: In a bid to make it easier for university and college teachers to earn points to enhance their research score for recruitment and promotion, the University Grants Commission has decided to treat all peer-reviewed journals at par with its own list of approved journals.
The recently-notified UGC minimum qualifications regulations make the point amply clear.
The methodology for calculating academic/research score offers points for “research papers in peer reviewed or UGC listed journals”.
For each such paper in science, engineering, medical, agriculture and veterinary sciences, a college or university teacher will earn eight points.
For each paper in languages, humanities, arts, social sciences, library, education, physical education, commerce, management and other related disciplines, the teacher will earn 10 points.
The regulations say: “Assessment must be based on evidence produced by the teacher such as copy of publications...”
The higher education regulator had earlier come out with an exhaustive list of publications with a view to count papers published in these alone for award of points for academic recruitments and promotions. The new step, sources say, has been taken to make recruitment and career growth easier for college and university teachers.
The UGC had first come out with a list of journals and then with a list of ‘removed journals’ to weed out sub-standard journals.
However, the list of removed journals, released in May 2018, had drawn flak as the 4,305 removed journals included prestigious ones like the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and Harvard Asia Pacific Review .
