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Journalism of Courage
In October last year, the University Grants Commission decided to scrap UGC-CARE (Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics), a listing of quality journals. Earlier this month the UGC said that it would move to a system where ‘suggestive parameters’ provided by the organisation would allow higher education institutions (HEIs) to identify suitable journals for themselves.
Journals are used to disseminate research conducted by faculty, students, and researchers. These publications are also used as a judge for faculty appointments, promotions, institution ranking, and research grants. To tackle the problem of poor quality and ‘predatory’ journals, UGC came up with CARE listing system in 2018 under which a cell established by the body would examine and maintain a list of journals.
However, according to UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar, CARE has been scrapped due to excessive centralisation and ‘concerns regarding subjectivity, lack of transparency, and inefficiencies in its assessment process.’
Academics from Pune raised concerns over the scrapping of the UGC-CARE list. Professor Rajesh Gacche, HOD of the Department of Biotechnology at Savitribai Phule Pune University, said, “Except for some research institutes in India, overall research quality is questionable. Universities that do not have the infrastructure to do proper research will assemble a list of journals that suit them. This is 100% going to compromise the quality of research. Some journals even in the CARE list were low quality, but at least it was something. UGC took care to not include predatory journals.”
Sunita Salunkhe, professor at SPPU’s Department of Chemistry, said, “Removing the CARE list is not a good move. SCOPUS based journals should be made compulsory. For local language journals there might not be a SCOPUS (scientific abstract and citation database) database so the CARE list was important. The process should have been streamlined, completely removing the list is not right.”
“If Universities are given the authority to make their own list, I can maybe start my own journal and start publishing in it. This right should not be given to the University, it should be a national list. For local languages, State governments can have their own list. The UGC care list was doing a good job actually,” she added.
Assistant professor Ankit Rawal, HOD of Sanskrit Department at The Fergusson College, said, “The research quality will be affected, and it will also be confusing for researchers to know where to publish. Giving authority to universities to make their own list can lead to malfunctions.”
Mahesh Dawange, assistant professor at the Hindi Department at SPPU said, “I feel that to maintain research standards, the UGC-CARE list was important. Now that the list has been removed, journals should not have a free reign. They should be constantly monitored and action should be taken against poor journals. Instead of giving the authority to the universities, UGC having a central list was better. If some journal is considered good in Pune but not in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, then it will create a controversy.”
However, Md Shakir Shaikh, assistant professor and HOD of the Hindi Department at Poona College, disagreed and said that removal of the list would not affect research publishing.
“Even when ISSN and ISBN numbers were not there, research would get published and readers would read it. I should maintain the quality of my writing, even if it is published in a normal journal. I don’t think predatory journals will also be a problem. Not everyone was able to publish in CARE list journals as they would have a long waiting list and it was difficult,” he said.
