UGC discontinues CARE Journal Listing, suggests new parameters to ensure quality, transparency, and relevance

The system faced significant criticisms, including over-centralisation, delays in including or excluding journals, and lack of transparency in its decision-making process

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has officially announced the discontinuation of the UGC-Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) journal listing.

In place of the CARE journal listing, the UGC has introduced a set of suggestive parameters for faculty members and students to guide their selection of academic journals for research and publication. These new parameters were developed by a group of experts and academicians, and are now open for public feedback.

This move, which supersedes the Public Notice dated November 28, 2018, follows the recommendations of an expert committee. “In supersession of the Public Notice dated 28th November 2018 for establishing UGC Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (UGC- CARE), the Commission, in its 584th meeting held on 3rd October 2024, based on the recommendations of the expert committee, has decided to discontinue UGC-CARE listing of Journals and develop suggestive parameters for choosing peer-reviewed journals by faculty members and students,” the UGC notice read.

“The suggestive parameters, developed by a group of experts and academicians, are now placed in the public domain for their feedback till 25th February 2025 at email id: journal@ugc.gov.in. The stakeholders, including Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), faculty members, may take note of it,” it adds.

Suggestive parameters for peer-reviewed journals

The UGC notice emphasises that HEIs are committed to promoting high-quality research and dissemination through peer-reviewed publications. To achieve this goal, HEIs are encouraged to adopt the suggestive parameters, put in public domain by the UGC. The UGC recommended that HEIs establish internal review committees to fine-tune these parameters based on their academic needs and ensure adherence to evolving quality standards.

Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, chairman, UGC says that the UGC-CARE list was introduced in 2018 to ensure that only reputable journals were recognised for faculty selections, promotions, and research funding applications. The list was designed in response to concerns about the quality of research publications and the prevalence of predatory journals.

UGC-CARE System faces criticisms

However, the system faced significant criticisms, including over-centralisation, delays in including or excluding journals, and lack of transparency in its decision-making process. Additionally, some highly respected journals, especially those published in Indian languages, were excluded, while less credible ones were included. Researchers also faced challenges such as the pressure to publish in UGC-CARE listed journals and the uncertainty when journals were abruptly removed from the list.

Review and discontinuation of UGC-CARE List

Addressing these issues, Prof Kumar says that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 criticised the heavy regulation of academic publishing. This led the UGC to establish an expert committee in December 2023 to review the UGC-CARE scheme. The committee's recommendations culminated in the decision to discontinue the CARE list and encourage HEIs to create their own credible institutional mechanisms for evaluating journals.

“This new approach gives institutions more flexibility,” Prof Kumar says, adding, “It allows them to create models that align with academic norms and the unique needs of different disciplines. Researchers will no longer be constrained by a centralised list of journals.”

In addition, Prof Kumar emphasises that HEIs will play a key role in combating predatory journals under this new system. Institutions will need to establish credible mechanisms for journal evaluation to protect their reputations and maintain scholarly standards. Experienced faculty members are also encouraged to guide younger researchers in identifying credible journals and avoiding predatory ones.

Restoring academic freedom and autonomy

The decentralisation of journal evaluation is seen as a step towards restoring academic freedom. “By discontinuing the UGC-CARE list, the UGC has returned the journal selection process to HEIs,” he says, adding, “This restores academic freedom and autonomy, allowing researchers to publish in journals that best align with their discipline and audience.”

HEIs will now have the responsibility to accommodate newer and rapidly evolving fields in their journal evaluation models. This flexibility allows for the recognition of journals that may not have been sufficiently acknowledged by traditional indexing models, ensuring that the evolving nature of academic publishing is addressed.

For further details, stakeholders are encouraged to refer to the UGC’s official communications and share their views on the newly proposed parameters before the deadline.

Source: https://www.educationtimes.com/article/newsroom/99737613/ugc-discontinues-care-journal-listing-new-parameters-introduced-to-ensure-quality-transparency-and-relevance

Quality alarm as UGC scraps journal list, global standing of Indian universities to be affected

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to discontinue its standard list of publications that helps researchers and academics identify journals that are credible and meet certain quality standards for publishing their papers.


Two UGC officials said the commission had recently decided to do away with the UGC-Consortium for Academics and Research Ethics (CARE) list.

Read the full article at: https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/university-grants-commission-scraps-journal-list-global-standing-of-indian-universities-to-be-affected/cid/2078454

Delisted Journals from SCOPUS as on 8th February 2025

 UGC-CARE has received complaints about several journals which are not following the standard publishing practices. After scrutinizing these Journals in accordance with UGC-CARE protocols, UGC has decided to remove these journals from Group II of the UGC-CARE List. Please note that any publication in these journals will not be considered for any academic purposes.

