Five universities ranked domestically among India’s top 100 last year figure among the bottom 10 of 1,500 global varsities, assessed by the proportion of their papers retracted after publication or published in de-listed journals.
Altogether nine Indian universities feature among the bottom 10 under the Research Integrity Risk Index (RI²), an evaluation system developed by Lokman I. Meho, professor of library sciences at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
Meho’s system awards universities higher scores for a higher proportion of questionable research publication, and works out the percentiles.
Of the 71 Indian institutions considered, 32 have been put in the “red-flag” category (95 percentile or above) while 5 are in the “high-risk” category (90 to 95 percentile).
Retraction refers to a publication withdrawing a published paper. Meho’s system looked at articles retracted because of data fabrication, plagiarism, ethical violations, authorship or peer review manipulation, or serious methodological errors, and the proportion of articles in journals de-listed from the Scopus or Web of Science databases for failing to meet quality or publishing standards.
The worst performers on RI² — which drew on databases of thousands of science journals — have a 5 to 7 per cent retraction rate.
Meho’s findings come amid widespread concern in India’s academic circles
about the need to reform the country’s homegrown National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), introduced by the Union education ministry in 2016, which ranks various higher-education institutions annually.
Many academics are worried that the NIRF allows certain universities engaged in questionable research publication practices to gain respectable ranks.
“The RI² approach should be integrated into our NIRF,” said V. Ramgopal Rao, vice-chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, and former director of IIT Delhi.
“Linking research impact with integrity makes RI² a powerful tool for those of us striving to build trust in science and institutions. We must integrate this into our NIRF ranking methodology as negative marking,” Rao said in a recent post on X.
Laggards
The five varsities featuring among India’s top 100 but making the bottom 10 list in RI² are: Graphic Era in Dehradun, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation near Vijayawada, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technological Sciences in Chennai, Anna University in Chennai, and the University of Pune.
The Vellore Institute of Technology, S.R.M. Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, and the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology are ranked 19th, 21st and 28th in NIRF 2024 but make the red-flag category in RI².
Siksha O’ Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar, ranked 24th best in India, is in Meho’s high-risk category.
Emails were sent to the vice-chancellors and registrars of 13 Indian universities — the 9 figuring in the bottom 10 on Meho’s list and the 4 mentioned above — seeking their reactions to the RI² findings.
An email was sent to higher education secretary Vineet Joshi asking why the education ministry did not include lack of research integrity as a negative factor while ranking institutions. His response is awaited.
Defence
Graphic Era vice-chancellor Narpindar Singh expressed “strong objection and deep concern regarding this portrayal, which is based on erroneous data, flawed calculations, and questionable methodological assumptions”.
He said retractions happened for many reasons, including honest methodological errors, data interpretation issues and, occasionally, ethical breaches. These breaches typically reflect the actions of individuals or small research groups and should not be extrapolated to indict entire institutions, he argued.
As for the de-listing of journals, these decisions are made by indexing agencies based on evolving criteria and editorial policies, over which the individual researcher has no control, Singh said. Expecting authors to anticipate future de-listings is absurd, he added.
He also questioned the credibility of Meho’s study and methodology, saying his article was not peer-reviewed.
H. Sudarsana Rao, vice-chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, which features in Meho’s bottom 10, said retracted articles cannot be a criterion to judge unethical practices. He said articles might be retracted because of reasons such as a difference of opinion in the editorial board.
Rajeev Kumar, former JNU professor and expert in Scientometrics, said RI² was the
first comprehensive metric that accounted for dubious research practices.
“The NIRF and all other world rankings mainly depend on inflated citations and volume of publications without catering to malpractices,” he said.
Another academic, who did not wish to be identified, said the ranking agencies “make business out of their ranking activity”. The inclusion of negative factors would dissuade institutions from participating in their ranking exercise, he argued.
N. Raghuram, biotechnology professor at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University here, said Indian policies of counting publications in “approved journals” for individual promotions and awards or rewards were part of the problem.
Global practices
Like the NIRF, global ranking agencies such as Times Higher Education (THE) and QS do not take retracted papers into account, giving weight only to citation impact.
Still, US varsities have done well in Meho’s rankings, with just one of 178 institutions assessed — the University of Tennessee Health Science Center — figuring on the “watch list” category (75 to 90 percentile). Eighteen are in the “normal variation category” (50 to 75 percentile) and the rest in the “low risk” category (below 50 per centile).
The California Institute of Technology has a composite score of 0.003 while Princeton University has 0.004.
Among Indian institutions, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has been awarded a score of zero while the Homi Bhabha National Institute has 0.25.
Graphic Era, which ranked at the bottom, has a score of 0.916 while Vel Tech (also among Meho’s bottom 10) has 0.868.
Among the 71 Indian institutions assessed, 8 are rated low risk and 14 are in the normal variation category, with 12 on the watch list.