Two Problems - One Solution

‘It’s better late than never’ – well quoted but less practiced. And we are no exceptions. Most of us (scientists) work under stringent budget and supply conditions, although the things are changing for better with time. We also most of the times come up with surprisingly good ideas. And what we can expect better than getting it published in some well recognized top-tired journals. It also pays in terms of availing competitive home based as well as international grants. But,

problem no 1 :

• Unfortunately, all the good science we do, adds very little to our home based journals. Moreover the biggest sufferers are the huge home based readership as the scarce budget for ~400 odd universities in India alone can hardly afford the subscription for those top-tired journals, apart from CSIR institutions, a few well funded and central universities. Although CSIR and UGC have taken joint efforts to pay for thousands of e-journals, the lack of computers and infrastructure in most of the places makes the effort futile. Hence, some of the consequent effects are, students (M.Sc./M.Phil./Ph.D./etc) are deprived of the latest cutting edge technologies happening around the world, latest in scientific news, future science inclinations to a particular field, etc and additionally, we can hardly attract internationally recognized scientists and noble laureates for lectures, thought provoking seminars, latest hypothesis, some hands-on experiments, etc. Similarly, the private companies show little interest in Indian science, which is apparently a major source of funding in developed countries. Hence, the problems are multidimensional.

problem no 2 :

• The contributions of Indian scientists to ‘Science’ are long and hard known and need not any formal introduction. Despite these concatenated efforts, the Indian community back home could not produce a journal with comparable International impact (highest IF is of Current Science India 0.688 for 2004), while at the same time they serve as editorial board members and respected reviewers for all top-tired journals. We all scholars humbly feel the paradox and share the same dilemma and to utter surprise, our Guides agree with the fact and felt similarly when they were graduate students. But nothing has changed and it is unlikely to circumvent this jeopardy in near future.

So, how do we tackle such problem(s) when most of the scientists would like to get recognized by publishing in top-tired journals, get awarded with bigger and better grants and at the same time help the fellow community?

solution for both :

• Let us everybody publish our work in the BEST journal of our field. So, that the world community scrutinize our work and we also do not feel compromised by publishing in an unknown Indian Journal. BUT, we all can share a moral/ethical compliance at the same time that once our original research gets accepted/published in an International high-impact journal, we would write a "review" on a similar topic along with the zest of present published work. This would help Indian students to get an overview of the work along with a feel/scope of the research done, Indian universities have to pay less, the work gets more publicized, this in turn would fetch more citations and finally the journal impact factor would increase without compromising the quality of work or where it gets originally published. And what would be a better example than the open access journal PloS Biology (Public Library of Science), which alongwith a handful of scientific editors and technicians achieved an IF of 14.7 within three years of their publication. Even better, in addition to the paperback edition of reviews/perspective's/essay/features/advances/highlights/editorial etc, an e-journal with comments and views on the same topics from the readers would add a lot to the subject. More suggestion would follow and could be materialised, once a bunch of enthusiastic and affectionate self-realized scientists willing to patronize the home journals and be members/advisers and particularly write a column of any scale of their already peer-reviewed work in esteemed journals, is started and it is a matter of time when it would happen. Rest would be history.

Out of inquisitiveness and excitement, "INDIAN SCIENCE REVIEWS" as the name of the expected journal is suggested.

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As a matter of fact, 'cheaper/open-access journals' taking the battle on with their competitive commercial counterparts claimed a 'NEWS HEADLINE' in NATURE, published online dated 24 Jan, 2007.