The root cause of this menace is the UGC's insistence that one needs a PhD to become a teacher in a college. People then pursue PhD only to satisfy this requirement. Bereft of any passion towards the subject, people write junk, useless papers and send them to tier 2, tier 3 conferences. They care only about the number of papers they can show on their CV, and not about the quality of their work. These people waste precious years of their lives, and end up becoming terrible, useless teachers. They then churn out similarly useless students, and this cycle continues.
it’s not that simple mate. The expectations are that one publishes an x+1 amount of papers per year (put in that x any real number). With the load of teaching, admin, writing, one ends up writing over weekends. Also, one is judged against the highest achievers of the field who are the outlayers. Imagine you play football in a bottom of the league club but you are expected to produce like Messi. Thats somehow whats happening
I kept my integrity intact, published only in internationally reputed journals, and the end result was that I was denied promotion even after meeting all the criteria. Authorities don't give a damn about quality, they need numbers.
A much needed topic to discuss in media.....As a researcher what I felt is that those who have either good connection with scientific faculty or have good amount of money can only publish......those who can't afford them there no chance of publishing.....
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE truely even the gods from the other realm cant touch the education system and it's elites not just in India (It's all a large Nexus and they understand each other don't worry), just forget it the world is what these elites dictate and we simply live in it because they allow us. Try making fre**kin Godzilla a circus monkey it's a far easier proposition dear journalists.. good luck. 🍷
@@yashsinghal1023 not entirely true. I have gotten a paper published during my Btech itself and we didn’t forge a word. All results were authentic. And nope, I don’t come from IIT background. I haven’t even heard of publishing papers via money means. I wonder who’s even doing this? 😅
This is because of opening too many engineering colleges and having too many graduates who don't have interest in subject. In US they have around 2500 Universities most of which are high quality and getting a degree is very difficult, In India there is 5000+ colleges. if you invest about 30-40 lakhs you can open your own Engineering school in building and get government 🤣permit to give degrees. This is the situation of our country.
Actually, most of the teachers and professors don't have deep knowledge of concepts and they only have procedural knowledge in math and they are not evaluated well but have been given degrees to hide the reality of Education. They can only solve those questions which they already solved or some variants of those questions they can only solve. Teachers in turn do not evaluate students well in order to hide their weakness in the subjects.
Just because a research is paid doesn't mean it's fake there could be time constraints as well As scopus requires min 6 months process and paid does it in 1 month
I am currently a scholar at a reputable central university and I have every reason to publish in a bogus UGC Care journal to keep my fellowship. My university requires me to publish a paper within two to three years to convert my JRF to SRF. The reality is that in my area of study only the most driven people are able to achieve that kind of thing within two years if they aim to publish in a legit Web of Science or Scopus indexed journal. People need to realize that PhD scholars need to go through their coursework, comprehensive exams and Proposal seminars within the first two years of PhD. Not everyone can manage to write a quality paper within this period and even if they do, the average period from submission to publication in an actually good journal is anywhere from 6 months to 1-2 years. Not to mention the inevitable rejections you might have to face during the process. So if I want to keep my fellowship past three years, I will obviously have to publish in sub par journals and waste my time, money and energy. Add to it the fact that literally no one seems to care about the quality of publications when it comes to hiring or promotions. So why should one waste time over things like academic integrity in this country?
Whatever you are saying is correct, no doubt. The mental exhaustmemt that one scholar goes through during the journey is unexplainable, but some ethics should be there, isn't it? Yes, it takes time to publish papers, but three years is not a small time period. During course work and comprehensive exam, u can carry on with your literature survey. And talking about JRF and SRF, some are even publishing paper in sci indexed journal ( unpaid) with a fellowship of amount 8k only.
@@mdhar7825 No I am not saying that paying to publish should be the norm man. I am talking about how the rules in our country are structured in a way that makes hardwork absolutely meaningless. Not every niche area of study have quick publishing SCI journals and many scholars join institutions with no real knowledge of academic writing and most supervisors don't take the effort to teach them such things. I personally am blessed to have an understanding supervisor and I do believe that it's better to publish in a good journal and I want to do the same despite everything. But it is literally meaningless when you publish like that if you want to teach in a public institution in this country because even someone with a bogus publication gets the job. it makes you question your academic integrity
@Lilacs scholars with no knowledge of academics writings (I think the education system should be blamed here, not scholar), and supervisors with zero academic help and treating the scholar like their slave are very common in our system. Unfortunately, if we look at our country's research quality and standard, it is pathetic. Literally, we are producing garbage for the name sake of research. It should be like IITs, NITs , where only sci and scopus(some iits don't count scopus journals) indexed journals (unpaid) are considered for credit scores.
I am a budding researcher in the finance area and this story is very relevant from academic standpoint. Kindly publish more related stories for keeping the academic community abreast of the evolving situation.
This is why you need to train kids how to research and write from a young age. If the kids themselves know how to do it, they won’t need to circumvent the right process. Also, make it a process to write the papers in their own mother tongue. Make the paid translation legal.
@@amitkumarpatel8206 you did read the part about getting it translated, right? Do you want think some scientist in Germany would have written papers in English?
It is a fact,I am daily seeing people managing Ph ds , getting papers published by paying money and then getting promotions ,feel sorry to get birth in such moth written corrupt society.
That's absolutely true, I am persuing my PhD in chemistry in UK, many Indian students now-a-days are coming with this try to get acceptance, in reality they don't even know the title of their own authored papers.
Lol, it's hopeless.. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE truely even the gods from the other realm cant touch the education system and it's elites not just in India (It's all a large Nexus and they understand each other don't worry), just forget it the world is what these elites dictate and we simply live in it because they allow us. Try making fre**kin Godzilla a circus monkey it's a far easier proposition dear journalists.. good luck. 🍷
You concluded the problem perfectly. Even UGC messed up it. In 2012 a committee constituted by UGC released a list of approved journals which was filled with bogus journals after couple of years they released modified list of approved journals in which the number of dubious joulnals was reduced but still a lot of such journals were in this new list. It clearly shows the academic dishonesty or to some extent forgery at the highest level of academia in India. Further, three different categories of journals were created to overcome the problem. Its a matter of serious investigation as this process helped in awarding fake PhD degree to thousands and appointment/ promotion to many non eligibles. Moreover, recently very high grade by NAAC to few state University in UP appears a sham considering the real research outcome of these Universities. If properly investigated, it can be one of the biggest scam namely Academia Gate of India
@@grapeshott not of quality in a sense. Think of a teacher who is bad at teaching or got in this line through political power. 0 knowledge/experiences of field, just bluffing.
