India's scientific publication in predatory journals: Need for regulating quality of Indian science and education

Abstract

Nature Index analysis 2014 rates India at the 13th place for its high-quality scientific publications. Despite this achievement, several studies have revealed that India is also among the major contrib-utors of articles published in poor-quality predatory open access journals. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to estimate which category of educational and research institutes predomi-nately publishes in predatory open access journals in India and to understand whether academi-cians in India are aware of predatory journals. It was found that private/government colleges contribute to about 51% of predatory publications, followed by private universities, state universi-ties, national institutes, central universities and industries, for research articles published from September 2015 to mid-February 2016. The publication pressure among researchers and lack of monitoring the research being conducted are the major factors contributing to articles published in poor-quality predatory open access journals from India.