Why are we Indians ruining Science?
Science in India - doomed to obscurity.
Last month, I published a blog post - "Science in India - Doomed to Obscurity?". I discussed how Science often gets a beating as a career option - because students originally interested in science are externally veered to other more lucrative options. I ended the post with an emphatic "Yes, I am happy I am pursuing a career in Science".
A month later, I find the "?" at the end of the last post changed to a ".".
This is not a complete retraction of my feelings, I am still happy choosing Science because it is an enormously fulfilling profession. I am, though, very concerned, about the state of Science in India.
What happened?
The article investigates the role of India in polluting the current scene of Science. It reports that as much as 27% of fake journal publishers are based in India (more than 1 in every 4!) and India is home to 42% of fake single-journal publishers. These are stats for over 11,000 open access journals that have been identified as fake.
They mention the source as as a paper in October in the open access journal BMC Medicine. Thankfully, this open access paper has good intentions. If promotions and awards of tenure happen on such basis in India, there needs to be someone who stops this. And what a sorry state of events it is, that we need people from outside the country to sweep the trash out of our own courtyards.
Citing several other articles and papers as well, the article points out the sad truth: that India is one of the world's largest bases for predatory open-access publishing. Why are such unethical activities finding root in our society? Where are the highly-acclaimed and globally gloated-about values of Indian culture now?
Perhaps such publishers don't understand how Science works. Science isn't about one team working on one problem, finding a solution and then being lauded. Science is about collective efforts, where one researcher often looks to his/her peers for solutions to some part of the problem. If Team A claims (through such fake papers) to have found a solution for at least one step of a bigger problem, Team B naturally relies on their results, and goes forward with their work without wasting time, money and efforts in re-solving the same problem. In such a case, if A's work provides a wrong, fake, incorrect foundation, what would the result be after all?
It makes me terribly sad to say this but perhaps it's time we recognized that "Indian" values are less about honor and integrity and more about desperation and deprivation today. We won't solve problems till we don't accept they exist.
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SOURCES
Article from The Hindu -- Fake journals: 'Make in India' gone wrong
Link
I also found that the above article has no references to the articles it derives its information from (this is bad practice). Sources mentioned in the above article are listed here:
The Hindu published the article:"Fake journals: 'Make in India' gone wrong"
The article investigates the role of India in polluting the current scene of Science. It reports that as much as 27% of fake journal publishers are based in India (more than 1 in every 4!) and India is home to 42% of fake single-journal publishers. These are stats for over 11,000 open access journals that have been identified as fake.
 |
| Differences between authentic and predatory journals, put in a simplistic manner |
They mention the source as as a paper in October in the open access journal BMC Medicine. Thankfully, this open access paper has good intentions. If promotions and awards of tenure happen on such basis in India, there needs to be someone who stops this. And what a sorry state of events it is, that we need people from outside the country to sweep the trash out of our own courtyards.
Citing several other articles and papers as well, the article points out the sad truth: that India is one of the world's largest bases for predatory open-access publishing. Why are such unethical activities finding root in our society? Where are the highly-acclaimed and globally gloated-about values of Indian culture now?
"Even if science done in India has not grown much in the last few years, India has successfully played a vital role in polluting the scientific literature with trash."
Perhaps such publishers don't understand how Science works. Science isn't about one team working on one problem, finding a solution and then being lauded. Science is about collective efforts, where one researcher often looks to his/her peers for solutions to some part of the problem. If Team A claims (through such fake papers) to have found a solution for at least one step of a bigger problem, Team B naturally relies on their results, and goes forward with their work without wasting time, money and efforts in re-solving the same problem. In such a case, if A's work provides a wrong, fake, incorrect foundation, what would the result be after all?
It makes me terribly sad to say this but perhaps it's time we recognized that "Indian" values are less about honor and integrity and more about desperation and deprivation today. We won't solve problems till we don't accept they exist.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCES
Article from The Hindu -- Fake journals: 'Make in India' gone wrong
Link
I also found that the above article has no references to the articles it derives its information from (this is bad practice). Sources mentioned in the above article are listed here:
- The BMC Medicine article:
Shen and Bjork BMC Medicine (2015) 13:230
Link [freely available] - Dr. Jeffrey Beall's article in Nature in 2012:
Beall Nature (2012) 489, 179 doi:10.1038/489179a
Link - September 2014 Editorial in Current Science:
Raghavan et al. Current Science (2014) 107, 5
Link, also available at this page - The BMJ editorial in January 2015:
Clark BMJ 2015;350:h210
Link
Sad fact : What looks good.. sells.
ReplyDeleteScientists are not marketing experts and hence they need to bring something really awesome to get attention. But as you have mentioned any worthwhile scientific finding requires collective and cumulative effort of lots of scientists and more importantly huge amount of time is invested to bring something even mildly revolutionary.
Government needs to understand the challenges faced by scientific community.
Scientific community needs to understand to be sensitive(as you have said) and learn some marketing(i am bit ashamed to say this but..it is the way)
Nice post. Speak up scientist...speak!
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DeleteExactly! So glad you see my point. Science isn't a routind job, it's supposed to be new and unexplored territory. So just because it doesn't fit the bill to some people who don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not helping society. Sadly, the people who do control the purse strings are those who are, at best, half-knowledgeable.
DeleteAs for the issue of insensitivity, I hope that changes with time. (Though again, given the tinkering with curricula, I'm afraid things might get messed up to a large extent and it'd again take a long time to set them right. ) On my part, trying to raise a voice.
Thank you for the encouragement. :)