Let us not chase ranks but help our faculty and students in their questioning and exploring, teaching and learning
Friends, "I think higher education in India has been losing its soul for a long time, particularly in humanities and social sciences because of the pressure to get jobs. The basic purpose of higher education - of questioning and exploring - has been lost," says Prof. Suhas Palshikar, the eminent political scientist. Questioning, exploring, learning, and teaching have been put on the back burner in many higher educational institutions (HEI), nay they have been sacrificed at the altar of chasing ranks. While several institutions are indulging in citation gaming and other unwelcome practices to improve their rank, some others, I hear, are thankfully getting out of this rat race. Prof. Padmanabhan Balaram has written several editorials on the abuse of publication and citation data in *Current Science*. He has also spoken about it in many of his talks. Please listen to his LIS Academy talk (on Science publishing and the decline of scholarship), the first in their seminar series, delivered on 14 November 2020. It is available on YouTube. And yet a very large percentage of research papers from LIS departments and the doctoral (and possibly Master's) dissertations in LIS submitted to Indian universities is in citation analysis/scientometrics. Balaram says many of the papers written by Indian librarians are no good at all. You might also wish to read: 1. *Indian J Med Ethics*, 2018 Jul-Sep; *3*(3):221-229. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2018.024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29650499/ Evaluation of research in India -- Are we doing it right? 2. *Proc** Indian Natn Sci Acad*, *80* (No. 5) December 2014, pp. 919-929, doi: 10.16943/ptinsa/2014/v80i5/47965 Heads I win, Tails you lose: The intransigence of STM publishers By all means, let us use citation data to do research. Research like, for example, what Don Swanson of the Chicago University and Ronald Kostoff of the US Naval Laboratory have done, literature-based discovery. But our main purpose is to serve our faculty and students to do whatever they do better, which are mostly teaching, learning, questioning, exploring, creating new knowledge, inventing, patenting, and occasionally advising the government and helping industry. HEIs are, so to say, in the business of knowledge generation and exchange. There are two parts to it, viz. enhancing *access* to knowledge generated worldwide, and making the knowledge generated by our own researchers *visible* to the world. That, in short, is scholarly communication librarianship is all about. With best wishes, Arun -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Good to hear from you Sir You have hit the nail on the head. Totally agree that service is taking a back seat (not to generalize) nowadays. Librarians have to provide the service that helps scholars in producing quality research. Regards Jagadish On Tue, 27 Jun, 2023, 10:35 am Subbiah Arunachalam, <noreply1@ncsinet.in> wrote:
Friends,
"I think higher education in India has been losing its soul for a long time, particularly in humanities and social sciences because of the pressure to get jobs. The basic purpose of higher education - of questioning and exploring - has been lost," says Prof. Suhas Palshikar, the eminent political scientist.
Questioning, exploring, learning, and teaching have been put on the back burner in many higher educational institutions (HEI), nay they have been sacrificed at the altar of chasing ranks. While several institutions are indulging in citation gaming and other unwelcome practices to improve their rank, some others, I hear, are thankfully getting out of this rat race.
Prof. Padmanabhan Balaram has written several editorials on the abuse of publication and citation data in *Current Science*. He has also spoken about it in many of his talks.
Please listen to his LIS Academy talk (on Science publishing and the decline of scholarship), the first in their seminar series, delivered on 14 November 2020. It is available on YouTube.
And yet a very large percentage of research papers from LIS departments and the doctoral (and possibly Master's) dissertations in LIS submitted to Indian universities is in citation analysis/scientometrics. Balaram says many of the papers written by Indian librarians are no good at all.
You might also wish to read:
1. *Indian J Med Ethics*, 2018 Jul-Sep; *3*(3):221-229.
doi: 10.20529/IJME.2018.024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29650499/ Evaluation of research in India -- Are we doing it right?
2. *Proc** Indian Natn Sci Acad*, *80* (No. 5) December 2014, pp. 919-929, doi: 10.16943/ptinsa/2014/v80i5/47965
Heads I win, Tails you lose: The intransigence of STM publishers
By all means, let us use citation data to do research. Research like, for example, what Don Swanson of the Chicago University and Ronald Kostoff of the US Naval Laboratory have done, literature-based discovery. But our main purpose is to serve our faculty and students to do whatever they do better, which are mostly teaching, learning, questioning, exploring, creating new knowledge, inventing, patenting, and occasionally advising the government and helping industry. HEIs are, so to say, in the business of knowledge generation and exchange. There are two parts to it, viz. enhancing *access* to knowledge generated worldwide, and making the knowledge generated by our own researchers *visible* to the world. That, in short, is scholarly communication librarianship is all about.
With best wishes,
Arun
-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
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Mysore Jagadish -
Subbiah Arunachalam