New Delhi, 23 July 2018: Union Minister for HRD Mr Prakash Javadekar, in a reply to a starred question in Lok Sabha, today said that UGC has addressed the problem of predatory and sub-standard journals claiming to publish scholarly articles. Accordingly, the Standing Committee of UGC on notification of journals has been constituted which, after due verification, has removed 4,102 substandard journals. UGC currently recognizes only the following categories of academic journals:

Journals indexed in Web of  Science or Scopus

Journals recommend by the Standing Committee and Language Committee – suggested by experts primarily in the field of languages

Journals recommended by Universities

 He further said that in order to stop predatory and sub-standard journals to be published Ministry has asked Universities to review the adaptation before the final recommendation for a journal to the Ministry.

While talking about plagiarism the Minister said that all universities have been asked to scan all submitted thesis through software so that plagiarism gets exposed.

He further said that beside these two steps Ministry has revised the Academic Performance Indicators (API) for promotion of college teachers where College teachers will no longer be bound to pursue research but it will remain mandatory for university teachers.

The purpose of this step is to engage teacher more in teaching and community activities rather than research activities. The Minister said that all three steps together will end the menace of predatory journals.