  India is emerging as a major knowledge producer of the world in terms of
proportionate share of global research output and the overall research
productivity rank. Many recent reports, both of commissioned studies from
Government of India as well as independent international agencies, show India
at different ranks of global research productivity (variations as large as from
3rd to 9th place). The paper examines this contradiction; tries to analyse as
to why different reports places India at different ranks and what may be the
reasons thereof. The research output data for India, along with the ten most
productive countries in the world, is analysed from three major scholarly
databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions for this purpose. Results show
that both, the endogenous factors (such as database coverage variation and
different subject classification schemes) and the exogenous factors (such as
subject selection and publication counting methodology) cause the variations in
different reports. This paper reports first part of the analysis, focusing
mainly on variations due to use of data from different databases. The policy
implications of the study are also discussed.
