Page 111 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

It must have been doubly difficult, given her hugely public profile after having won the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry, in 2018. Honesty and courage won the day for research ethics and academic authenticity.

Between these two indubitable but opposing facets, ethics is the gold standard against which
academics, research, and an entire education policy for a country of 1.2 billion are weighed. Thus,
etching ethics into education and research through policy interventions like the UGC-CARE and NEP
2020 in India is the raison d’etre of this paper.

In the entire discourse on Academic Research and Ethics, the spotlight is most often issue based
and non-holistic; consequently, missing the wood for the trees. It is apparent that this dichotomy
was observed, taken note of, and decisive action taken in the form of two path-breaking initiatives
UGC-CARE in 2018 and NEP 2020. Albert Einstein’s statement, “Relativity applies to physics, not
ethics,” puts in perspective the requirement for a rigorous framework to engender and nurture ethics.
Thus, landmark reforms required in the education sector have now been enshrined in NEP 2020 and
mandatory mechanisms for reestablishing credibility in academic research and ethics have been put in
place by the UGC-CARE initiative.

UGC-CARE

In 2018 the UGC-CARE was established to promote and benchmark research integrity and
publication ethics among the Indian academia (Patwardhan, et al., 2018 and Patwardhan, 2019). It
was partly set up to repudiate India’s unsavoury distinction of generating a high percentage of poor-
quality research publications (Patwardhan, et al., op. cit.). India was forced to take cognizance of
the situation when the 15 points under the Academic Performance Indicator (API) earmarked for
publication in refereed journals, lead to a wild proliferation of predatory journals (Moher, et al., 2017
and Priyadarshini, 2017). The requirement of publications prior to Ph.D. submission only added fuel
to fire. Consequently, the primary objective of UGC-CARE was a complete overhaul of the existing list
of journals approved by its apex higher education body, the University Grants Commission (UGC).
“To promote quality research, academic integrity and publication ethics in Indian universities,” is
stated as the first objective of the UGC-CARE. Its structure for the assessment of journals is available
as a well-planned, informative, functional, responsive, and graded structure.
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At this juncture, it is relevant to endorse the organization of the UGC-CARE, which has designated
four universities as responsible for the collection of primary information related to journals published
from their allocated regions/states. Tezpur University, Assam is responsible for the UGC-CARE East
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Zone, which includes the eight states of northeastern India, along with Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha,
and West Bengal. This cohort has special features dictated by topography, accessibility, culture, and
probably the richest trove of tribes, languages, and dialects. This curation of the rich cultural and
linguistic diversity as reflected in the many regional-language journals, demands special mechanisms
that are being worked out, to give them equitable visibility and ensure they meet the designated UGC-
CARE standards. The region is often considered a soft option for many predatory publishers seeking
to circumvent accepted ethical publication norms. Issues of incorrect /false ISSN and Impact Factors,
misleading addresses and credentials of publishers and editors, besides baseless RTIs have been
successfully weeded out. UGC-CARE East Zone at Tezpur University has completed the primary data
verification of a good number of journals from the East Zone. This was possible due to the seamless
cooperation between the four UGC-CARE universities and UGC-CARE, Pune.

The programme has made a good beginning in restoring ethical practices and weeding out predatory
journals. Since the inception of the programme, workshops, meetings, reformatting of lists, and
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journal groups have been undertaken regularly. The interactions have helped the nascent, novel

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