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Belgium vs India

On research quality in 2022-now, India ranks #18 in the world and Belgium #19, of 189 countries. Belgium stands higher in 15 of the 26 fields both publish in, India in 11.

Research profiles alike: -0.53different shapes of research, whatever their size. How it is measured

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Belgium

World rank, 2022-now
#19
#19 all time
Works, 2022-now
106k
fractional
Top-10% rate
11.6%
share of its work among the world's most cited
Open access
43%
of its works free to read

Strongest relative focus: Medical Terminology, Equine, Insect Science.

India

World rank, 2022-now
#18
#20 all time
Works, 2022-now
1.4M
fractional
Top-10% rate
6.5%
share of its work among the world's most cited
Open access
40%
of its works free to read

Strongest relative focus: Drug Discovery, Pharmaceutical Science, Complementary and alternative medicine.

Who leads, measure by measure?

Belgium leads on 6 of 9 measures: excellence for its fields, top-10% rate, citations per work, institutions in the world top 100, open access and international co-authorship. India leads on 3 of 9 measures: research quality, output and growth.

Belgium 63 India
  1. #19Research qualityworld rank of 189 countries, 2022-now#18
  2. 1.17×Excellence for its fieldsits top-10% rate against what its topics predict; 1.00× is as expected0.67×
  3. 106kOutputfractional works, 2022-now1.4M
  4. 11.6%Top-10% rateshare of its works among the world's most cited6.5%
  5. 22.6Citations per workall time, per fractional work12.0
  6. 1World top 100institutions it holds among the world's best 1000
  7. 43%Open accessof its works free to read, all time40%
  8. 27%Internationalof its works written with co-authors abroad, all time11%
  9. -13%Growthworks in 2022-25 against 2018-21; half a bar is no change+48%

A rank is drawn as its standing: the longer the bar, the nearer the top. Anything else is drawn against the larger of the two, and two values a hair apart are called level. Quality, excellence and the top-10% rate are explained in the methodology.

Who leads in each field?

Belgium stands higher in 15 of 26 fields, India in 11. Belgium leads most in Immunology and Microbiology (#10 against #28); India leads most in Chemistry (#5 against #20). Each bar is that side's standing among all countries ranked in the field: the full bar is first place.

Belgium 1511 India
  1. #14Agricultural and Biological Sciences#17
  2. #15Arts and Humanities#23
  3. #19Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology#21
  4. #21Business, Management and Accounting#18
  5. #15Chemical Engineering#6
  6. #20Chemistry#5
  7. #24Computer Science#19
  8. #18Decision Sciences#14
  9. #19Dentistry#27
  10. #20Earth and Planetary Sciences#23
  11. #18Economics, Econometrics and Finance#20
  12. #24Energy#15
  13. #18Engineering#15
  14. #17Environmental Science#18
  15. #19Health Professions#23
  16. #10Immunology and Microbiology#28
  17. #25Materials Science#14
  18. #19Mathematics#17
  19. #16Medicine#30
  20. #19Neuroscience#27
  21. #20Nursing#23
  22. #17Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics#8
  23. #20Physics and Astronomy#19
  24. #20Psychology#35
  25. #20Social Sciences#36
  26. #14Veterinary#19

Standing is the percentile of world rank within each field, 2022-now; the printed number is the rank itself. A dash means the field is too small there to rank. How sides are compared.

The numbers behind each field

Click a heading to sort. The side that does better in a pair of columns is shaded: a lower rank, a higher rate, more works.

Field Belgium rankIndia rank Belgium top 10%India top 10% Belgium worksIndia works
Agricultural and Biological Sciences #14 #17 11.2% 6.9% 5.1k 108k
Arts and Humanities #15 #23 12.0% 8.5% 4.7k 17k
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology #19 #21 11.5% 6.2% 6.1k 70k
Business, Management and Accounting #21 #18 13.1% 8.9% 2.4k 37k
Chemical Engineering #15 #6 9.2% 7.6% 395 5.8k
Chemistry #20 #5 10.6% 7.8% 1.5k 38k
Computer Science #24 #19 9.5% 6.5% 5.9k 167k
Decision Sciences #18 #14 12.2% 7.7% 1k 15k
Dentistry #19 #27 16.8% 4.1% 419 15k
Earth and Planetary Sciences #20 #23 10.3% 7.0% 1.6k 14k
Economics, Econometrics and Finance #18 #20 12.0% 7.3% 2.4k 22k
Energy #24 #15 9.3% 6.9% 645 17k
Engineering #18 #15 9.8% 7.0% 14k 261k
Environmental Science #17 #18 10.8% 7.7% 5.1k 65k
Health Professions #19 #23 12.1% 6.8% 2.9k 29k
Immunology and Microbiology #10 #28 14.1% 5.7% 1.3k 10k
Materials Science #25 #14 9.3% 7.2% 2.8k 71k
Mathematics #19 #17 11.1% 9.0% 1.4k 17k
Medicine #16 #30 13.1% 4.8% 23k 254k
Neuroscience #19 #27 10.9% 5.9% 2.4k 19k
Nursing #20 #23 13.7% 6.6% 456 8.5k
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics #17 #8 10.1% 6.4% 264 11k
Physics and Astronomy #20 #19 11.0% 6.2% 2.8k 26k
Psychology #20 #35 11.2% 5.2% 3.9k 26k
Social Sciences #20 #36 12.3% 7.2% 13k 61k
Veterinary #14 #19 13.9% 4.3% 298 1.6k

What is each known for?

