If our scientists publish their contributions in our journals, the scientific community will naturally cite our journals and this will increase their visibility

One of the major issues highlighted in the published draft Science Technology Innovation Policy (STIP ) 2020 is the promotion of Indian Journals.   It recommends creation of a digital versions of Indian print journals to make them more accessible to the international scientific community. Promoting Indian Journals is an issue long due in Indian science.

There was time when great Indian scientists used to publish their discoveries in local magazines or journals. Still, their work got wide publicity across the globe. Even the multi-disciplinary journal Current Science started in 1932 by stalwarts of Indian scientists like CV Raman, Birbal Sahni, Meghnad Saha, Martin Foster, and SS Bhatnagar, is not getting enough attention from our present-day scientific community. The notion that scientific discoveries get attention only if published in western journals is not completely true. If the work is of very high quality, language is not a barrier.

In pursuit of writing a paper in the format of a reputed western journal, we often forget the novelty and creativity in research. This badly affects innovation in our research. This culture should go away. Why cannot the western scientific community follow our procedure? We have to make them follow us, rather than we follow them.

Researchers publish their results in foreign journals to increase visibility and respect. Even though there are concerns regarding the assessment of quality by looking at the impact factor, so far this is the only scale used to assess the quality of a researcher. In order to increase the visibility of journals, few editors specifically ask the authors to cite at least few published papers from their journals during the last 10 years. In the process few predatory journals also get cited in the web of science.

If our scientists publish their great contributions in our journals, naturally, the scientific community will cite our journals in their work. This will in turn increase the visibility of our journals in the scientific community. If Indian journals should be promoted, government should make it mandatory to publish the research outputs coming from our public sector institutions, through government-funded projects, only in Indian journals.

The practice of giving preference to aspirants having publications in foreign journals should be abolished. Most of the universities, of late, have made it mandatory to publish in web of science indexed journals, in the name of improving research quality. This creates unnecessary pressure among young scholars. Rather than focussing on productivity of their research work, they are looking at how to publish in high impact journals. This is one of the reasons for rise in scientific fraudulence in our community. The recent such case reported from our most reputed National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore is an ample proof of this.

The universities should approve research work published in Indian journals, including journals in regional languages, without stressing its impact factor. This will encourage young researchers to publish in Indian journals.

Similarly, the undue importance given to high-impact publications in recruiting processes should change. One should check the credibility and ability of the researchers rather than the publications. A researcher who works with a team of Nobel laureates will fetch more publication than with an ordinary research team, however meagre his/ her contributions are. So, publication in a foreign journal cannot assure quality of a candidate. There are hundreds of researchers in our universities who are doing break-through works, but due to lack of exposure their work is not getting enough attention.

The Government should think of developing our own Altmetrics tools to put a bench mark of our journals. The current system being followed among scientific circles is based on Clarivate Analytics, which follows the quality standards visualised by western journals. It cannot evaluate the works being published in one's native languages in a fool proof manner.

It is true that science is universal and there should not be any compartmentalisation. However, blindly following the standards and principles set by western journals won't help in developing Indian Science. Journals are the mirror of scientific research through which we sees our quality face. It's high time we look through our own mirrors rather than someone else's.

(The writer is a popular science author. The views expressed are personal.)