Publication

Interesting! Interesting!! Interesting!!! ... This is what I read this morning in ToI. Was expecting something like this. If it is so easy, it is not worth it. If it is not, it takes time to mature an idea in the form of output and publication. Was getting tired of China-India comparison on volume of research publication. It is not that such things are not in India. A majority of the conf. paper from lesser known institutions in India that I review belong to that category. These are run by private entrepreneur who is in education business. There is hardly any quality faculty, students or research infrastructure there. But the faculty has to show publications to their boss who is not from education fraternity, so that the institute is ranked higher. The faculty of Govt. run institutions do not show these vices. However, they are accused of lower volumes of publications in comparison to China and US. The Govt. run institutions are of various categories. There are primarily research institutes with no UG students. The faculty member there take one or half-course in a whole year with a very small class size of Masters or PhD students. Their every project/assignment can be of longer term with the potential of becoming a good publication (the PG students have adequate background). These institutes cannot be compared with primarily UG institutes like NITs, IITs. Each evening I return from office at about 7:30-8:00 p.m. Thereafter, when I start checking Mid-Sem. answer scripts it takes approx. 15 minutes per script of 4x3=12 questions with comments etc. Note that to an IIT student one has to explain each evaluation, questions, parts and subparts - even after the explanation is made they keep nagging whether for a particular error on his part 2 marks deduction is justified or it should have been 1 mark. (The time we studied as IIT UG 20 years back has changed. Now students file court cases, guardians email Director, student take image of answer with his camera mobile and his father who too is an academician comments if evaluation is justified and then there is mandatory student feedback)Imagine, how many days are required to finish checking scripts of 90 students. And the number of sponsored project one does, the number of national mission project one is engaged, the no. of papers/thesis one reviews, the no. of committees one belongs to with meeting, discussion note etc. - all without any secretarial support that means draft to final - every note one has to be prepared by himself. And they also have a family! Still I would say, the majority of the faculty members gives approx. two hours to their research students every day. However, one has to note that the research students in IITs, in most of the cases, are not IIT BTech, not IIT MTech, not NIT (or next level inst.) B.Tech., not Pvt. Engg. college toppers as there is good job market for them or they prefer to go abroad for various reasons. So, we mostly get the leftovers of Pvt. Engg. colleges in our research lab. and they need time to stabilize and get their fundamentals right before they can pursue higher things. Now by the time they stabilize, a considerable time has gone and funding period is limited. Effectively they pursue a challenge that can be overcome in 2 years than what a IIT grad pursues in US univ. in 4 years. So, the quality of problem becomes different. This makes a big difference and the vicious cycle sets in - better performance bringing better students even if we discount US life-style or dollar dreams.

This post is not to question flight of good Indian students to US, a good amount of debate is already on in different forums. This is again not to undermine the research contribution of students in our research lab.s. In fact, the amount of value addition they do to themselves at IITs is more than what our best students do in US research lab.s. Also, it is their sheer hard work and lifting of themselves that keep our research lab.s running and we faculty members are grateful to them. This post is to be realistic in terms of volume of publication. Yes, certain amount of pressure does good. But it should not be too much. I cannot ask my research students to publish in volumes to fulfill certain quota rather I ask them to be honest, to learn from failures, to work harder and enjoy research, the newness of things that emerge. I ask them to write good English, learn how to communicate. And they reciprocate! I take pride in the outputs generated by these students - had their communication ability been better, it would have been published in top rung journals instead of mid-level journal (of course with impact factor > 1) they usually attempt to. Let us not to do what has been reported next.

-------

Copy + paste gives Chinese research a bad name

Gillian Wong LIUZHOU, CHINA

WHEN professors in China need to author research papers to get promoted, many turn to people like Lu Keqian.
Working on his laptop in a cramped spare bedroom, the former schoolteacher ghostwrites for professors, students, government offices — anyone willing to pay his fee, typically about 300 yuan ($45). “My opinion is that writing papers for someone else is not wrong,” he said. “There will always be a time when one needs help from others. Even our great leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping needed help writing.”
Ghostwriting, plagiarising or faking results are so rampant in Chinese academia that some experts worry it could hinder China’s efforts to become a leader in science. The communist government views science as critical to China’s modernisation, and the latest calls for government spending on science and technology to grow by 8% to 163 billion yuan ($24 billion) this year.
State-run media recently exulted over reports that China publishes more papers in international journals than any except the US. But not all the research stands up to scrutiny. In December, a British journal retracted 70 papers from a Chinese university, saying the work had been fabricated. “Academic fraud, misconduct and ethical violations are very common in China,” said professor Rao Yi, dean of the life sciences school at Peking University in the capital. Critics blame weak penalties and a system that bases faculty promotions and bonuses on the number, rather than quality, of papers published. Dan Ben-Canaan is familiar with plagiarism. A colleague approached him in 2008 for a paper he wrote about the kidnapping and murder of a Jewish musician in Harbin in 1933 during the Japanese occupation.“He had the audacity to present it as his own paper at a conference that I organised,” Ben-Canaan said. “Without any shame!”
In a separate case, he gave material he had written to a researcher at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He said he was shocked to receive a book by the academic that was mostly a copy and translation of the material Ben-Canaan had provided — without any attribution. The pressure to publish has created a ghostwriting boom. — AP