@@grapeshott similarly bogus journals are those that are filled with trash research papers (Plagiarized, paper on oversaturated field with no new information etc. )
I myself have worked with a few researchers from India and talked about this issue several times. This was one of the reason they left academia in India. The honest people, if don't keep churning out paper are forced either to move in industry or move abroad. Low stipends and low salary is also another factor.
The NET exam itself is outdated and don't have standard. No wonder why students are leaving this country. The ego, complex, unprofessionalism, favoritism is killing Indian academia.
Thanks a ton for letting this issue out. This publish or perish attitude is sinking the research arena since decades. Not every research can be break through or completely astounding. In order to decorate every research as such ..... scientist, scholars resort to such tactics.
Can't understand why educated Indians do not seem to address this issue. I always say "Mara Bharat mahan " Mayan on fakery corruption network criminals shams. Notice they gave Canadian names but the telephone numbers traced to India
Excellent research. Covers all aspects of the deeper problem. While such fraudulent practices are now common in India given the UGC pressure, ease of publication in discontinued journals and hacking of authentic sites, there is another issue that stands tall - almost negligible academic training in publication at universities/colleges. There are only a handful of universities across the country that train their pupils on academic publication and even fewer that highlight the importance of it in the long term. Hope this video carves a dent and leads to change.
Hahaha seriously, a PhD has become so easily available these days. This was most needed for people who are keen to do PhD but don't know about the publication. Kudos to the Print team. The fact that our Media House never discusses this issue is that they don't care about the quality of education.
Great content. I too a PhD scholar of Computer Science and Engineering Department NIT DURGAPUR. I can too see such journals very often in different platforms (among which some are reputed journals).
The papers our University Professors write these days are unbelievably childish. Like you wouldn't believe that they're allowed to teach after writing what they wrote.
Plagiarism is considered OK at vast majority of the universities except the most prestigious ones in India. While this is polar opposite in the Western universities, where vast majority frown on plagiarism.
C'mon that is complete BS, I did my PhD at an IIT and currently in the states doing a postdoc. Plagiarism is not considered OK in India, at least not in reputed research circles. Such blanket statements are BS.
@Goodsong Subscriptions You are correct. It's not so the case in elite universities but everywhere outside premier IITs and IISc, low tier IITs and most NITs, it's tolerated. I will edit my comment.
U have to also consider that evaluation in Indian system is different than those in West. In India, u have to regurgitate direct answers and perhaps solve questions. In Western system, synthesis of an analytical answer is required. And there they use online mode to check plagiarism. In India, most of test r done in written format. Until it's Word to Word plagiarism, it won't be detected here. Blame the system, not the students.
@Zen Lord I’m from the Delhi School of Economics, yes, and it ranks higher in the social sciences globally than most IITs and IISc do for various sciences.
They also offer co-authorship in ELSEVIER paper. Scopus is also to be blamed. Sometimes, if it is asked to them directly whether one journal is indexed in Scopus or not ; they will say it is indexed, although it might be being investigated by the Scopus themselves.
Degree Certificates can be purchased .. is really true --- grades can be purchased -- Today 95% in CBSE 12th standard is norm -- YOU ASK any one who wrote 12th grade exam -- says got 95% .. Complete collapse of value system .. High school student scolds teacher saying " My father can fire from school" . Integrity , honesty , sincerity and all very very old words to be kept in Museum like antique piece
It's because of UGC guideline because of which faculties are pressurises to publish research paper every year. It should be clear that research and teaching both are different things, for research one's need fund, resources and time which is not possible with academic works...... but who cares... we have only two choice either publish(by hook or crook) or leave this field.
Good effort, Mohana and team! And keep in mind that Scopus and Impact Factors are not the holy grail of research. For instance, Scopus is published by Elsevier - a for-profit organization listed on the stock exchange and has commercial interests. Impact Factor is a metric which even the Nobel Prize winners have harshly criticized. There are many good journals across disciplines that are not indexed in Scopus. For example, Ephemera Journal in the social sciences is published by academicians in the UK. India has to stand up confidently and good academic journals that is tailored to the needs of Indian scholars. Unfortunately, this is less likely to happen. The so-called top institutions in India have failed to develop a good academic journal in their respective disciplines though there are a few exceptions as always. Countries such as Spain, Netherlands, etc. have academic journals that also publish in their vernacular language (mother tongue) with an English abstract. For instance, see the works by Bruno Latour. Will Indian academicians stand up confidently and develop academic journals tailored to the needs of our society? Perhaps, they could learn a thing or two from the corporate world :) The title of the video says Indian PhDs, professors. I understand that the investigation has been done in India. But this pay-for-publish schemes happens globally even in the North America, Europe, etc. Many big highly respected journals are also involved in the pay-for-publish schemes. Here's a very nice and legit marketplace: 123mi.ru/. They also list the prominent journals that have been a part of this.
I think the same case happened in most developing country. In my country (Indonesia), quantity matters most than quality. Here, one have to publish minimum one paper per semester, as well as teaching minimum 12 credits, and one community service in order to comply government regulation. That's why predatory journals are the viable exit route
In a atmosphere where kids are not failed ever, through school and in the bachelor's level, what do you expect? And every institution is held ransom by a handful of ill qualified people or in many instances just one person. In departments there is so much in fighting and petty jealousies that one wonders how India ever produces well rounded graduates. Every incident in all educational institutions is becoming highly politicized. One cannot expect miracles....
Very very true… I have seen colleagues who never did any research publish several papers… this is the well known route for promotions in India…University higher officials too turn a blind eye…
Hi Mohana, This is Krishna. I am a PhD currently working at a science non-profit. Thank you for bringing up this important topic. Would love to help in any follow-up discussions. I also recommend covering some COPE guidelines, and you may also refer to the blog - Scholarly Kitchen and forensic researchers - Elizabeth Bik/ Retraction watch in your discussions.
The saddest part for genuine researcher is that they are not recognized with a few genuine publication they published when applying for a position. Other candidates with plenty of research articles, published in predatory journals are being recognized and offered position in many colleges, universities. The problem is that many college, universities and institutions doesn't have mechanism to identify which publication is predatory, fake or bogus. The faculties in those institutions do published in such fake and clone journals. One can easily identify if you visit thier profile and CV. Thus also compel the genuine, hardworking and ethical researchers/candidates to dive into publishing more articles through illegal ways.
I have seen PhD students with more than 100+ paper published. I bet he will not even remembered the title of the papers. Its quite normal scenario in Indian Universities.
this a problem world wide. india is in a good position to fix this problem by creating an institute composed of its top 10 or top 20 univerisities, colleges, and research institutions and funded by the government to accept submissions of papers for peer review. the papers must be submitted in LATEX format and in english and all papers should be available for free to the public like arxiv. india can become an arbiter and referee of the best scientific papers while promoting its free reach and quality research
PhDs should have publishable results on their thesis not necessarily published. A candidate should be judged on his ability, skills, difficulty of the research field etc.
