At Least 35 Of UGC's 'Preferred' Journals Could Be 'Predatory'
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-01-26
Summary:
"These predatory journals, and those who publish in them, tend to be from Asia and Africa. One study found the average publishing fee to be USD 178 (Rs 12,000). The same study found that, in 2014, an estimated 420,000 articles were published by around 8,000 journals. In September 2016, the US Federal Trade Commission sued the Hyderabad-based publisher OMICS Group for, as Ivan Oransky put it, 'bilking researchers out of potentially millions of dollars'. While the majority of these papers are from private colleges, premier national institutions aren’t exempt. A recent Current Science analysis of 3,300 papers found 11% of them were from institutes affiliated to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the CSIR labs, the National Institutes of Technology, IITs, etc.
In an effort to combat this pernicious trend, the UGC announced that it would convene a committee to prepare a list of recommended, genuine journals. Only the papers published in these journals would count towards an academic’s performance evaluation. And only these papers would count towards an academic’s score in the Academic Performance Indicators (API) system. This in turn forms the basis of the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) and the direct recruitment of teachers and other academic staff as per the University Grants Commission (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2010. Prior to the amendment in July 2016, the universities decided by themselves as to which journals would count and which wouldn’t.
Last week, the UGC published its list of recommended journals. They numbered a staggering 38,653 across all disciplines. A quick analysis of the list showed at least 35 journals that might be classified as predatory. (The full list is available at the end of the article.)"