I read with great interest a news article published in Nature on rising retractions in India (1). Though India doesn't boast of any university or IITs in top 100 list of globally reputed rankings like Times Higher Education, QS etc; it has seen a steady rise of research papers from what we had in 2001. However India's research papers are not cited heavily and there is an overall doubt about the quality (2). No wonder the retraction rate is high. Most of the Indian institutes don’t punish the scientists with retracted papers. I personally know one or two scientists in my circle who have carried on unfettered despite having had several of their papers retracted. Now, Indian researchers are under immense pressure to perform because in most of the places incentive of publication is promotion or increments. Recently India has seen an unprecedented rise in the Private Universities and Colleges whose sole motto is increasing student enrolment and vying for the prized global or national rankings (3). Professors literally perish if they don’t publish; they are given targets to publish and incentives like the salesmen or the corporate. Obviously with so much under stake the numbers of publications will continue to swell with increased retractions, unchecked growth and no real-world impact.
At least 25 papers of one scientist from Saveetha University, Chennai has been retracted in July 2025 (4). This particular Chennai based university is under radar for maximum retractions in the past 4 years with 99,80 and 90 retractions in 2023,2024 and 2025 (5). One Physics professor of IIT Dhanbad has had 34 retractions since 2018, yet he got promoted to Associate Professor recently (6). UGC, the regulator of all Indian Universities and the apex body, a decade ago had prepared a list named UGC CARE list in line with the Beale list to prevent predatory journals and paper mills. However, very recently UGC scrapped its own CARE list creating more confusion, utter dismay and sparking fears about unscrupulous paper mills (7).
Overall, as India is gearing up for burgeoning private education paraphernalia with ever increasing appetite for quantity over quality of research papers and a pressure to perform, it doesn’t appear that retractions are going to stop soon.
References:
1. India to penalize universities with too many retractions
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/
2. https://www.deccanherald.com/
3. https://www.institutmontaigne.
4. https://sciencechronicle.in/
5. https://retractionwatch.com/
6. https://sciencechronicle.in/
7. https://www.thehindu.com/
