It is worth noting that in the last decade, China has not only overtaken India in medical research, but has also now emerged as the fifth leading nation in its share of the world's scientific publications. India accounts for about 17% of the world population, but only about 2.55% of all the published papers (PubMed) in the year 2011 had the first author affiliation from India. This research remains invisible, a loss not only to the medical community but also to society at large.

In recent times, annually, there are over 22,000 postgraduate students doing a dissertation in Indian medical institutions, but the current conversion of dissertations into successful publications is abysmally low. During the same 10-year period, the total research output of the Massachusetts General Hospital (USA) was 46311 publications and of the Mayo Clinic (USA) was 37633, accounting for more than 4.07 and 3.3 times the number of publications from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, respectively. Of these, 332 (57.3%) medical colleges had not published a single research paper over the past 10 years. have recently reported that the research output from 579 Indian medical institutions and hospitals over 10-year period from 2005 to 2014 has been poor, averaging to only 14.5 publications per institution per year. Currently, there are about 459 medical colleges in our country along with over 120 other teaching institutions, wherein medical teachers are now expected to do quality research.

Doing quality medical research, which improves patient care, improves medical education, reduces budgetary expenditure, and benefits the society at large, is also an important responsibility, though often underrated. A medical teacher has multiple responsibilities including undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, clinical work, administrative assignments, assessment-related work, and being a guide for postgraduate dissertations and mentoring.

Medical conferences 2016 india