A senior scientist's struggle to make Indian science journals world class

Subhash Chandra Lakhotia knows he is fighting a losing battle. In his early seventies now, he has been on a mission of sorts for over five decades to make Indian science journals world class. To do that, Lakhotia expects Indian scientists to join his battle. But most have hung back. That “deeply upsets me”, he told me on a recent morning in his basic office-cum-lab on the first floor of the zoology department at Banaras Hindu University where he is a professor of cytogenetics, a branch of genetics that deals with chromosomes. 

Lakhotia vented his unhappiness in a scathing editorial “Why are Indian research journals not making a mark? The enemy is within” in the December issue of Current Science journal last year. The editorial takes a shot at the Indian scientific community for publishing very little in  Indian journals and much more in international ones.

Scientists everywhere publish their research findings in peer reviewed journals so that their work is read and debated with a view to advancing the science of their field. One of the key points the editorial makes is that Indian journals won’t improve unless scientists send in their best papers. 

Some researchers say they don’t publish in domestic journals because the papers published in them are not cited enough, the review is not strong, or it doesn't advance their career. They acknowledge the issue as a vicious circle and leave it at that.

Lakhotia grew up with little money and nine siblings (he is in the middle) in Rajasthan’s Churu city and then in Kolkata where the family later moved to live with his father who had an unsteady job as a life insurance agent. During his three years at Kolkata’s Vidyasagar College, he didn’t have the money to go to the canteen even once. 

But lack of resources failed to prevent his parents and elder siblings infusing an atmosphere of books, poetry, and music in the house where they often chatted about leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose. In fact, Lakhotia’s grandfather picked his middle name “Chandra” from Bose's name because Lakhotia was born a few months after Bose’s death. When Lakhotia started his research career in the early 1970s, he made two decisions: To continue his research career in India rather than abroad and to send every alternate paper to Indian journals. He has been true to his word.

Some researchers say that publishing in top international journals furthers their career, especially when they seek jobs or faculty positions. Interviewers often look at whether or not the applicant has published in journals with a high “Impact Factor” — a debatable matrix to determine a journal’s quality. 

The Impact Factor ranges from zero (bad) to 10-plus (best). Even the good Indian journals such as Current Science, The Journal of Genetics, and Sadhana don’t have an Impact Factor of more than 1. Most selection committees know that the Impact Factor is not the best judge of a researcher’s worth, but they still go by it because it makes their job easy. 

Students in Lakhotia’s lab appreciate his passion but some worry their credibility could be questioned if they publish in low impact journals. India’s reputation is also tarnished because it tops the list of countries that publish (27 per cent) the most bogus journals in the world. 

Lakhotia urges selection committees to consider what is published and not where it is published. “Unless they [interviewers] give credit to the content of research, things won’t change,” says Pradeep Burma, a geneticist at Delhi University. He suggests that selection committees could put out a list of journals with a note saying that papers published in them will carry the same weight as the popular international journals. 

Burma was Lakhotia’s student. He remembers him as a “strict guy”. Lakhotia argues that his papers, whether in domestic or international journals, have almost equal citations. Being published frequently in Indian journals has not held him back; he won the prestigious science honour — the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award — in 1989.  Lakhotia says that the editors of some Indian journals work very hard to put out good papers but they also need great papers. “I am not saying that you [scientists] publish all your work here, but also publish here,” he says.  

Some scientists such as Upinder Bhalla, computational neuroscientist at Bengaluru’s National Centre for Biological Sciences, publish most of their papers in international journals because their peer group in India is small and they want to reach out to a specific scientific community for a more “meaningful discussion” that benefits their field. Bhalla, however, mostly publishes in open-access journals so that his work is accessible. 

Geneticist Mitali Mukerji at Delhi’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology says that she doesn't mind publishing in Indian journals but she definitely minds that researchers don't read much here which then limits the conversation. A top researcher who doesn't want to named says the comments he got from an Indian journal reviewers were not helpful. 

Soumitro Banerjee, electronics professor at Kolkata’s Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, suggests that the government needs to put more money into Indian academies that publish good journals. Banerjee and other scientists say that the cost of publishing in some top international journals is almost prohibitive. Nature Communications, for example, charges over Rs three lakhs per paper. Contrast this with the fact that the Indian government’s science budget is even less than one per cent of its total GDP. 

Lakhotia lambasts as ‘completely demeaning’ the recent government proposal to pay PhD students Rs 50,000 for publishing in international journals and Rs 20,000 for publishing in select domestic journals. “If the government creates such “insulting” distinctions, how can  one expect the scientific community to think any differently?” he asks. 

“The problem is real,” says Rohini Godbole, physicist at Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Sciences. She was involved in the editorial process of Pramana, an Indian physics journal, for over two decades. Godbole agrees with Lakhotia that Indian scientists need to be part of the solution. “It needs will,” says Godbole. “It is an uphill task,” says Banerjee. 

Meanwhile, Lakhotia will continue to wake up at 5am every day, spend the next two hours reading scientific papers, go to work in his lab, urge students to publish in Indian journals as well as foreign, and then go back home to spend the evening with his grandson.