruit faculty from outside India (with limit of 25% of faculty strength).
• Freedom to admit additionally foreign students on merit subject to a maximum of 30% of the strength of admitted domestic students.
• Freedom to fix and charge fees from foreign students without restriction.
• Freedom to fix the domestic student fees, subject to the condition that no student, who gets admission is turned away for lack of finance.
• Freedom to enter into academic collaborations with other Institutions within the country.
• Freedom to have own transparent merit based system for admission of students.
• Every Institute to encourage scholarships and extension of loans facility.
• Freedom to offer courses within a program, as well as to offer degrees in newer areas, including inter-disciplinary ones.
• Freedom to have the flexibility of course structure in terms of number of credit hours.
• Flexibility in fixing of curriculum and syllabus, with no UGC mandated curriculum structure.
• Freedom to offer online courses as part of their programmes with a restriction that not more than 20% of the programmes should be in online mode.
• Students enrolment capacity to be 10,000 in 15 years.
• Faculty-Student Ratio should be 1:20 at the time of Notification and should increase to 1:10 in five years.
• UGC Inspections shall not apply to Institutions of Eminence.

Science & Technology
Joint Science Communication Forum
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about joint Science Communication Forum -its objective) + Mains ( GS III awareness in the field of science and technology)
What's the NEWS

• The Department of Science & Technology has constituted a joint Science Communication Forum with a view to facilitate interaction, cooperation, and coordination amongst various public sector science communication institutions and agencies.

Know! about the forum

• The Forum brings together science communication efforts spread across various institutions and can help adoption of a common policy and best practices at a wider scale, ultimately aiming towards a national science communication framework.
• It is represented by senior officials from various central ministries and departments, including Agriculture, Health, Culture, Defense, Space, Atomic Energy, and Information & Broadcasting, in addition to Science & Technology.
• The Forum would work upon strategies for effective planning and implementation of science communication programmes at macro and micro level in the country to spread scientific awareness
• The Forum would be served by a Secretariat at the National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC), Department of Science & Technology

National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC)

• The National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) is a scientific programme of the Government of India for the popularisation of science, dissemination of scientific knowledge and inculcation of scientific temper.
• Established under the Department of Science and Technology, it "is mandated to communicate Science and Technology to masses, stimulate scientific and technological temper and coordinate and orchestrate such efforts throughout the country.
• NCSTC was established in 1982.

Connect to the Past (May 2020)
Year of Awareness on Science & Health (YASH)

• National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC) and Department of Science & Technology (DST) has launched a programme on health and risk communication ‘Year of Awareness on Science & Health (YASH)' with focus on COVID-19.
• It is a comprehensive science and health communication initiative to promote grass-root level response on health.
• The aim of the initiative is to encourage the public engagement and enable communities to increase their sense of awareness against COVID-19.
• The YASH programme will help in improving risk understanding, indigenous knowledge, bring attitudinal changes, to cope with courage and confidence.

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