Wind beneath the wings
Interpersonal relationship is the basis of a mentee-mentor relationship, and hence there can only be broad guidelines, but not rule-books, on how to nurture the same.
Articles
Not Another Brick in the Wall
Throughout the period of film-making, we emphasize the point that the process is as important as the product: maintaining harmonious relationships within the group, learning from each other, engaging with subjects in an ethical manner that respects their dignity, privacy and right to choose is more important than making a ‘good’ film.
The Many Ways of Doing a PhD
Why is there variation in the degree of independence that mentees have in terms of their research? What are the consequences of this variation for both the mentors and the mentees? Should institutes take this variation into account while hiring or promoting faculty?
Scientific Integrity – the interaction of common human foibles and different interest groups
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’?
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?
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.
Meeting Report: STIP 2020 and the Future of Scientific Research in India
Meeting report of a webinar to discuss the Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy 2020.
The law against sexual harassment and the task at hand
What the law has to say about sexual harassment at the workplace and the working of Internal Complaints Committees.
Budget 2021: What’s in it for research?
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.
Why the national ayurveda protocol on COVID management appears wanting
The protocol thus is faithful neither to the Ayurvedic classics nor to conventional diagnostic criteria. A document endorsed by the country’s Prime Minister would be expected to be clear, error-free and trustworthy. The document in question sadly has these attributes only faintly.