Author: Moderator

Scientific Integrity – the interaction of common human foibles and different interest groups

Posted on , updated on by Moderator

Over the decades the research ideas have become more intricate (as expected) and consequently, more expensive. Therefore, to carry out justified research, a scientist needs to jazz it up with fancy buzzwords and high-sounding goals. Otherwise, it falls flat, and therefore, there is no funding for it. On the other hand, somewhere down the way, we (scientists and science administration) seem to have forgotten that research is mostly boring laborious repetitive jobs to reproduce and re-evaluate observations. Therefore, the first thing to be discarded along the way has been the due rigor of the work.

Do we need to spend substantial amounts on ‘open access’?

Posted on , updated on by Moderator

All citizens have a right to know the output of academic research funded through public money. However, the pay-walls between the research output and readers have become much more formidable barriers in recent years. Authors and/or their institutions, and readers thus have to shell out substantial money to access the published results while commercial publishers make very high profit. Do researchers and readers really need to spend the hard-to-get research funds for open access when any published paper can be available to the desiring reader through email exchanges between reader and author involving request for, and sharing of the pdf file?

Why are both UGC- CARE List of Journals and Good Academic Research Practices (GARP) Archaic?

Posted on , updated on by Moderator

This paper discusses the limitations of Good Academic Research Practices (GARP) and UGC-CARE List in engaging with the emerging scholarly open publishing platforms, specifically preprints. This paper throws some light on preprints and their role in accelerating science communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. The UGC’s opaqueness towards emerging open publishing platforms in its GARP document and propagating traditional scholarly publications through UGC-CARE List has also been deliberated.

Budget 2021: What’s in it for research?

Posted on , updated on by Moderator

For a science budget in the backdrop of a pandemic, it does make big moves but leaves some crucial details to be filled in later.  Finance Minister quoted Rabindranath Tagore in her budget speech – “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark”. Until the details come in, faith must be kept that what the big print has given, the fine print will not take away.