The keywords that describe each side's research, by fractional works in 2022-now and weighted toward what it does more of than the world.

Belgium

▲ more of its work than of the world's◆ about the world's share▼ less than the world's
All 40 words, with their numbers
  1. Epidemiology5,676▲ 1.18×140 topics
  2. Climate Change3,571◆ 1.09×131 topics
  3. Globalization2,872▲ 1.21×182 topics
  4. Machine Learning2,752▼ 0.68×95 topics
  5. Sustainability2,563◆ 0.87×139 topics
  6. Deep Learning2,543▼ 0.61×84 topics
  7. Inflammation2,452◆ 0.95×83 topics
  8. Quality of Life2,117▲ 1.21×61 topics
  9. Public Health1,899◆ 1.08×76 topics
  10. Environmental Impact1,870◆ 0.91×73 topics
  11. Mental Health1,824◆ 1.06×48 topics
  12. Treatment1,666◆ 1.13×52 topics
  13. Oxidative Stress1,578▼ 0.79×63 topics
  14. Biodiversity1,547▲ 1.68×38 topics
  15. Human Rights1,377◆ 1.11×90 topics
  16. Cardiovascular Disease1,345◆ 0.98×39 topics
  17. Renewable Energy1,332▼ 0.76×61 topics
  18. Diagnosis1,313▲ 1.17×41 topics
  19. Invasive Species1,118▲ 2.2×21 topics
  20. Identity1,090▲ 1.25×79 topics
  21. Genetics1,056▲ 1.24×27 topics
  22. Gender1,049▲ 1.62×58 topics
  23. Management1,048◆ 1.09×40 topics
  24. Clinical Trials974▲ 1.21×19 topics
  25. Social Justice970▲ 1.35×55 topics
  26. Religion929▲ 1.66×43 topics
  27. Colonialism917▲ 1.60×51 topics
  28. Evolution878▲ 2.7×19 topics
  29. Ethics878▲ 1.44×62 topics
  30. Conservation875▲ 1.69×24 topics
  31. Democracy797▲ 1.89×30 topics
  32. Phylogeny787▲ 3.9×17 topics
  33. Community Engagement766▲ 1.95×21 topics
  34. European Union738▲ 2.7×29 topics
  35. Taxonomy679▲ 3.9×15 topics
  36. Biogeography664▲ 1.97×20 topics
  37. DNA Barcoding651▲ 3.1×9 topics
  38. Territorial Governance539▲ 3.9×4 topics
  39. Local Development510▲ 4.1×2 topics
  40. Institutionalization460▲ 4.1×5 topics

India

▲ more of its work than of the world's◆ about the world's share▼ less than the world's
All 40 words, with their numbers
  1. Deep Learning122k▲ 2.2×85 topics
  2. Machine Learning110k▲ 2.0×97 topics
  3. Epidemiology62k◆ 0.97×140 topics
  4. Sustainability43k◆ 1.10×139 topics
  5. Climate Change40k◆ 0.92×132 topics
  6. Neural Networks37k▲ 1.50×42 topics
  7. Healthcare37k▲ 1.99×43 topics
  8. Nanoparticles34k▲ 1.68×44 topics
  9. Environmental Impact34k▲ 1.22×74 topics
  10. Internet of Things32k▲ 2.3×33 topics
  11. Artificial Intelligence29k▲ 1.28×67 topics
  12. Convolutional Neural Networks29k▲ 2.5×14 topics
  13. Biomedical Applications29k▲ 1.51×36 topics
  14. Nanomaterials29k▲ 1.71×21 topics
  15. Inflammation29k▼ 0.84×83 topics
  16. Security29k▲ 2.6×31 topics
  17. Oxidative Stress28k◆ 1.04×63 topics
  18. Renewable Energy27k▲ 1.18×61 topics
  19. Antioxidant24k▲ 2.2×51 topics
  20. COVID-1924k◆ 1.13×34 topics
  21. Mechanical Properties23k▲ 1.44×39 topics
  22. Data Mining22k▲ 1.88×25 topics
  23. Wireless Sensor Networks22k▲ 3.1×23 topics
  24. Energy Efficiency22k▲ 1.47×46 topics
  25. Big Data21k▲ 1.37×37 topics
  26. Medical Imaging19k▲ 2.2×9 topics
  27. Graphene19k▲ 1.74×12 topics
  28. Feature Extraction19k▲ 2.6×10 topics
  29. IoT18k▲ 3.0×19 topics
  30. Environmental Monitoring18k▲ 2.9×19 topics
  31. Image Processing18k▲ 2.5×14 topics
  32. IoT Security17k▲ 3.5×3 topics
  33. Classification17k▲ 2.3×13 topics
  34. Smart Cities14k▲ 3.4×8 topics
  35. Big Data Analytics13k▲ 3.9×5 topics
  36. Privacy13k▲ 2.8×11 topics
  37. Cybersecurity13k▲ 3.1×6 topics
  38. Feature Selection12k▲ 3.5×6 topics
  39. India11k▲ 9.1×4 topics
  40. Smart Farming10k▲ 5.5×2 topics