The quality of publications is judged by the number of patents commercialized. I remember about SAM PITRODA, the chairman of knowledge commission in India, how he used to go to USA to work and publish papers, patents. Why he could not do the same in India ? No infrastructure in India for doing research. I visited many govt institutions including NIN, Osmania university where I saw PhD scholars doing experiments on outdated equipment. The same goes on for medical colleges as well.
It really takes a lot of effort, patience, and time to write an empirical paper of high-quality, which has practical implications and guidance for future researchers, but few syndicates in academia are just destroying the integrity. Research is a beautiful tool for knowledge creation....Once in my early days of Ph.D., I was also trapped by a syndicate, but that was last and first.....Now I have quite a good number of empirical papers in long established Scopus indexed journals and some of this papers took more than 2 and half years to go through the rigorous peer review process. My best wishes to the budding researchers, and keep in mind there is no shortcut to success.
Thank you so much to the team behind this thoroughly professional piece, rarely do i see such important yet perceivably 'not newsworthy' (from the commercial sense) issues covered by media in such detail. I am thoroughly impressed & just subbed to the Print....this needs to be widely viewed as its of national importance...i would say a matter of national security in today's knowledge societies. Once again awesome job guys!
It is refreshing to see that the media is paying attention to such important issues. Awareness through such great journalism helps address glaring issues regarding research in India. Thanks Print
I am an academic (teaching and doing research in Greece), and I have been fortunate enough to have known many Indian scientists while I was living in the USA, with most of which we became life-long friends. All of them are extremely honest, decent characters whose integrity (academic and personal) is out of the question. Despite the existence of predatory journals (all of which are extremely easy to spot even for an undergraduate student) and peer-review rings, these communities are essentially in different worlds. Top-tier universities will never hire a researcher who shows his papers published in these shady venues; it is only the real bottom-tier institutions that may hire and promote people that publish like this, and this has very little impact in society, since bottom tier institutions are not the ones that are expected to create the next break-through in science or engineering. In terms of societal impact, the only impact that these practices may have are on the very few personnel that rely on such practices to get promoted/occupied in the first place. And, finally, one comment on the issue of "the need for reform in academia": if your standards are already so low that you only expect your faculty to publish one paper per year, trying to provide for a relaxed environment from the pains of publish or perish culture, the next you're going to do is ask for no evaluation whatsoever of faculty, then no evaluation whatsoever of students, and one day you end up with higher education that has no meaning. Thanks for reading this far!
Yes that's so true ... some one told me that it's so easy to get a PhD these days .. clear NET JRF .. you will get 30000 approx from govt monthly .. talk to the professor and give him half of this ( means 15000 ) every month and just relax and enjoy with rest 15000 .. he will manage everything... at that time I was like .. No this can't be true... thanks print..
Great reporting. I've observed this during my masters course in Dental surgery where data was skewed to show 'positive correlation' and the hypothesis was desperately tried to be proved 'correct'. All just to get promotions and look good while going for interviews
During my btech in iitd I was doing a research project and I find that many professors from some unknown University in India had published point to point copy of a research paper from IEEE in some local journal
Even colleges in India push bachelor students to get their paper published otherwise they won't give marks. These are computer science students asked to publish paper based on their computer science project in just 2-3 months.
This is bound to happen when there is no impetus of practical learning and to attempt to create interest towards research and getting to learn new things!! to aid these the unfortunate reality is that the engineering colleges grooming like mushrooms dont have any scope for learning and experimental learning, more or less the same case in many deemed universities and private institutions with out due dilegence which results in abysmal masters and post doctoral individuals coming up!! need some systemic overhaul in addition to set procedural guidelines along with clear mention of topics and quality methods to assess the contents put including efforts made to overcome plagiarism!! there also needs to thorough time bound peer reviews and conclusion at faster pace!!
Thank you "The Print" for bringing this issue in front of public. Now the genuine scientific community should raise their voice against these fraudsters. This is not the case that nobody knows these issues. Most of the students, professors are aware about this fraudulent game. Even, they are investing money to get their paper published or to buy a position as an editor! (OMG!!!). Just think, what is happening in India. If it continues, I don't think that the future of Indian Research is going to be good.
Excellent Journalism. Long awaited piece. Another topic could be money for jobs in academia. Everyone knows it but nobody speaks it. Upto 90% of professors are employed for cash and they are chosen over well-qualified and research-oriented candidates, for state and central government positions. Real candidates with the right aptitude and qualification have little to no worth while applying for most government jobs as professors.
Publication is a business. They take email IDs from the university websites and keep shooting mails saying they will help in publication. In addition is there is free service also like you include my name i will include yours, you cite my papers i will cite yours.
I've got a master's in Physics and this is exactly why I gave up on the idea of going for a PhD. Also, instead of being admired and respected the researchers and scientists in India are looked down upon. It's very unfortunate. I'm even planning to switch fields now.
Start a coaching centre😂. Its fun in India. Attract students using some advertisement. Don't go for quality teaching. Students will love your coaching if you start using shortcut 😂😂😂😂.
Amazing report. The damage being done to genuine researchers is very harmful and hard to remove the stigma that comes with it. Systems need to be updated if India wants to grow.
WILEY is a reputed publisher with questionable publication ethics. It recently rejected my paper saying though it was interesting article they are no longer publishing this type of research. They sent another email within few minutes and suggested that they could transfer my manuscript to seven other journals which would be a better match for my article. The process was very simple. All I had to do was to check the scope of the journal (they suggested based on scope only) and click on transfer manuscript. This would save me the trouble of registering on the new journal's site. But each of the journals had an article processing charge of 3000-4200 USD.
Excellent journalism! May your tribe thrive to expose such evils in society and eventually help save the honor of people working earnestly in their respective areas. Thank you print.
Many cloned journals are also there. Generally, the original journals are in non-English languages (Scopus indexed) and a cloned journal website is created under the same name (even with the same ISSN). In these cloned journals, send the paper in the morning, they acknowledge in the afternoon, pay in the evening and your paper would be published before 10 pm (on the same day)
Excellent work. Now the question is how to stop this problem. From your side you can take up the issue with the Government of India. We wholeheartedly support you. In fact, this present fraudulent practice bring bad name to Indian Academia.
I have published many research articles in different Elsevier journals. Nowadays a unique trend has arisen. Reviewers reject article on some superficial grounds and the Editor in chief recommends some paid journal from Elsevier. A worst kind of scam.
