ABSTRACT
In this analysis of scientific research conditions in India, the authors investigate the structural reasons for ‘quality’ issues with journal publications from the university sector. Though, historically speaking, the best of scientific research has emerged from public universities through the first half of the twentieth century, policy measures of the post-independence period attempted a bifurcation of scientific training and research away from the universities and subsequently localized within national laboratory-structures of independent institutes. Saikia and Robinson observe that the deliberate alienation of the university sector from effective goals of scientific knowledge-creation – through a combination of inadequate infrastructures, bureaucratic administrations and pedagogical inertia within teaching-learning processes – has fed into a culture of ‘received’ rote learning with little impetus for critical inquiry-based science. This has been further aggravated by the menace of ‘predatory journals’, absurd regulatory frameworks and measures of individual ‘output’ that discourage collaborative engagement. The university’s mission of disseminating scientific knowledge in the larger public interest is marred by a systemic encouragement of ‘safe’ research and ‘risk-aversion’ – geared largely towards a personal ethic of ‘advancement’.
