Ranking Pressure Takes Toll On Research Credibility

IN 2023, the name Dionisio Lorenzo Villegas, professor and dean at Spain’s Universidad Fernando Pessoa-Canarias in Las Palmas, started appearing in research papers across reputed journals. His collaborators came from far-flung regions such as India, China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

As it turned out, following an investigation by Retraction Watch, a platform that tracks retractions across scientific publications, he was part of the so-called “academic papermill”. Without actual research, he bought his way into these publications by paying $290-400 and managed to publish six-seven articles in reputed journals.

The ringmaster of the operation was Chennai-based Sarath Ranganathan, who ran an entity called iTrilon. Now disbanded, it sold authorship of ‘readymade papers’ to researchers. Publication was ‘guaranteed’ in globally recognised journals indexed on platforms such as PubMed and Scopus, thanks to Sarath’s ‘connections’. In fact, Sarath ran a WhatsApp group, a 1,024-member community, where he assured ‘guaranteed acceptance’ across major journals. But as fate would have it, his activities came to the notice of ‘science sleuths’, a researchers’ community dedicated to exposing such scams. Media scrutiny forced Sarath to deactivate his entire social presence. An infographic shared by him in May 2023 boasted of publishing over 291 papers, with “91% in journals indexed on PubMed, WoS, and Scopus”.

In a separate incident in May, John Wiley & Sons Inc., a $3 billion NYSE-listed company that publishes around 1,400 academic papers every year, brought the curtains down on its Hindawi imprint, which had published around 250 journals. The Wiley unit retracted at least 11,300 research papers and shut down 19 journals after a probe found fake articles.

The two incidents offer a sneak peek into the million-dollar illicit ‘research black market’, where everything, from authorship to bogus research is on sale, for just a few dollars.

India, along with China and the U.S. at the top, has seen a huge spike in the number of retractions in the past two to three years. Of around 10,000 retractions globally in 2023, almost double from 2022, India’s share was 2,737, data by Retraction Watch shows. The retractions were not limited to lower-rung institutions but some of the high-ranked ones as well.

Achal Agrawal, founder of India Research Watch, an online community of volunteers that works towards eradicating malpractices from Indian academia, says the selling and buying of fake authorship and citations is a huge problem in India. “There have been cases reported by Retraction Watch where Indian universities were found trying to buy papers from foreign researchers. A particular university was also found to make its undergraduates write research papers and cite other papers from the university to inflate the citation count,” says Agrawal, also an assistant professor at Lucknow-based private Sitare University.

The retraction rate for India is much higher than other major countries, says Agrawal. “There are tons of WhatsApp and Telegram channels actively selling papers.”

Deans and directors of top B-schools partly blame ranking frameworks for the ‘rat race’ in academia. National and international accreditation bodies give significant weightage to research; the higher the number, the better the ranking, which translates into good business for these institutions. According to a survey by India Research Watch, 51% of 364 respondents blamed ‘university ranking parameters’ for a spike in papermills across India.

“Certain researchers, typically based abroad, have a network with Indian institutions,” says the dean of a prominent business school. “First, when the paper is submitted, it goes to the editor’s desk, who decides if it is suitable. Then it goes to a set of peer reviewers. If one’s friend is the editor, he or she can ensure that it’s seen favourably at the desk level. They can then send it to at least two sets of easy reviewers, and it’s easier to publish.”

Another B-school director says some researchers have gamed the system. Institutions collaborate with faculties (typically well-placed researchers abroad or NRIs) on co-authoring a publication and get NIRF ranking boost as long as it has at least one author’s name in it. “If one school has five authors, four from that institution and one from abroad, it counts as a school publication. If the paper gets published in quality journals, the school gets credit, and these researchers are paid handsomely. Everybody lives happily ever after.”

Most say the trend amplified when NIRF ranking was implemented in 2015. NIRF ranking gives 24% weightage to research, of which 12% is for the number of publications, and 12% for quality or citations. Another 6% is for revenues from training programmes. “24% weightage for research alone is a huge chunk. Even placement is 16%. As long as it’s skewed this way, the black market will flourish.”

A Double-edged Sword

Earlier it was not monetisable, so institutions hardly focused on hardcore research. NIRF ranking changed the game. In 2024, India published 5,65,651 papers, as per NIRF. “IITs lead with 16 institutions, contributing 24.29% of total publications and receiving 24.77% of total citations, followed by private institutions with 22 contributing 23.48% of total publications and receiving 22.19% citations,” the report adds.