As many viewers supports such nice topics in The Print, the issue needs more exposure in public domine too. I was serious about my daughter to pursuing her career in Research. But, these frustating conditions & apathy by the Government to support scholers in all aspects, i had to withdraw & tell her to choose a career of her interest and some ethics & genuinity. Thanks to 'The Print' for bringing such great topics of concer to the public. High time Government pays attention to this problem.
I’m glad at least The Print decided to look into this. Some of these “scholars” in our academia are nothing short of pathetic in terms of their knowledge of their subject.
UGC should change its guidelines on publication of papers. Even in medical Colleges people are publishing bogus things. Talking about the medical and surgical field, how is mandatory publication a good measure for appointment of consultants . A doctor might be great at surgery but not so good as a researcher and same goes for physicians. The public would have benefited from a better surgeon or physician than a researcher. However a good research background always earns brownie points but should never be a mandatory factor.
Excellent work on an issue of great importance and far reaching implications. In addition to its role in the performance evaluation of faculty, publications are also given an undue importance in the ranking of institutions as well. The institutions in turn forces thesis supervisors to have more and more publications. even M Tech students are forced to have publications in peer reviewed journals which is highly impractical considering the timeline. Publications were considered as an independent evaluation of a thesis work earlier. it is high time to have a relook at this assumption. It is also unfortunate that such poor quality publications available online will severely compromise the credibility of Indian researchers in future.
Fantastic report, a true reflection of what is going on in Indian academia, it is completely fair and legitimate from perspective of UGC to make it mandatory to have certain number of publication for promotion and PhD degree. It is not something unique in India, the universities worldwide have even stringent requirements for it. The problem people in Indian academia has selected short cut rather than long road to learn and inculcate the skill of doing good quality research and getting in published. In USA and other developing countries the axiom is ” if you are not publishing, you are not doing”. Yes. It is not only Indian academia but also scientist working in various government funded research organisations are using the funds to get published. Many research or review articles from government research organisation can be found in "open access” journals that takes any where from 2000 $ to 3500 $ for publication. Rather than diluting the rules related to publication UGC should narrow the acceptable journals list. Only the journal with impact factor should be conducted. Another problem for Indian researchers is also lack of good quality indigenous journals that can provide the platform for publication along with maintaining the quality. Most of the good quality journals are owned by USA OR Europe. To be fair to them, most of the the reputed journals are quite neutral when it comes to selection of manuscripts for publication. They don't discrimate on the basis of region and country but we also need to make sure that our research and writing quality is of the level that can compete globally.
This is much needed conversation, we are already late to take some action against this. Those who are in academics and research, already know how publishing novel works are difficult from any Indian affiliations because of this distrust. The same work done by any Western institutes gets easily published compared to any premier research institutes in India. I think publishing articles is important part of education, and every bachelor's student should write a paper and get proper training in this. But why does it have to be a International Journal. Every institute must have their own journal and students can get opportunity to publish there, this will increase the writing capabilities of students. Now for promotion in job: mostly scientific institutes and top universities do not accept these predatory journals... But they do have a tremendous pressure to publish (this is true for every country), which is not the worst thing, if scientists aee given enough funds and less bureaucracy (God I have so much to say about this.. but maybe I'll continue this thread if people are interested in reading this, I left Indian Academia for n number of reasons, and currently doing my PhD in medicine from Sweden)
This is the result when the governments pay so little attention to the department of education in the country. They should install a professor to the position of education minister so the he/she can aware of such fine points and take suitable remedial action.
There is a huge lot of quality research is going on, not in academics, but in industry only. If the Industry is not involving directly with research hand-on-hand with academic institutes, then what quality of research one can produce in a country with lots of bogus & unqualified research centers in India? My sincere request to ThePrint team, kindly concentrate or keep an eye on Pharmacy Colleges (More than 50% in India are bogus, running short of Academicians, providing fake documentation, fake Teachers, like so on to get PCI approval...even Pharmacy Council of India is also not bothered). Kindly start an attempt to glorify the Field of Pharmacy once again in our Country.
The root cause of this menace is the UGC's insistence that one needs a PhD to become a teacher in a college. People then pursue PhD only to satisfy this requirement. Bereft of any passion towards the subject, people write junk, useless papers and send them to tier 2, tier 3 conferences. They care only about the number of papers they can show on their CV, and not about the quality of their work. These people waste precious years of their lives, and end up becoming terrible, useless teachers. They then churn out similarly useless students, and this cycle continues.
Wow😮
Right bro 👍
it’s not that simple mate. The expectations are that one publishes an x+1 amount of papers per year (put in that x any real number). With the load of teaching, admin, writing, one ends up writing over weekends. Also, one is judged against the highest achievers of the field who are the outlayers. Imagine you play football in a bottom of the league club but you are expected to produce like Messi. Thats somehow whats happening
nailed it
To be fair, the is pandemic, it exists all over the world.
I kept my integrity intact, published only in internationally reputed journals, and the end result was that I was denied promotion even after meeting all the criteria. Authorities don't give a damn about quality, they need numbers.
I know the feeling....
Everytime
Even real "serious" research journals worldwide are no more than a tit for tat game for he most part.
Here the discussion is not what you are topic is what country Academia is doing going fast to become visha guru in fake publishing
Wish you had learnt it the easy way man
Kudos to print team for active journalism
Have you actually witnessed something like that? ‘Coz I haven’t.
A much needed topic to discuss in media.....As a researcher what I felt is that those who have either good connection with scientific faculty or have good amount of money can only publish......those who can't afford them there no chance of publishing.....
Si.
Thankfully someone is now talking about the quality part needed in education and so called PhD, well done The Print Team !
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE truely even the gods from the other realm cant touch the education system and it's elites not just in India (It's all a large Nexus and they understand each other don't worry), just forget it the world is what these elites dictate and we simply live in it because they allow us. Try making fre**kin Godzilla a circus monkey it's a far easier proposition dear journalists.. good luck. 🍷
Phd from every institute not equal.. iits do good reseaech
@@yashsinghal1023 not entirely true. I have gotten a paper published during my Btech itself and we didn’t forge a word. All results were authentic. And nope, I don’t come from IIT background. I haven’t even heard of publishing papers via money means. I wonder who’s even doing this? 😅
@@tula__ exactly there are lot of legit paper publications... I was not trying to say exclusively iit people publish good reseaech
@@yashsinghal1023 that’s my point. If IIT ain’t doing, tier 2, 3 colleges ain’t doing, then who.
In india fake is the Hallmark of victory
This is because of opening too many engineering colleges and having too many graduates who don't have interest in subject. In US they have around 2500 Universities most of which are high quality and getting a degree is very difficult, In India there is 5000+ colleges. if you invest about 30-40 lakhs you can open your own Engineering school in building and get government 🤣permit to give degrees. This is the situation of our country.
Speak for yourself. This is just what happens when there is low demand and high supply. Paper mills are very common in academia across the world.
