UGC’s Initiative To Curb Low Quality Research Journals

UGC’s Initiative To Curb Low Quality Research Journals

UGC has expressed its serious concerns over the pace at which substandard, low-quality research & academic journals are coming into existence, degrading the quality of research in India. In an initiative to curb this massive proliferation dubious journals, UGC on Wednesday made an announcement to form an authority of academic institutions responsible for compiling a list of “credible quality journals” which upon finalization will replace the current journal list UGC has.

‘Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics’ or ‘CARE’ will be the name of the association which will comprise of members from government bodies and statutory councils, headed by UGC Vice-Chairman himself.

As per a statement released by the commission, issue related to poor quality journals exists worldwide but in India, the rate at which fake research articles are published in journals is way too high.UGC stated that Research journals from the field of science & engineering, agriculture, and biomedical sciences field that are accepted in SCOPUS may also be considered while framing the list by the CARE team.

A prime task for the Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics’ members will be to scrutinize all the existing journals minutely. They will also be responsible to create a step by step research

paper submission procedure in the journals that will be included in the new list.

“All such proposals will be scrutinized via precise validated protocols led by a special cell at the entrusted institution and if found appropriate, would be recommended to CARE for possible inclusion in the “CARE Reference List of Quality Journals” Commision added.

University Grants Commission (UGC) is the prime Govt funding agency which holds the responsibility to set up academic standards and ensuring that they are followed. But as per a report released earlier this year, almost 88 % of UGC approved list of journals were of substandard quality. Most of the paper published in the journals lacked either a valid website detail, proper references, editor details or even the ISSN number. Eventually, this has lead to low credibility research papers from India on a global scale.

The issue of substandard journals with low-quality research papers has been lurking around in the Indian research community since ages, with the rate increasing year by year. Strict review process and proper execution are indeed required to lift up the Indian research paper quality to match up with global journals.

-IANS

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