Data shows how crucial research has become for ranking across disciplines. Business schools, in particular, are going all-out to bolster their research portfolios. Many spend 10-15% of their revenue on research alone. Among B-schools, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, and IIM Kozhikode took the top three spots in management in NIRF ranking this year.

“Research is important. That’s the currency with which you are evaluated. If you are looking at the FT50 publication list, IIM-A is at the top among Indian schools. We had around 20-22 publications last year. When you open a top journal and see that a publication from India is from IIM-A, at the back of your mind, you know if I do any business in India, this is the institution I’ll target. It leads to industry, academic and research connect,” says Bharat Bhasker, director, IIM Ahmedabad.

For top-tier B-schools such as the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, there’s no dearth of funds for faculties to conduct research. “When someone comes in as a faculty to do research, he or she is expected to spend a vast majority of time doing research and look for attempts to publish in top journals,” says Madan Pillutla, dean and professor of organisational behaviour at the institute.

ISB publishes roughly 15 papers every year. “We provide funds to hire a researcher, who typically costs around ₹10 lakh per year. Faculties get money to travel to conferences, buy data and other things. That is about ₹12-13 lakh, which each person expected to do research gets every year. In addition, they apply for grants. We have research centres within the school. If more money is needed, there are internal grants from the government and organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” says Pillutla.

IIM Indore, which bagged the eighth position in NIRF ranking this year, focuses on solving real-world problems for research. “During Covid we set aside a fund and looked at Covid-related issues. We do impactful research as it dovetails into our teaching,” says director Himanshu Rai.

Depending on the quality, research can attract top faculty, says Rai. “Accreditation bodies and ranking agencies look at where the research is being published. The leadership you attract also depends on the journal where research is published… Last academic year, we removed incentives for category B journals. Now, we have incentives only for A-star and FT50 journals.”

Indian business schools are being benchmarked globally, and research is an important part, says Himadri Das, director-general, International Management Institute (IMI). “The focus on research is 5-10 years old. Indian B-schools have always focused on imparting high-quality education. They, of course, wanted PhDs because that’s the requirement, but research was not a focus.”

Even the top three global accreditation bodies — AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA — look at measuring research besides classroom learning. But despite all these, most B-schools hardly focus on research. NIRF data shows the top 100 management institutes contributed 82.58% of total publications.

The higher education sector in India is facing significant challenges related to the education quality and employability of its graduates. As of August 2024, there were 1,66,538 faculty with PhD in India, around 58.66%. The remaining 41.34%, or 1,17,439, were master’s degree holders. According to NIRF data, the faculty with ‘doctoral qualifications’ is concentrated in top 100 institutions.

Experts say there’s a need to standardise the incentive structure to boost research. “Only a few institutions in India are doing that (incentivisation). It’s the nature of humans to do things that they are incentivised to do,” says ISB’s Pillutla, who wants philanthropists to step in to fill the gap.

AI In Research

The emergence of Generative AI models has reshaped the way industries work. Their ease and accuracy levels have forced firms to alter strategies. But Indian B-schools don’t consider it as an existential crisis. “AI (in research) is neither A nor I — neither artificial nor intelligent,” says Debashis Chatterjee, director, IIM Kozhikode. “You can’t convert a productivity tool into a tool for curiosity or seek patterns in established realms of knowledge through an algorithm.”

“A GenAI model or LLM is only as good as the data it’s trained on,” says Das of IMI. He, however, agrees that ‘emerging LLMs’, when they are robust, will make a difference. “It’ll be easier to do tasks such as ‘literature surveys’, which are laborious and manual.”

Still Far Behind

India is way behind China and the U.S. in research. The country’s share in global publications is only 5.21%. Saravanan Kesavan, dean, BITS School of Management, says India lacks ‘knowledge creator’ institutions in research. “You can either decide to be a knowledge disseminator, a knowledge creator, or both. If you are the former, you are teaching what other people are writing. In the U.S., if you are a knowledge disseminator, you are not in top-rank schools. The top ones create knowledge and teach as well. There has to be a certain number of schools in India that are knowledge creators.”

The massive reliance on research quantity is to be blamed for the increase in research misconduct, says Agrawal. He advocates for better measurement of metrics. “NIRF looks at the quantity and quality of research papers. The quality is measured by the number of citations. In the black market, one can even buy citations, like authorship. We hope NIRF is looked at critically, and redesigned to address these flaws.”