Actually, most of the teachers and professors don't have deep knowledge of concepts and they only have procedural knowledge in math and they are not evaluated well but have been given degrees to hide the reality of Education. They can only solve those questions which they already solved or some variants of those questions they can only solve. Teachers in turn do not evaluate students well in order to hide their weakness in the subjects.
Even all politicians like Shashi Tharoor, and jaishankar know it but they only talk about it but never do anything to improve.
Just because a research is paid doesn't mean it's fake there could be time constraints as well
As scopus requires min 6 months process and paid does it in 1 month
I am currently a scholar at a reputable central university and I have every reason to publish in a bogus UGC Care journal to keep my fellowship. My university requires me to publish a paper within two to three years to convert my JRF to SRF. The reality is that in my area of study only the most driven people are able to achieve that kind of thing within two years if they aim to publish in a legit Web of Science or Scopus indexed journal. People need to realize that PhD scholars need to go through their coursework, comprehensive exams and Proposal seminars within the first two years of PhD. Not everyone can manage to write a quality paper within this period and even if they do, the average period from submission to publication in an actually good journal is anywhere from 6 months to 1-2 years. Not to mention the inevitable rejections you might have to face during the process. So if I want to keep my fellowship past three years, I will obviously have to publish in sub par journals and waste my time, money and energy. Add to it the fact that literally no one seems to care about the quality of publications when it comes to hiring or promotions. So why should one waste time over things like academic integrity in this country?
Whatever you are saying is correct, no doubt. The mental exhaustmemt that one scholar goes through during the journey is unexplainable, but some ethics should be there, isn't it? Yes, it takes time to publish papers, but three years is not a small time period. During course work and comprehensive exam, u can carry on with your literature survey. And talking about JRF and SRF, some are even publishing paper in sci indexed journal ( unpaid) with a fellowship of amount 8k only.
@@mdhar7825 No I am not saying that paying to publish should be the norm man. I am talking about how the rules in our country are structured in a way that makes hardwork absolutely meaningless. Not every niche area of study have quick publishing SCI journals and many scholars join institutions with no real knowledge of academic writing and most supervisors don't take the effort to teach them such things. I personally am blessed to have an understanding supervisor and I do believe that it's better to publish in a good journal and I want to do the same despite everything. But it is literally meaningless when you publish like that if you want to teach in a public institution in this country because even someone with a bogus publication gets the job. it makes you question your academic integrity
@Lilacs scholars with no knowledge of academics writings (I think the education system should be blamed here, not scholar), and supervisors with zero academic help and treating the scholar like their slave are very common in our system. Unfortunately, if we look at our country's research quality and standard, it is pathetic. Literally, we are producing garbage for the name sake of research. It should be like IITs, NITs , where only sci and scopus(some iits don't count scopus journals) indexed journals (unpaid) are considered for credit scores.
I am a budding researcher in the finance area and this story is very relevant from academic standpoint. Kindly publish more related stories for keeping the academic community abreast of the evolving situation.
This is why you need to train kids how to research and write from a young age. If the kids themselves know how to do it, they won’t need to circumvent the right process. Also, make it a process to write the papers in their own mother tongue. Make the paid translation legal.
Mother tongue mein likh to denge , pr padega kon stupid ....Mother tongue waale ?
@Zen Lord I am 100% sure you never read a single research paper ... Lord name but senseless statement
@@amitkumarpatel8206 Did you read the full comment idiot?
Has nothing to do with teaching kids. Boomers were equally corrupt too (if not more).
@@amitkumarpatel8206 you did read the part about getting it translated, right? Do you want think some scientist in Germany would have written papers in English?
It is a fact,I am daily seeing people managing Ph ds , getting papers published by paying money and then getting promotions ,feel sorry to get birth in such moth written corrupt society.
Thanks
Hi Syam,
Thank you for supporting our journalism.
That's absolutely true, I am persuing my PhD in chemistry in UK, many Indian students now-a-days are coming with this try to get acceptance, in reality they don't even know the title of their own authored papers.
Lol, it's hopeless.. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE truely even the gods from the other realm cant touch the education system and it's elites not just in India (It's all a large Nexus and they understand each other don't worry), just forget it the world is what these elites dictate and we simply live in it because they allow us. Try making fre**kin Godzilla a circus monkey it's a far easier proposition dear journalists.. good luck. 🍷
You concluded the problem perfectly. Even UGC messed up it. In 2012 a committee constituted by UGC released a list of approved journals which was filled with bogus journals after couple of years they released modified list of approved journals in which the number of dubious joulnals was reduced but still a lot of such journals were in this new list. It clearly shows the academic dishonesty or to some extent forgery at the highest level of academia in India. Further, three different categories of journals were created to overcome the problem.
Its a matter of serious investigation as this process helped in awarding fake PhD degree to thousands and appointment/ promotion to many non eligibles. Moreover, recently very high grade by NAAC to few state University in UP appears a sham considering the real research outcome of these Universities.
If properly investigated, it can be one of the biggest scam namely Academia Gate of India
What does "bogus" journal mean?
@@grapeshott not of quality in a sense. Think of a teacher who is bad at teaching or got in this line through political power. 0 knowledge/experiences of field, just bluffing.
@@grapeshott similarly bogus journals are those that are filled with trash research papers (Plagiarized, paper on oversaturated field with no new information etc. )
@@grapeshottjournals that publish low quality content. Much of them are even without peer review.
The UGC Care list(s) of journals are updated every now and then. A journal that was in the list last month, may not be in the list now. It's crazy.
I myself have worked with a few researchers from India and talked about this issue several times.
This was one of the reason they left academia in India. The honest people, if don't keep churning out paper are forced either to move in industry or move abroad.
Low stipends and low salary is also another factor.
Publish or persidh scheme is not exclusively in india to be fair. It's mostly same everywhere, in india it's more visible
@@yashsinghal1023 yes you are very right about this. It's present everywhere.
The NET exam itself is outdated and don't have standard. No wonder why students are leaving this country. The ego, complex, unprofessionalism, favoritism is killing Indian academia.
Net exam is just like board 12th board exam.
I conpleted my paper in btech final year and got it approved after three years. By that time I had forgotten about it😅
😂
You are legend
Tell me about it. My paper was rejected after 7 months. It felt like a fuck you after so many days
@@rayhans7887 Happens.
Nowadays you can get it done in 48 hours that too @rs600
Thanks a ton for letting this issue out. This publish or perish attitude is sinking the research arena since decades. Not every research can be break through or completely astounding. In order to decorate every research as such ..... scientist, scholars resort to such tactics.
Nothing can change - because there is ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY for top bosses! Jor se bolo - mera bharat mahan!
