Page 17 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

The UGC in collaboration with the knowledge partner Clarivate Web of Science has published a
guidance document “Good Academic Research Practices” (GARP) for the benefit of the faculty and
students from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This document can play a vital role in creating
more awareness regarding importance of academic integrity and offer valuable guidance regarding
good practices to be followed to improve quality of research and scholarly publications.

Going Forward

UGC has to make academics and students familiar with research methodology. Publications arise
from research. If the research is poor, the output is naturally poor. UGC needs to be vigilant about the
quality of research supervision. How research guidance is undertaken today has to be rethought, more
so in the fund-starved post-COVID dispensation. A balance between quantitative and qualitative
evaluation is paramount. Implementation of both these yardsticks needs a high measure of honesty
and integrity.

In this book, we have renowned researchers, academicians and authorities sharing their candid
perspectives. With the focus on research, Subhash C. Lakhotia, Praveen Chaddah, Padma Prakash,
Uma Vaidya, Kiran Pandey, Sanjay Pai, and Parimal Vyas have covered the very wide fields of the
philosophy, ethics, the roles, responsibilities of research, methodologies and fallacies of research in
science, in research publications, in social science, in languages, in humanities and social sciences, and
in biomedical sciences. Debendra Baruah, M.R.Yadav, Ramesh and Ajanta Deka, give insight to
research integrity, academic dishonesty misconduct, and ethical violations. Vinod Jain and Gaurangi
Maitra focus on promoting ethics through UGC-CARE and NEP 2020, while Manmohan Gupta
and Pulok Mukherjee talk of the importance of databases, and the Impact Factors. While Shubhada
Nagarkar highlights the causes and consequences of predatory journals, Shridhar Gadre rounds it off
with the positivity of mentoring.

Hopefully, authors are discouraged from choosing predatory publishing as an easy way to earn
academic benefits, and cut-off the flow of articles to predators. The initiatives such as UGC-CARE and
GARP will hopefully create more awareness and help the cause of promoting academic integrity and
ethical publishing. UGC’s efforts are just a beginning. Active involvement of the academic community
coupled with strong support from the government shall remain key drivers for successfully promoting
research quality, academic integrity, and control predatory publishing in India.

Note

This chapter based on the following articles published in Current Science:
is
Patwardhan, B. and A. Thakur. 2019. UGC-CARE Initiative to Promote Research Quality, Integrity,
and Publication Ethics. Current Science 117 (6): 918–919.

Patwardhan, B. and G.R. Desiraju. 2020. Assessing Research: The slippery slope. Current Science 118
(12): 1869–1870.

References

Cobey, K. 2017. Nature News 549(7670): 7.

Hopf, H., A. Krief, G. Mehta, and S.A Matlin. 2019. R. Soc. Open Sci. 16(5): 190161 (1–7).

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