Are we really publishing scholarly and peer reviewed Journals in LIS?
When I check my e-mail account, I observe that on an average I receive one request in a week to send a paper for a particular LIS Journal. It seems that there is mushrooming of LIS Journals. In India it is very easy to start a journal. Just register the Journal with RNI (Registrar of Newspaper/Magazine in India), constitute a dummy editorial board, get the ISSN from NISCAIR and journal is ready to be launched. In LIS there are approximately 80 journals. There is also no restriction to make the journal National or International, it depends on us. After the implementation of API/PBAS by UGC for evaluation of performance of faculty & librarians for career advancement and recruitment, a trend has emerged in the last five years to start an in-house journal within the organization, or by individual association and NGOs to get articles published at any cost, simply to meet their scores for promotion/recruitment. By December 2009, there were 7425 journals registered in India in all areas as per ISSN register whereas this number reached 16161 in 2013. In many Indian universities, for the selection process the journals are classified into national & international for allotting the marks whereas they should have been classified as "Indian" or "Foreign" Journals. It has been seen that many times journal having word "International" is treated as foreign publication and it got more marks. Therefore, most of these journals started with "International Journal of ........" A new trend has also started to take the handling charges from the authors who want to publish their paper/article. It seems that authors are able to get anything published that is in type form without refereeing or revision. Here nobody will reject the paper. Such paid journals have become a booming business in India but this trend has tarnished the standard of research journals in LIS. An influential person can get his or her paper published easily, whether it has any novelty or not. People with little experience in a editing and reviewing become Chief Editor and Expert Referees. There are instances when heads of the department tend to insert their names in most of the papers, communicated from their department. Here, the main point is that if somebody publishes his/her paper in LIS journals like IASLIC Bulletin, SRELS Journal of Information Management, Annals of Library and Information Studies etc. and another person publishes in "International Journal of XYZ" published from India, then who will get more point as per the UGC rule. Can we compare the standard of above mentioned journals with any other so called International Journal published from India? Therefore, we should have a strict code for Academic and Research Journals and it may be prepared by ISSN giving agency i.e., NISCAIR. It is also necessary that, while evaluating the quality of publications, emphasis should be given to those publications which are indexed and cited by international databases like SCOPUS, Web of Knowledge etc. Feedback and comments are welcome. Anil Singh NCERT Library New Delhi -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Dear Sir,
I am totally agree with you and you raised very valid points. In such
situation i would like to suggest recruiting agency should only consider
the papers which indexed in above databases. Instead of counting the papers
it will be nice to count the citations of the article cited by other
authors as well as h-index of the author publications also in a data range
if counting of article is more. Some time i also surprised how a person has
written 3/4 hundred papers but now realizing the fact that many are
insisting their subordinates to write their names in the paper or a
researcher has to write his/her boss name if he want to complete his/her
Ph.D successful (I have faced this problem earlier).
In the interview board a person should be ready their with databases like
SCOPUS/Web of science to evaluate his citations and value of research.
There should be some provision to discontinue the journals (e.g like after
6/7 year of publication) by some agency if it does not secure some minimum
impact factor or such parameters.
I am not happy if some one accept my papers in a first instance but i feel
happy if it is rejected several times for modifications as well as some
time feel up-sate also if some editor insist to incorporate similar
articles content which is very difficult for me to do because of my
complete originality!
Thanking you sir for raising such significant issues!
On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Anil Singh
When I check my e-mail account, I observe that on an average I receive one request in a week to send a paper for a particular LIS Journal. It seems that there is mushrooming of LIS Journals. In India it is very easy to start a journal. Just register the Journal with RNI (Registrar of Newspaper/Magazine in India), constitute a dummy editorial board, get the ISSN from NISCAIR and journal is ready to be launched. In LIS there are approximately 80 journals. There is also no restriction to make the journal National or International, it depends on us.
After the implementation of API/PBAS by UGC for evaluation of performance of faculty & librarians for career advancement and recruitment, a trend has emerged in the last five years to start an in-house journal within the organization, or by individual association and NGOs to get articles published at any cost, simply to meet their scores for promotion/recruitment. By December 2009, there were 7425 journals registered in India in all areas as per ISSN register whereas this number reached 16161 in 2013.
In many Indian universities, for the selection process the journals are classified into national & international for allotting the marks whereas they should have been classified as "Indian" or "Foreign" Journals. It has been seen that many times journal having word "International" is treated as foreign publication and it got more marks. Therefore, most of these journals started with "International Journal of ........"
A new trend has also started to take the handling charges from the authors who want to publish their paper/article. It seems that authors are able to get anything published that is in type form without refereeing or revision. Here nobody will reject the paper. Such paid journals have become a booming business in India but this trend has tarnished the standard of research journals in LIS. An influential person can get his or her paper published easily, whether it has any novelty or not. People with little experience in a editing and reviewing become Chief Editor and Expert Referees. There are instances when heads of the department tend to insert their names in most of the papers, communicated from their department.
Here, the main point is that if somebody publishes his/her paper in LIS journals like IASLIC Bulletin, SRELS Journal of Information Management, Annals of Library and Information Studies etc. and another person publishes in "International Journal of XYZ" published from India, then who will get more point as per the UGC rule. Can we compare the standard of above mentioned journals with any other so called International Journal published from India?
Therefore, we should have a strict code for Academic and Research Journals and it may be prepared by ISSN giving agency i.e., NISCAIR. It is also necessary that, while evaluating the quality of publications, emphasis should be given to those publications which are indexed and cited by international databases like SCOPUS, Web of Knowledge etc.
Feedback and comments are welcome.
Anil Singh NCERT Library New Delhi
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-- With Regards, Vinod Kumar Mishra, Assistant Librarian, Biju Patnaik Central Library (BPCL), NIT Rourkela. Mob:91+9439420860 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Dear Anil
You have hit the nail. It requires lot of guts to criticize in this profession as everyone knows to everyone and equation of their relations is very much important for them. I appreciate your view and look it towards healthy discussion. I don't know about what other professionals think. It could be complete opposite from my view as well.
With best regards
Rajesh Chandrakar
On Thursday, July 24, 2014 9:52 AM, Anil Singh
participants (3)
-
Anil Singh -
Rajesh Chandrakar -
vinod mishra