Can't understand why educated Indians do not seem to address this issue. I always say "Mara Bharat mahan " Mayan on fakery corruption network criminals shams. Notice they gave Canadian names but the telephone numbers traced to India
Kudos to the print team for taking up this issue which is affecting the Indian research community and issues with scientific research.
Thanks!
Dear Satish,
Thank you for contributing to our journalism.
Excellent research. Covers all aspects of the deeper problem. While such fraudulent practices are now common in India given the UGC pressure, ease of publication in discontinued journals and hacking of authentic sites, there is another issue that stands tall - almost negligible academic training in publication at universities/colleges. There are only a handful of universities across the country that train their pupils on academic publication and even fewer that highlight the importance of it in the long term. Hope this video carves a dent and leads to change.
Most universities are teach only and barely do any research.
This video is solely made to advertise those agents. Didn't you realize?
Hahaha seriously, a PhD has become so easily available these days. This was most needed for people who are keen to do PhD but don't know about the publication. Kudos to the Print team. The fact that our Media House never discusses this issue is that they don't care about the quality of education.
Great content. I too a PhD scholar of Computer Science and Engineering Department NIT DURGAPUR. I can too see such journals very often in different platforms (among which some are reputed journals).
The papers our University Professors write these days are unbelievably childish.
Like you wouldn't believe that they're allowed to teach after writing what they wrote.
The bitter truth I am fighting for since 2015, even a week before I made a webinar on this. kudos team much needed.
This makes sense to why India ranks low in citation despite pumping out so many papers a year.
Plagiarism is considered OK at vast majority of the universities except the most prestigious ones in India. While this is polar opposite in the Western universities, where vast majority frown on plagiarism.
C'mon that is complete BS, I did my PhD at an IIT and currently in the states doing a postdoc. Plagiarism is not considered OK in India, at least not in reputed research circles. Such blanket statements are BS.
@Goodsong Subscriptions You are correct. It's not so the case in elite universities but everywhere outside premier IITs and IISc, low tier IITs and most NITs, it's tolerated. I will edit my comment.
U have to also consider that evaluation in Indian system is different than those in West. In India, u have to regurgitate direct answers and perhaps solve questions. In Western system, synthesis of an analytical answer is required. And there they use online mode to check plagiarism. In India, most of test r done in written format. Until it's Word to Word plagiarism, it won't be detected here.
Blame the system, not the students.
@@arindambaisya you’re right, but the list of prestigious universities is larger, and includes JNU/DU etc as well
@Zen Lord I’m from the Delhi School of Economics, yes, and it ranks higher in the social sciences globally than most IITs and IISc do for various sciences.
They also offer co-authorship in ELSEVIER paper. Scopus is also to be blamed. Sometimes, if it is asked to them directly whether one journal is indexed in Scopus or not ; they will say it is indexed, although it might be being investigated by the Scopus themselves.
Thank you for bringing this out. So tired of substandard Scopus journals charging 25k and watching idiot articles getting published.
Degree Certificates can be purchased .. is really true --- grades can be purchased -- Today 95% in CBSE 12th standard is norm -- YOU ASK any one who wrote 12th grade exam -- says got 95% .. Complete collapse of value system .. High school student scolds teacher saying " My father can fire from school" . Integrity , honesty , sincerity and all very very old words to be kept in Museum like antique piece
It's because of UGC guideline because of which faculties are pressurises to publish research paper every year. It should be clear that research and teaching both are different things, for research one's need fund, resources and time which is not possible with academic works...... but who cares... we have only two choice either publish(by hook or crook) or leave this field.
Good effort, Mohana and team! And keep in mind that Scopus and Impact Factors are not the holy grail of research. For instance, Scopus is published by Elsevier - a for-profit organization listed on the stock exchange and has commercial interests. Impact Factor is a metric which even the Nobel Prize winners have harshly criticized. There are many good journals across disciplines that are not indexed in Scopus. For example, Ephemera Journal in the social sciences is published by academicians in the UK.
India has to stand up confidently and good academic journals that is tailored to the needs of Indian scholars. Unfortunately, this is less likely to happen. The so-called top institutions in India have failed to develop a good academic journal in their respective disciplines though there are a few exceptions as always. Countries such as Spain, Netherlands, etc. have academic journals that also publish in their vernacular language (mother tongue) with an English abstract. For instance, see the works by Bruno Latour. Will Indian academicians stand up confidently and develop academic journals tailored to the needs of our society? Perhaps, they could learn a thing or two from the corporate world :)
The title of the video says Indian PhDs, professors. I understand that the investigation has been done in India. But this pay-for-publish schemes happens globally even in the North America, Europe, etc. Many big highly respected journals are also involved in the pay-for-publish schemes. Here's a very nice and legit marketplace: 123mi.ru/. They also list the prominent journals that have been a part of this.
I think the same case happened in most developing country. In my country (Indonesia), quantity matters most than quality. Here, one have to publish minimum one paper per semester, as well as teaching minimum 12 credits, and one community service in order to comply government regulation. That's why predatory journals are the viable exit route
Hey, do you know about a Water Resource Prof named Limantara?
In a atmosphere where kids are not failed ever, through school and in the bachelor's level, what do you expect? And every institution is held ransom by a handful of ill qualified people or in many instances just one person. In departments there is so much in fighting and petty jealousies that one wonders how India ever produces well rounded graduates. Every incident in all educational institutions is becoming highly politicized. One cannot expect miracles....
Very very true… I have seen colleagues who never did any research publish several papers… this is the well known route for promotions in India…University higher officials too turn a blind eye…
This has been running for quite a few years now. Thank you for bringing this up.
A few hundred people tarnishes the entire Academic professionals.
Hi Mohana, This is Krishna. I am a PhD currently working at a science non-profit. Thank you for bringing up this important topic. Would love to help in any follow-up discussions. I also recommend covering some COPE guidelines, and you may also refer to the blog - Scholarly Kitchen and forensic researchers - Elizabeth Bik/ Retraction watch in your discussions.
I worked at a college in Tamil Nadu, where teachers were given designations of "Professor" and " Senior Professor" based on such bogus publications.
I wish we had a "Pulitzer prize" in India; this piece truly deserves it!
The saddest part for genuine researcher is that they are not recognized with a few genuine publication they published when applying for a position. Other candidates with plenty of research articles, published in predatory journals are being recognized and offered position in many colleges, universities. The problem is that many college, universities and institutions doesn't have mechanism to identify which publication is predatory, fake or bogus. The faculties in those institutions do published in such fake and clone journals. One can easily identify if you visit thier profile and CV. Thus also compel the genuine, hardworking and ethical researchers/candidates to dive into publishing more articles through illegal ways.