Publishers/editors may send the request for re-inclusion of a journal which has been removed from the UGC-CARE List. They can submit journal title/s through IQAC Cell of any affiliated college / University following the prescribed submission process with the recommendation of teaching faculty along with the duly signed declaration form by IQAC head, or in his/her absence, Principal/Vice- Chancellor of the College/University. Journal information should be submitted to the nearest UGC- CARE Universities. The journals will be scrutinized again in accordance with the UGC-CARE protocols.

Source: https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/Apps1/User/Web/ScopusDelisted (Accessed on 8th February 2025)

IIT Bombay and IISER Pune to be mentors to promote research in higher education institutions

"The idea is to promote and improve research work at central and state universities under the mentorship from hub institutions which are already excelling in research,” said Prof Karandikar“Total of 31 institutions across the country having stellar research records have been identified to become hubs (File)

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay from Mumbai and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) from Pune are the two institutions from Maharashtra identified as mentors under the Partnerships for Accelerated Innovation and Research (PAIR)–a flagship initiative by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to promote research in higher education institutions in the country, secretary of Department of Science and Technology, Prof Abhay Karandikar said on Monday.

The ANRF, which aims to foster culture of research in India’s universities, colleges and other research institutions, launched the PAIR initiative a couple of months ago wherein higher educational institutions in the country having excellent research record will mentor other institutions such as central universities and public universities through pairing under ‘hub and spoke’ model.

“Total of 31 institutions across the country having stellar research records have been identified to become hubs. Now they will have to apply for PAIR along with their spoke institutions for a period of five years, on various themes listed for research with focus on multidisciplinary approach. The idea is to promote and improve research work at central and state universities under the mentorship from hub institutions which are already excelling in research,” said Prof Karandikar while adding that the mentorship parameters will have a range of activities from finalising on research topics depending on strengths, guidance on publishing of research papers in high quality journals and also co-supervising PhD students among others.

Each hub and spoke pairing will receive financial support of Rs 100 crore coming from the government through ANRF for a period of five years. “Out of the funding, 70 percent will have to be used for research activities at spoke institutions whereas a hub institution will get to use the remaining 30 percent of the grant. In order to expand the reach of the scheme, each hub institution is required to have one of the spoke institutions which is located outside of the state,” said Prof Karandikar who currently also holds charge on ANRF as CEO.

Prof Karandikar, who will be the chief guest for Mumbai University’s convocation ceremony to be held on Tuesday, delivered a talk at varsity’s Kalina campus a day before on how ANRF is transforming the science and technology landscape in the country. The talk which entailed information on various new schemes under ANRF to enhance research output was attended by several researchers from Mumbai University–faculty as well as students.

In his talk, Prof Karandikar highlighted that research output in the country is concentrated in few institutions with lowest number of (18) institutions having average publication per institute at 7,620 research papers and highest number (115) institutions have average publication per institute of 1,121 research papers while underlining how ANRF is devoted to enhance research and development outputs in institutions across the country.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/iit-bombay-and-iiser-pune-to-be-mentors-to-promote-research-in-higher-education-institutions-9763583/lite/

Top Searches from “IEEE Xplore Digital Library" - 14th December 2023

 

