The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to discontinue its standard list of publications that helps researchers and academics identify journals that are credible and meet certain quality standards for publishing their papers.

Two UGC officials said the commission had recently decided to do away with the UGC-Consortium for Academics and Research Ethics (CARE) list.

Three academics told The Telegraph that the decision would adversely affect the global standing of Indian universities and create an ecosystem for the growth of predatory journals.

According to the current UGC norms, assistant professors and associate professors need to publish research papers or books to be eligible for career progression. Before 2018, the UGC maintained an approved list of journals based on the inputs of universities without any thorough scrutiny at its end. This led to a proliferation of predatory journals where authors got their papers published by paying a fee.

In November 2018, the UGC started the UGC-CARE, a reference list of journals indexed in globally accepted databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. The Indian journals were included in the list after a thorough assessment by experts.

"The UGC has decided to discontinue the CARE list. It was felt that universities are best suited to decide on which publications to follow," said a UGC official.

Three academics, who did not wish to be identified, said the UGC did not hold any consultation with the universities on abandoning the CARE list.

"The UGC has compromised with the quality of research and publications. This will increase predatory journals once again. There will be no control. Earlier, UGC had given this responsibility to universities to suggest journals for inclusion in its approved list. All kinds of substandard journals were included," said an academic.

In 2018, a study published in the journal Current Science said 88 per cent of a sample of 1,009 journals approved by the UGC were of "low quality".

Another academic criticised the draft regulations recently released by the UGC that require three papers to be published by an assistant professor and an associate professor to be promoted. According to the existing rules, an assistant professor is required to publish seven papers for promotion while an associate professor has to publish 10.

"The UGC wants to relax the number of publications for promotion apart from diluting the quality of publications. This will finish the global standing of Indian universities in terms of research and publication. In the last six years, researchers were publishing in good quality journals," he said.

A faculty member of a state university said varsities would now follow their own lists of journals, which would lead to a lot of confusion.