I have seen PhD students with more than 100+ paper published. I bet he will not even remembered the title of the papers. Its quite normal scenario in Indian Universities.
Kudos to You. God knows India needs this type of Investigative Journalism.
this a problem world wide. india is in a good position to fix this problem by creating an institute composed of its top 10 or top 20 univerisities, colleges, and research institutions and funded by the government to accept submissions of papers for peer review. the papers must be submitted in LATEX format and in english and all papers should be available for free to the public like arxiv. india can become an arbiter and referee of the best scientific papers while promoting its free reach and quality research
PhDs should have publishable results on their thesis not necessarily published. A candidate should be judged on his ability, skills, difficulty of the research field etc.
Exactly
UGC abolished rules of minimum published papers before PhD submission long before.
The quality of publications is judged by the number of patents commercialized. I remember about SAM PITRODA, the chairman of knowledge commission in India, how he used to go to USA to work and publish papers, patents. Why he could not do the same in India ? No infrastructure in India for doing research. I visited many govt institutions including NIN, Osmania university where I saw PhD scholars doing experiments on outdated equipment. The same goes on for medical colleges as well.
This has been happening forever. I can say this from 35 years of college teaching. The UGC is a relic-a sleeping behemoth.
Bravos!! I thought we never talk about these stuff other then politics. Job well done @ThePrint👏
When my alcoholic, addict roommate's name started appearing in his PhD seniors' papers for "collab" during post-graduate years, I figured.
It really takes a lot of effort, patience, and time to write an empirical paper of high-quality, which has practical implications and guidance for future researchers, but few syndicates in academia are just destroying the integrity. Research is a beautiful tool for knowledge creation....Once in my early days of Ph.D., I was also trapped by a syndicate, but that was last and first.....Now I have quite a good number of empirical papers in long established Scopus indexed journals and some of this papers took more than 2 and half years to go through the rigorous peer review process.
My best wishes to the budding researchers, and keep in mind there is no shortcut to success.
This is very sad news. People must revert back to publishing in well known journals
Thank you so much to the team behind this thoroughly professional piece, rarely do i see such important yet perceivably 'not newsworthy' (from the commercial sense) issues covered by media in such detail. I am thoroughly impressed & just subbed to the Print....this needs to be widely viewed as its of national importance...i would say a matter of national security in today's knowledge societies. Once again awesome job guys!
It is refreshing to see that the media is paying attention to such important issues. Awareness through such great journalism helps address glaring issues regarding research in India. Thanks Print
Well said. Better govt have to avoid PhD requirement or publications mandatory in UG level.
I am an academic (teaching and doing research in Greece), and I have been fortunate enough to have known many Indian scientists while I was living in the USA, with most of which we became life-long friends. All of them are extremely honest, decent characters whose integrity (academic and personal) is out of the question. Despite the existence of predatory journals (all of which are extremely easy to spot even for an undergraduate student) and peer-review rings, these communities are essentially in different worlds. Top-tier universities will never hire a researcher who shows his papers published in these shady venues; it is only the real bottom-tier institutions that may hire and promote people that publish like this, and this has very little impact in society, since bottom tier institutions are not the ones that are expected to create the next break-through in science or engineering. In terms of societal impact, the only impact that these practices may have are on the very few personnel that rely on such practices to get promoted/occupied in the first place. And, finally, one comment on the issue of "the need for reform in academia": if your standards are already so low that you only expect your faculty to publish one paper per year, trying to provide for a relaxed environment from the pains of publish or perish culture, the next you're going to do is ask for no evaluation whatsoever of faculty, then no evaluation whatsoever of students, and one day you end up with higher education that has no meaning. Thanks for reading this far!
Yes that's so true ... some one told me that it's so easy to get a PhD these days .. clear NET JRF .. you will get 30000 approx from govt monthly .. talk to the professor and give him half of this ( means 15000 ) every month and just relax and enjoy with rest 15000 .. he will manage everything...
at that time I was like .. No this can't be true...
thanks print..
Enjoy in 15000? Even beggars have better standards than Phds
Thanks for a great video. It is refreshing to see real journalism being done in India.
Kudos to print team for Investigative journalism
I wish Indian professors treat scholars like human/student not like a Bandhua majdoor...
Great reporting. I've observed this during my masters course in Dental surgery where data was skewed to show 'positive correlation' and the hypothesis was desperately tried to be proved 'correct'. All just to get promotions and look good while going for interviews
During my btech in iitd I was doing a research project and I find that many professors from some unknown University in India had published point to point copy of a research paper from IEEE in some local journal
What did you do to claim your research following this discovery?
Even colleges in India push bachelor students to get their paper published otherwise they won't give marks.
These are computer science students asked to publish paper based on their computer science project in just 2-3 months.
😂😂😂😂😂 And these poor sods think they are researchers.
Why am I not surprised? And, of course, there will be a troll crowd chest thumping about India's accomplishments in publications.
True. Even scholars are encouraged.
👌👌Very sensible & relevant Journalism...hats off to team of PRINT👏👏🙏🙏👍👍
This is bound to happen when there is no impetus of practical learning and to attempt to create interest towards research and getting to learn new things!! to aid these the unfortunate reality is that the engineering colleges grooming like mushrooms dont have any scope for learning and experimental learning, more or less the same case in many deemed universities and private institutions with out due dilegence which results in abysmal masters and post doctoral individuals coming up!! need some systemic overhaul in addition to set procedural guidelines along with clear mention of topics and quality methods to assess the contents put including efforts made to overcome plagiarism!! there also needs to thorough time bound peer reviews and conclusion at faster pace!!
Thanks for print for keeping good journalism alive
Thank you "The Print" for bringing this issue in front of public. Now the genuine scientific community should raise their voice against these fraudsters.
This is not the case that nobody knows these issues. Most of the students, professors are aware about this fraudulent game. Even, they are investing money to get their paper published or to buy a position as an editor! (OMG!!!).
Just think, what is happening in India. If it continues, I don't think that the future of Indian Research is going to be good.
Excellent Journalism. Long awaited piece. Another topic could be money for jobs in academia. Everyone knows it but nobody speaks it. Upto 90% of professors are employed for cash and they are chosen over well-qualified and research-oriented candidates, for state and central government positions. Real candidates with the right aptitude and qualification have little to no worth while applying for most government jobs as professors.
Publication is a business. They take email IDs from the university websites and keep shooting mails saying they will help in publication. In addition is there is free service also like you include my name i will include yours, you cite my papers i will cite yours.
Yes sir.
@@sauron2000000as aa
The best episode on academia in India.
Really revealing coverage indeed! Very soon (if not already), no International body would recognise even a good scholar from India...