SN	RESEARCH DOMAIN	RESOURCE	MOST CITED BY PAPERS 1	MOST CITED BY PAPERS 2
1	IMAGE PROCESSING	IEEE XPLORE	J. Deng, W. Dong, R. Socher, L. -J. Li, Kai Li and Li Fei-Fei, "ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database," 2009 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Miami, FL, USA, 2009, pp. 248-255, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2009.5206848. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5206848&isnumber=5206488	C. Szegedy et al., "Going deeper with convolutions," 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Boston, MA, USA, 2015, pp. 1-9, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2015.7298594.   URL: URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7298594&isnumber=7298593
2	MACHINE LEARNING	IEEE XPLORE	C. Szegedy et al., "Going deeper with convolutions," 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Boston, MA, USA, 2015, pp. 1-9, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2015.7298594. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7298594&isnumber=7298593	J. D. Hunter, "Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment," in Computing in Science & Engineering, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 90-95, May-June 2007, doi: 10.1109/MCSE.2007.55. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4160265&isnumber=4160244
3	DEEP LEARNING	IEEE XPLORE	K. B. Lee and H. S. Shin, "An Application of a Deep Learning Algorithm for Automatic Detection of Unexpected Accidents Under Bad CCTV Monitoring Conditions in Tunnels," 2019 International Conference on Deep Learning and Machine Learning in Emerging Applications (Deep-ML), Istanbul, Turkey, 2019, pp. 7-11, doi: 10.1109/Deep-ML.2019.00010. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8876906&isnumber=8876888	D. Goularas and S. Kamis, "Evaluation of Deep Learning Techniques in Sentiment Analysis from Twitter Data," 2019 International Conference on Deep Learning and Machine Learning in Emerging Applications (Deep-ML), Istanbul, Turkey, 2019, pp. 12-17, doi: 10.1109/Deep-ML.2019.00011. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8876896&isnumber=8876888
4	ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE	IEEE XPLORE	J. Canny, "A Computational Approach to Edge Detection," in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. PAMI-8, no. 6, pp. 679-698, Nov. 1986, doi: 10.1109/TPAMI.1986.4767851. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4767851&isnumber=4767846	S. G. Mallat, "A theory for multiresolution signal decomposition: the wavelet representation," in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 674-693, July 1989, doi: 10.1109/34.192463. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=192463&isnumber=4963
5	CLOUD COMPUTING	IEEE XPLORE	J. Deng, W. Dong, R. Socher, L. -J. Li, Kai Li and Li Fei-Fei, "ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database," 2009 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Miami, FL, USA, 2009, pp. 248-255, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2009.5206848. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5206848&isnumber=5206488	S. G. Mallat, "A theory for multiresolution signal decomposition: the wavelet representation," in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 674-693, July 1989, doi: 10.1109/34.192463. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=192463&isnumber=4963
6	BIG DATA	IEEE XPLORE	J. Deng, W. Dong, R. Socher, L. -J. Li, Kai Li and Li Fei-Fei, "ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database," 2009 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Miami, FL, USA, 2009, pp. 248-255, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2009.5206848. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5206848&isnumber=5206488	C. Szegedy et al., "Going deeper with convolutions," 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Boston, MA, USA, 2015, pp. 1-9, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2015.7298594. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7298594&isnumber=7298593
7	IOT	IEEE XPLORE	A. Al-Fuqaha, M. Guizani, M. Mohammadi, M. Aledhari and M. Ayyash, "Internet of Things: A Survey on Enabling Technologies, Protocols, and Applications," in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 2347-2376, Fourthquarter 2015, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2015.2444095. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7123563&isnumber=7331734	W. Shi, J. Cao, Q. Zhang, Y. Li and L. Xu, "Edge Computing: Vision and Challenges," in IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 637-646, Oct. 2016, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2579198. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7488250&isnumber=7563473
8	VLSI	IEEE XPLORE	P. N. Belhumeur, J. P. Hespanha and D. J. Kriegman, "Eigenfaces vs. Fisherfaces: recognition using class specific linear projection," in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 711-720, July 1997, doi: 10.1109/34.598228. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=598228&isnumber=13123	P. Perona and J. Malik, "Scale-space and edge detection using anisotropic diffusion," in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 629-639, July 1990, doi: 10.1109/34.56205. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=56205&isnumber=2032
9	CYBER SECURITY	IEEE XPLORE	A. Al-Fuqaha, M. Guizani, M. Mohammadi, M. Aledhari and M. Ayyash, "Internet of Things: A Survey on Enabling Technologies, Protocols, and Applications," in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 2347-2376, Fourthquarter 2015, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2015.2444095. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7123563&isnumber=7331734	E. G. Larsson, O. Edfors, F. Tufvesson and T. L. Marzetta, "Massive MIMO for next generation wireless systems," in IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 186-195, February 2014, doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2014.6736761. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6736761&isnumber=6736727
10	BLOCKCHAIN	IEEE XPLORE	K. Christidis and M. Devetsikiotis, "Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things," in IEEE Access, vol. 4, pp. 2292-2303, 2016, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2566339. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7467408&isnumber=7419931	W. Saad, M. Bennis and M. Chen, "A Vision of 6G Wireless Systems: Applications, Trends, Technologies, and Open Research Problems," in IEEE Network, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 134-142, May/June 2020, doi: 10.1109/MNET.001.1900287. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8869705&isnumber=9105918
11	NOMA	IEEE XPLORE	L. Dai, B. Wang, Y. Yuan, S. Han, I. Chih-lin and Z. Wang, "Non-orthogonal multiple access for 5G: solutions, challenges, opportunities, and future research trends," in IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 53, no. 9, pp. 74-81, September 2015, doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2015.7263349. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7263349&isnumber=7263333	Z. Ding, X. Lei, G. K. Karagiannidis, R. Schober, J. Yuan and V. K. Bhargava, "A Survey on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for 5G Networks: Research Challenges and Future Trends," in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 2181-2195, Oct. 2017, doi: 10.1109/JSAC.2017.2725519. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7973146&isnumber=8038094
12	WIND TURBINE MONITORING	IEEE XPLORE	J. M. Guerrero, J. C. Vasquez, J. Matas, L. G. de Vicuna and M. Castilla, "Hierarchical Control of Droop-Controlled AC and DC Microgrids—A General Approach Toward Standardization," in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 158-172, Jan. 2011, doi: 10.1109/TIE.2010.2066534. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5546958&isnumber=5662271	J. Rocabert, A. Luna, F. Blaabjerg and P. Rodríguez, "Control of Power Converters in AC Microgrids," in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 27, no. 11, pp. 4734-4749, Nov. 2012, doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2012.2199334. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6200347&isnumber=6222041