I agree with the views of Anil, Vinod and Rajesh. But it is not the LIS to be blamed alone. This is a practice in all fileds, especially in India. I would like to bring attention to a major issue that India is facing due to this kind of "publish anywhere" syndrome. Currently, the world of scientific research presents a different and ever-changing landscape. The scientific output of the nations is tracked based on the indexed publications. The concepts of “quality in research”, “reviewed research” and “reviewed publications” are discussed widely and we understand that only reviewed and indexed research pieces qualify for the ratings and rankings of Universities and Institutions worldwide. It becomes essential to bring a large number of ‘reviewed’ research papers from Indian institutions, not only just to keep a good "global ranking", but also to ensure a high level scholarly environment in the country.  As a yardstick to measure the research contributions and research impact of individuals, research publications reflect the character of the innovative research, and it is critically looked by agencies and institutions in deciding funding, tenures, promotion and other related activities. In nutshell, the publications indexed in the databases such as Scopus and ISI Web of Science are considered in the global level, where a large number of Indian papers are not accepted in ranked journals and many researchers do not gain an understanding of producing better content. Publishing the papers in peer-reviewed and internationally indexed journals by Indians is increasingly important, which will increase researchers’ index and wide acceptance and academic profiling. This is also very important for the ranking of the institutions and the country at global level. According to Thomson Reuter’s analysts, the rise of China in the internationally influential journal literature indexed by Thomson Reuters ISI—in terms of share of world output—is the most significant event in the structure of scientific research in the past 30 years. In 1983, China produced just 6 percent of articles in the Science Citation Index (Web of Science). Now, China produces some 13 percent of the literature, second only to the United States at 29 percent. (Source: Research fronts 2013: 100 Top-Ranked Specialties in the Sciences and Social Sciences, Thomson Reuters, April 2013). This is also can be validated by from another Citation database, Elsevier’s Scopus Citation Database. Librarians have a major role in  creating awareness among young faculty, researchers to  address research publication process, global research network, optimization of research publication, structuring of research publications, review and indexing process, methods of generating good publications, demonstration of global indexing databases, research networks and other citation and evaluation metrics. Hope UGC will consider this important factor in their forthcoming reformation under Prof. Hari Gautham and include research and faculty evaluations based on quality of research and publications. The views in this notes are purely personal. ---------- Dr. J. K. VIJAYAKUMAR, Manager, Library Research & Reference, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, -------------------- 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 <dr.anilsingh5 at gmail.com> wrote: 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. _______________________________________________ LIS-Forum mailing list LIS-Forum at ncsi.iisc.ernet.in http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.