In a sharp rebuke to current policy, a group of India’s top scientists has issued a pointed warning: the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) is pushing academic institutions toward unethical research practices. 

The scientists, eleven in number, wrote to government bodies back in June, highlighting how certain aspects of the NIRF methodology particularly those rewarding volume of papers and citation counts have encouraged manipulative behaviour. They argue that such metrics, in their current form, incentivize the production of low-impact or even trivial papers purely to boost institutional scores. 

One concern they flagged: institutions instructing researchers or students to cite internal colleagues’ work even when irrelevant, simply to inflate citation tallies. As one example, a study on eating habits arguably peripheral to deep scientific inquiry cited a study on diesel engines, purely to boost citation count. To critics, these tactics reduce research to a numbers game, undermining academic integrity and the credibility of Indian science. 

The scientists also point to the growing use of predatory or “paper-mill” journals, which publish articles for pay with minimal peer review. Institutions, in pursuit of higher NIRF rank, may funnel research into such outlets just to count publications. They warn this cycle damages both the reputation of institutions and the broader research ecosystem.

While the NIRF authorities have introduced some corrective steps for instance, proposing negative scores for retracted papers or citations of “tainted” work the group views these as “welcome but insufficient.” The scientists urge a major overhaul: not just more quantitative metrics, but stronger weight to qualitative assessment of research quality and impact. 

The letter was signed by notable figures, including Partha Majumder (former president, Indian Academy of Sciences), H. A. Ranganath, and L. S. Shashidhara. Despite repeated appeals, the signatories say, they have seen little meaningful response from the government or regulatory agencies. 

In the scientists’ view, unless the NIRF system is substantially reformed, it risks turning academic institutions into ranking factories, not centers of rigorous, meaningful inquiry. The integrity of India’s scientific future, they caution, may well depend on it.

You may also like NIRF Introduces Penalties for Poor Quality Research