Research Trends In Select Science Faculties Of University Of Jammu.

IntroductionKnowledge is being valued as a vital asset for progress and prosperity in every sphere of human understanding. The domain of knowledge especially scientific knowledge is ever expanding resulting out of experimentation carried out at different levels. This trend makes scientific & technological activities more important because it expands the intellectual asset of human kind and solves important national problems (Yamamoto, 2001). The most significant source of technological progress over the past several years has been the advancement of scientific knowledge. The dependence of industrial innovation on science first became evident in the last few decades of the 19th century. Industries the driving force of economy for a nation came to rely on universities to train the scientists & engineers that they would employ in their research. Therefore, University research itself also contributed to technical advances in industry all over the world (Hill, 2006). Science & technological research became the key area of focus because the engine of economic growth & social prosperity is the knowledge & the basic research that produces that knowledge. Okafor and Dike (2010) considers that the primary aim of research is discovering, interpreting, and the development of methods & systems for the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of scientific matters of world & universe. The results stemming from research & development can be used to solve various kinds of problems that are confronted by the society world over.Modern day research is increasingly complex & demands an ever-widening range of skills. Collaboration is one way of addressing such demands. The science community has increasingly celebrated collaborative research and there has been growing importance of research collaboration in science community (Gupta & Dhawan, 2008). According to He, Geng and Hunt (2008) among the numerous benefits of research collaboration, often cited in literature are sharing knowledge & techniques, cross pollination of ideas, pooling research resources & sharing expensive instruments, increasing visibility & recognition and accelerating research progress.Research, is regarded as an important indicator of nations competitiveness for the present and future (Abbot & Doucouliagos, 2004). Although govt. and private institutions have set up their own research centres and started their own research, universities continue to play a prominent role in knowledge production particularly in pure or basic research fields (Conroy, 1989); (Geuna, 1998); (Loon, 2008) as cited in ( Li, Millwater & Hudson, 2008). The ultimate output of research in universities may come in different forms varying over time like scientific and technological information (Mowery, n.d.). Research output is a mean by which academics contribute their own knowledge to existing body of knowledge. These contributions are generally in the form of books, journal articles and reports (Okafor 2011). The generation, dissemination and applications of research outputs and findings are the basis for industrial innovations and improved productivity and competitiveness at the organizational, societal and national levels. Recognizing the immense importance of science and technology India, has built up a strong research and development base in both governmental and private sectors in all areas of science and technology. This has lead to an impressive quality of research publications. As reflected in the publications indexed in international multidisciplinary subject databases, India's publication growth rate has been relatively much faster in recent years (Gupta & Dhawan, 2006). So, a quantitative investigation of research publication, based on attributes like author, institutional affiliation, citation to papers etc which constitutes the research output are important for knowledge representation at the level of scientific speciality as well as for studying intellectual structures and also for understanding informal and formal collaborative networks in both natural and social science. …