Research scores race; academic reputation walks behind
India keeps climbing the global rankings, but academic reputation – the indicator that counts most can be earned only gradually. At first glance, India’s global rank cards look glowing. QS World University Rankings 2027 list 52 Indian institutions – the fifth-largest contingent and the fastest-growing in the Group 20 nations. Times Higher Education (THE) 2027 features a record 143 institutions, second only to the United States. After jumping from 46 to a record 54 in 2026, India’s QS count in 2027 slipped to 52. Only three institutions – IIT Delhi, Bombay and Madras – sit in the global top 200, the same three as last year. Several little-known institutions scored citation scores above 95%, but a closer look reveals the major slippages. Only 6% improved their faculty–student ratio this year, while 30% declined. About 90% saw no change in foreign-student share; just one institution ranks in the global top 500 for international faculty. The weakest point: academic reputation, with the highest weightage of 30%. Only 8% of Indian institutions improved in QS 2027, while 28% fell. No Indian institution is in the global top 100 for academic reputation. To evaluate it, QS asks over 1.2 lakh academicians worldwide to name up to 10 domestic and 30 international institutions they consider best for research in their field. THE runs its own Academic Reputation Survey, which drives teaching reputation (15%) and research reputation (18%) – a third of its total.
Why reputation matters beyond rankings
For students, a respected name opens doors to universities abroad, global employers and scholarships. For faculty, reputation decides who they prefer to work with. Strong researchers want institutions whose names open doors to collaborators, grants and editorial boards. It also draws international faculty and students – precisely where India is the weakest. Meanwhile, the one score that is rising – research citations – the picture is cloudy. As per the Stanford–Elsevier list of the world’s top 2% scientists in 2026, hyper-prolific Indian scientists, publishing over 20 papers a year, nearly doubled in a year, from 150 to 292. The share of listed Indian scientists with a retraction rose from 8.6% to 13.3%, more than twice the global average. Near-perfect citation scores from little-known institutions don’t impress peers; they breed suspicion. To be fair, 87% of these scientists have never had a paper retracted. But global reputation is a shared national asset. When a foreign partner or journal editor judges India, the misdeeds of a few colour the general impression of all. THE will cap institutional self-citations from its 2028 edition. QS monitors hyper-authored papers and uses AI to catch coordinated survey responses which are prone to manipulation. NIRF stopped counting self-citations in 2024 and began penalising retractions in 2025. If media reports are right that the delay in announcing the NIRF 2026 list stems from tighter research checks, the delay is worth having.
Way forward
Building reputation is critical. It needs deliberate international positioning: scholarly communication, faculty exchanges, and a sustained presence at international events. Send researchers to present their impactful papers at global conferences, instead of paying huge incentives for publishing papers. Host visiting foreign professors. Build a few genuine joint-supervision and co-publication partnerships instead of dozens of paper MoUs. Get faculty onto global editorial boards. Place Ph.D. scholars and postdocs in good labs abroad; they become ambassadors for decades. And focus on a few areas to be known for, before trying to be known for everything. Reputation is built brick by brick. Institutions need to implement research integrity policies that matter: monitor self-citation, retractions, and authorship patterns, train every doctoral scholar in publication ethics, and reward a researcher for impactful papers, not the number of papers. Regulators – NAAC, NBA and NIRF – can help. They should weigh learning outcomes and build an institution-level integrity indicator which will enhance the credibility of Indian institutions. Rankings are mirrors. Too many institutions are polishing the mirror instead of improving the face. From 2028, shortcuts will cost more than they earn. Reputation will be a long-term valuable asset. The institutions that earn their international peers’ trust will carry India to the global top 100. (Prof O R S Rao is the Chancellor of the ICFAI University, Sikkim. Views are personal) | 
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