Publish or perish: making sense of India’s research fraud epidemic

Research fraud is a global problem and has become worse due to the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The problem is even more acute in India’s higher education sector where both the number of journal publications and retractions are growing rapidly. However, journal retractions do not capture the scope of research fraud since it is impossible to know the exact number of fraudulent publications that escape notice.

Publishing over teaching

Most observers blame the ‘publish or perish’ culture for India’s research fraud epidemic. However, a prior issue is the preference that the University Grants Commission (UGC) and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) give to publishing — which is different from research — at the expense of teaching for faculty members to advance their careers. This institutional bias drives a preference among faculty members to publish papers and is rewarded by promotions and other benefits at the workplace, whereas there are no significant incentives for better teaching.

The rationale to privilege publishing over teaching comes from two main considerations. The first stems from national and global university rankings, which have become ubiquitous and are considered to be of great value by the government, the HEIs themselves, and by students. These rankings reward publications but not teaching. HEIs are therefore incentivised to insist that their faculty publish. For private universities, the number of students they admit every year matters a great deal, and achieving higher rankings than their competitors is seen as necessary to attract more and better students. Public institutions do not want to be left behind either.

The second consideration is the widespread belief that faculty members conducting research improves teaching and hence student learning outcomes. However, the evidence does not quite support this belief.

The voluminous research on the research-teaching link has examined a diverse set of issues including the specific mechanisms at work, the fuzziness and diversity of the multiple variables used to understand the relationship, and both quantitative and qualitative research. However, there is no broad consensus that the relationship between them is significant or even that there is one. If there is some sort of soft consensus, it is that the context often matters.

Both these considerations likely contributed to the UGC’s decision to introduce the Academic Performance Indicator (API) in 2010 as part of the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) for faculty members’ promotions. The API established a clear bias for publications in assessing faculty members. Despite several amendments over the years, there has been no fundamental change to the API in terms of the emphasis on publications. The 2025 UGC draft regulations for the appointment and promotion of teachers in order to maintain academic standards, it claims, will reduce focus on quantifiable metrics such as publications. But for now, the publishing madness remains ascendant.

A return to teaching

If we turn to context, there are at least two reasons that render the emphasis on research questionable, on ethical and practical grounds.

First, the faculty members at all types of HEIs are expected to publish — whether at colleges devoted to undergraduate teaching, universities that are teaching-cum-research institutions, and specialised research centres which typically run only PhD programmes. There is no thought given to context: whether the university or college has the necessary physical infrastructure (libraries and laboratories for example), human capital (research-capable faculty members), academic environment (a sufficient population of postgraduate students and academics in specific disciplines), sufficient research funding, and a fair or even reasonable balance between the teaching, research, and administrative responsibilities of faculty members. Most HEIs fall short on many of these parameters. Without considering these issues, the emphasis on research and publishing is meaningless.

The outcome is eventually predictable. Given the limitations of most HEIs, the idea of ‘publish or perish’ is taken quite literally. Rather than carry out actual research, faculty members and even students churn out fraudulent papers for their HEIs to secure university rankings and for them to secure individual benefits. And publishers monetarily benefit from these publications and also participate in the scam.

Second, 80% of students at India’s HEIs are undergraduates who need better teachers rather than competent researchers. Given that the research-teaching link is dubious and that most HEIs do not have the necessary research capabilities, it should follow that those teaching at undergraduate institutions should focus on teaching.

In the end, it appears that the only logic to prefer research over teaching is to help HEIs attain university rankings and to help faculty members secure individual gains, both of which are the main drivers of research fraud, and neither of which contributes in any way to India’s knowledge sector.

Pushkar is director at The International Centre Goa. Views are personal.