Size is fractional works in the topics tagged with each word; colour is the word's share of the side's work against its share of the world's. Each word links to the topic it comes from most.

How has their output grown?

India has out-published Belgium every year since 1980.

still counting200k400kIndia391k in 2025Belgium27k in 20251990200020102020

Fractional works per year.

Their share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share, because all of science grows. Each line is a side as a percentage of every work published that year.

still counting2.5%5.0%7.5%India6.7% in 2025Belgium0.46% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

The share of each side's works, year by year, that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. The average of all institutions is 10.0% (why not 10%).

still counting5%10%15%Belgium11.0% in 2025India6.6% in 2025200020102020

A year with under 1% of the side's peak output is left out: a rate over a handful of papers says nothing. The latest years are still being cited.

Who holds more of the world's best institutions?

A country's average quality and the number of institutions it holds at the very top can disagree, and both are worth knowing. The counts are nested: an institution in the top 50 is also in the top 100.

Belgium 21 level2 India
  1. 0In the world top 500
  2. 1In the top 1000
  3. 6In the top 5002
  4. 9In the top 1,00015
  5. #17Elite capacityrank among 204 countries#16

Institutions ranked on research quality, 2022-now. Elite capacity counts a country's institutions by their worldwide rank, weighted so a place at #1 counts for more than one at #480.

Which publishes more research, Belgium or India?

India publishes 13.1× as much research as Belgium in 2022-now (1.4M against 106k fractional works).

Whose research has more impact, Belgium or India?

11.6% of Belgium's research reaches the world's top 10% most cited, against 6.5% for India.

Is Belgium or India growing faster?

Output in 2022-25 was +48% against 2018-21 for India, and -13% for Belgium.

Which has more open access research, Belgium or India?

43% of Belgium's research is free to read, against 40% of India's.

Which has more world-class institutions, Belgium or India?

Belgium holds 1 of the world's top 100 research institutions and India 0; in the top 1,000 it is 9 against 15.

Which institutions lead in each country?

The highest-ranked institutions on each side on research quality, 2022-now. The percentage is each institution's own top-10% rate: the share of its works that are among the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. Every figure stands alone, so they do not add up to 100%.

Belgium

  1. 1KU Leuven13.1% top 10% · 20k works
  2. 2Ghent University13.8% top 10% · 16k works
  3. 3University of Antwerp13.0% top 10% · 7.1k works
  4. 4UCLouvain10.1% top 10% · 7.4k works
  5. 5Vrije Universiteit Brussel13.0% top 10% · 6k works
  6. 6Université Libre de Bruxelles11.1% top 10% · 6.5k works

India

  1. 1Indian Institute of Science Bangalore7.1% top 10% · 8.1k works
  2. 2Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur9.3% top 10% · 10k works
  3. 3Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati7.3% top 10% · 7k works
  4. 4Indian Institute of Technology Bombay6.4% top 10% · 9.1k works
  5. 5Indian Institute of Technology Madras6.3% top 10% · 9.4k works
  6. 6Indian Institute of Technology Delhi8.4% top 10% · 11k works

The number is the rank inside the country. The track on each row is the top-10% rate; the tick is the average of all institutions, 10.0% (how it is set): teal above it, red below. The ranking is the quality score, which compares the rate with what each institution's own topics predict and adds a small reward for size, so the rates do not fall in order.

Who are the top researchers on each side?

The most cited researchers on each side, among those ranked.

Belgium

  1. 1 Jeroen Raes #1,855 worldwide 126k citations · 470 works
  2. 2 Sarah‐Maria Fendt #3,456 worldwide 20k citations · 242 works
  3. 3 M. Maes #3,749 worldwide 54k citations · 515 works
  4. 4 Mohamed Lamkanfi #4,281 worldwide 30k citations · 149 works
  5. 5 Diego G. Miralles #6,426 worldwide 38k citations · 485 works

India

  1. 1 Sanjit Mitra #61 worldwide 167k citations · 467 works
  2. 2 C. Mishra #208 worldwide 84k citations · 251 works
  3. 3 Sachin Kumar Mangla #416 worldwide 25k citations · 373 works
  4. 4 S. J. Kapadia #575 worldwide 52k citations · 233 works
  5. 5 P. Ajith #693 worldwide 82k citations · 285 works

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