I've got a master's in Physics and this is exactly why I gave up on the idea of going for a PhD. Also, instead of being admired and respected the researchers and scientists in India are looked down upon. It's very unfortunate. I'm even planning to switch fields now.
Start a coaching centre😂. Its fun in India. Attract students using some advertisement. Don't go for quality teaching. Students will love your coaching if you start using shortcut 😂😂😂😂.
India needs to fix the education system in a big way.
Amazing report. The damage being done to genuine researchers is very harmful and hard to remove the stigma that comes with it. Systems need to be updated if India wants to grow.
WILEY is a reputed publisher with questionable publication ethics. It recently rejected my paper saying though it was interesting article they are no longer publishing this type of research. They sent another email within few minutes and suggested that they could transfer my manuscript to seven other journals which would be a better match for my article. The process was very simple. All I had to do was to check the scope of the journal (they suggested based on scope only) and click on transfer manuscript. This would save me the trouble of registering on the new journal's site. But each of the journals had an article processing charge of 3000-4200 USD.
Much needed duscussion. This is a very serious problem that Print has highlighted.
I was thinking of publishing a paper on using tumeric paste as thermal compound to increase CPU performance 🙂
and have fungus grow in your cpu...
@@SarthakBhatiayeah with some luck we maybe even able to harvest the mycoprotien from that fungus and use that as an alternative food source
@@saltycat2299 😂😂😂😂
have you tried cow dung?
@@kevinp9110 🤣🤣
Excellent journalism! May your tribe thrive to expose such evils in society and eventually help save the honor of people working earnestly in their respective areas. Thank you print.
Great Work Miss. Seriously. 👏👏👏
Many cloned journals are also there. Generally, the original journals are in non-English languages (Scopus indexed) and a cloned journal website is created under the same name (even with the same ISSN). In these cloned journals, send the paper in the morning, they acknowledge in the afternoon, pay in the evening and your paper would be published before 10 pm (on the same day)
This Great Work by The Print. We need to highlight such stories and bring them into limelight.
Thank you, The Print, for highlighting this issue!
Excellent work. Now the question is how to stop this problem. From your side you can take up the issue with the Government of India. We wholeheartedly support you. In fact, this present fraudulent practice bring bad name to Indian Academia.
I was actually wondering why no one ever talked on this ?? Thank god they did.
I have published many research articles in different Elsevier journals. Nowadays a unique trend has arisen. Reviewers reject article on some superficial grounds and the Editor in chief recommends some paid journal from Elsevier. A worst kind of scam.
As many viewers supports such nice topics in The Print, the issue needs more exposure in public domine too.
I was serious about my daughter to pursuing her career in Research. But, these frustating conditions & apathy by the Government to support scholers in all aspects, i had to withdraw & tell her to choose a career of her interest and some ethics & genuinity. Thanks to 'The Print' for bringing such great topics of concer to the public. High time Government pays attention to this problem.
I’m glad at least The Print decided to look into this. Some of these “scholars” in our academia are nothing short of pathetic in terms of their knowledge of their subject.
Excellent presentation, in fact, I concede with the information. This is reality.
UGC should change its guidelines on publication of papers. Even in medical Colleges people are publishing bogus things. Talking about the medical and surgical field, how is mandatory publication a good measure for appointment of consultants . A doctor might be great at surgery but not so good as a researcher and same goes for physicians. The public would have benefited from a better surgeon or physician than a researcher. However a good research background always earns brownie points but should never be a mandatory factor.
Excellent work on an issue of great importance and far reaching implications. In addition to its role in the performance evaluation of faculty, publications are also given an undue importance in the ranking of institutions as well. The institutions in turn forces thesis supervisors to have more and more publications. even M Tech students are forced to have publications in peer reviewed journals which is highly impractical considering the timeline. Publications were considered as an independent evaluation of a thesis work earlier. it is high time to have a relook at this assumption. It is also unfortunate that such poor quality publications available online will severely compromise the credibility of Indian researchers in future.
Fantastic report, a true reflection of what is going on in Indian academia, it is completely fair and legitimate from perspective of UGC to make it mandatory to have certain number of publication for promotion and PhD degree. It is not something unique in India, the universities worldwide have even stringent requirements for it. The problem people in Indian academia has selected short cut rather than long road to learn and inculcate the skill of doing good quality research and getting in published. In USA and other developing countries the axiom is ” if you are not publishing, you are not doing”. Yes. It is not only Indian academia but also scientist working in various government funded research organisations are using the funds to get published. Many research or review articles from government research organisation can be found in "open access” journals that takes any where from 2000 $ to 3500 $ for publication. Rather than diluting the rules related to publication UGC should narrow the acceptable journals list. Only the journal with impact factor should be conducted. Another problem for Indian researchers is also lack of good quality indigenous journals that can provide the platform for publication along with maintaining the quality. Most of the good quality journals are owned by USA OR Europe. To be fair to them, most of the the reputed journals are quite neutral when it comes to selection of manuscripts for publication. They don't discrimate on the basis of region and country but we also need to make sure that our research and writing quality is of the level that can compete globally.
This is much needed conversation, we are already late to take some action against this. Those who are in academics and research, already know how publishing novel works are difficult from any Indian affiliations because of this distrust. The same work done by any Western institutes gets easily published compared to any premier research institutes in India.
I think publishing articles is important part of education, and every bachelor's student should write a paper and get proper training in this. But why does it have to be a International Journal. Every institute must have their own journal and students can get opportunity to publish there, this will increase the writing capabilities of students.
Now for promotion in job: mostly scientific institutes and top universities do not accept these predatory journals... But they do have a tremendous pressure to publish (this is true for every country), which is not the worst thing, if scientists aee given enough funds and less bureaucracy
(God I have so much to say about this.. but maybe I'll continue this thread if people are interested in reading this,
I left Indian Academia for n number of reasons, and currently doing my PhD in medicine from Sweden)
Great job Mohana 👍
This is the result when the governments pay so little attention to the department of education in the country. They should install a professor to the position of education minister so the he/she can aware of such fine points and take suitable remedial action.
Thanks to the print team for the important issue.
There is a huge lot of quality research is going on, not in academics, but in industry only. If the Industry is not involving directly with research hand-on-hand with academic institutes, then what quality of research one can produce in a country with lots of bogus & unqualified research centers in India? My sincere request to ThePrint team, kindly concentrate or keep an eye on Pharmacy Colleges (More than 50% in India are bogus, running short of Academicians, providing fake documentation, fake Teachers, like so on to get PCI approval...even Pharmacy Council of India is also not bothered). Kindly start an attempt to glorify the Field of Pharmacy once again in our Country.
Charged me 6500 rupees and that paper never even made up for Google Scholar.
Excellent journalism 👏👏👏
This is great work! Everyone who knows, fears to talk about it...Thank you for this video!