Why we can’t romanticise academic publishing changes
The discontinuation of the UGC (University Grants Commission) CARE (Consortium for Academic Research and Ethics) list, announced last April, marked an important moment in the landscape of Indian academia, signalling a shift from centralised gatekeeping to a decentralised, context-driven approach to research evaluation.
While the initial announcement sparked debates across campuses and academic spaces, it also offered an opportunity to reimagine what constitutes research quality and how it should be nurtured, evaluated and recognised in the Indian context.
Following this important decision, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across India have been grappling with the implications of this transition. Concerns about transparency, standardisation and quality assurance remain, but so does an emerging discourse on autonomy, innovation and contextual relevance.
Post-UGC-CARE vacuum: Risks and realities
The discontinuation of the UGC-CARE list, although motivated by the need to address its structural limitations, has left a vacuum – particularly for early-career researchers and doctoral students who now find themselves without a clear benchmark for identifying credible journals.
This uncertainty has led many to fall back on metrics like impact factors, SCOPUS or Web of Science indexing, thereby reinforcing a reliance on global, often Western-centric publishing ecosystems.
While these indices are valuable, their overemphasis risks marginalising Indian journals, especially those publishing in regional languages or on locally relevant themes.
Without institutional guidance, researchers may overlook high-quality, non-indexed journals contributing meaningfully to disciplines like education, sociology, political science or indigenous studies. This inadvertently undermines the diversity and richness of Indian scholarship.
Additionally, the challenge of predatory and cloned journals remains unresolved. In the absence of a vetted list, unethical publishers may find it convenient to exploit researchers who are under pressure to publish. Unless appropriate safeguards are introduced, the problem may mutate rather than disappear.
HEIs as catalysts for reform
The move toward decentralisation places an urgent and profound responsibility on HEIs to transition from being passive facilitators to active custodians of academic integrity.
It is no longer sufficient for institutions to rely on centralised metrics; they must now develop their own robust, contextually relevant frameworks for evaluating research. These frameworks must be transparent, inclusive and sensitive to disciplinary diversity, rather than replicating the flawed, metric-driven models they seek to replace.
Central to this shift is the establishment of domain-specific peer review systems that assess publications not just by indexing status, but by their originality, methodological soundness, contextual relevance and societal impact.
A tiered evaluation model could also be adopted, recognising journals based on qualitative indicators such as editorial standards, peer-review rigour, ethical practices and accessibility.
Notably, HEIs must give due recognition to regional and vernacular scholarship, which remains marginalised despite its critical contribution to India’s socio-cultural and educational discourses.
Ethical practices in research – ranging from obtaining ethical clearance and informed consent to robust anti-plagiarism enforcement – must form the bedrock of any institutional evaluation process.
Furthermore, these frameworks must not be static blueprints but living documents, subject to regular review and refinement through feedback from academic stakeholders. Without such context-sensitive structures, the promise of decentralisation risks devolving into yet another bureaucratic formality devoid of academic nuance or ethical rigour.
Towards genuine scholarly purpose
With institutional handholding no longer centrally defined, researchers in India must now embrace a proactive and self-regulatory approach to academic publishing. This necessitates a cultural shift – from publishing merely to satisfy institutional norms to publishing with genuine scholarly purpose.
A key step in this direction involves strengthening research mentorship, where doctoral supervisors and senior faculty go beyond thesis guidance to support young scholars in identifying appropriate publication platforms, understanding the peer-review process and upholding academic integrity.
Additionally, researchers should be encouraged to develop reflective research portfolios that document not only their publications but also their scholarly impact, dissemination activities and community engagement – offering a more comprehensive picture than traditional publication metrics alone.
Promoting interdisciplinary and collaborative research is equally essential. Institutions and funding agencies must facilitate partnerships that bridge STEM, social sciences and humanities through mechanisms such as seed grants, research clusters and sabbatical exchanges.
Finally, awareness of open science practices must be embedded into academic culture. Researchers need to be educated on the value of open access journals, data repositories and preprint platforms to ensure transparency, accessibility and reproducibility in research – key elements in building a more ethical and inclusive academic ecosystem.
The role of national agencies and regulatory bodies
While decentralisation grants institutions the autonomy to design context-specific research evaluation frameworks, it does not eliminate the need for overarching guidance. In fact, the absence of a structured support system risks deepening disparities across institutions and compromising academic integrity.
National regulatory bodies such as the UGC, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the National Council for Teacher Education and the All India Council for Technical Education must play a facilitative rather than prescriptive role in this transition.
A well-curated, dynamic national repository of evaluated journals – not as an enforcement tool but as a consultative reference – can offer researchers clarity without imposing uniformity.
Moreover, the shift demands extensive capacity-building within HEIs. Without targeted workshops and institutional resources focused on ethical publishing, research design and transparent evaluation methods, decentralisation may devolve into inconsistency.
Equally critical is the support for high-quality Indian journals, many of which lack the financial and infrastructural capacity to meet global standards. Providing editorial training, digital publishing tools and funding opportunities will be essential to ensure their visibility and credibility.
Finally, in a decentralised ecosystem, a robust redressal mechanism is indispensable. Establishing ombudsman systems to address disputes or grievances related to publication practices will uphold accountability and safeguard researcher rights.
Without these systemic safeguards, decentralisation could result in fragmentation rather than reform.
India’s academic landscape is at a decisive juncture, and the discontinuation of the UGC-CARE list should not be misconstrued as a withdrawal from quality assurance but rather recognised as a bold – though risky – invitation to radically rethink how research is evaluated.
This shift challenges the hegemony of mechanistic metrics and compels a transition toward a more humanistic, contextually grounded and institutionally owned system of academic assessment.
However, such a transition cannot be romanticised. It demands a vigilant and strategic recalibration of institutional practices, lest decentralisation deteriorates into fragmentation, inconsistency or even academic complacency.
To realise its transformative potential, this moment requires a deliberate dismantling of the entrenched culture of compliance and opportunism, replacing it with a culture rooted in critical scholarship, ethical responsibility and intellectual collaboration.
HEIs must assume the dual role of evaluators and enablers by promoting research environments that are both methodologically rigorous and contextually relevant. Equally, researchers must redefine their roles – not merely as content producers chasing citations but as co-creators of knowledge with societal and disciplinary significance.
Only through sustained investment in human capital, enabling platforms and progressive policies can Indian academia transcend this moment of uncertainty and claim a more equitable, pluralistic and globally resonant future.
Mohammad Ilyas is a research fellow at EdifyOnline Corp USA (remote) and a former scholar at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India.
This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.