A research integrity index shining a light on how Indian universities have gamed the publishing metrics
If seven Indian universities were among the 17 that belonged to the red flag category initially, as per current data based on 1,500 most-publishing universities, the number of Indian universities in the red flag category has swelled to 32
If many institutions have gamed the publishing metrics to achieve higher university rankings at the expense of scholarly integrity, a Research Integrity Risk Index (RI2) that has been developed by a Beirut-based researcher red-flags the institutions which indulge in such unethical practices.
Though there are several metric-maximising behaviours such as hyper-prolific authorship, share of highly cited articles, and evolving collaboration profiles, Dr. Lokman I. Meho from the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon in a preprint (which is yet to be peer-reviewed) posted last month has used just two indicators — retraction rate per 1,000 publications calculated over the preceding two full calendar years (2022-2023), and the share papers in journals delisted from the scholarly databases Scopus and Web of Science calculated over the two most recent full calendar years (2023-2024) — to calculate the RI2 score.
Based on the Research Integrity Risk Index, institutions have been grouped together into one of the five risk categories — red flag for extremely high risk (over 95th percentile) to white for low risk (less than 50th percentile). Universities that come under the red flag group have “extreme anomalies across indicators that reflects systemic integrity risks requiring immediate scrutiny,” the preprint says.
How the study was done
Data reported in the preprint first posted last month was collected on May 1 this year and focussed on the top 1,000 most-publishing universities worldwide; the study was restricted to 18 universities in India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Subsequently, the study was expanded to 1,500 most-publishing institutions globally, and the data was collected on June 5, 2025. The study also includes national, regional, and international institutions as control groups to contextualise the trends.
If seven Indian universities were among the 17 that belonged to the red flag category initially, as per current data based on 1,500 most-publishing universities, the number of Indian universities in the red flag category has swelled to 32. With 21 universities in the red flag group, Saudi Arabia has the second most institutions in the ignoble list. The total number of universities globally in the red flag group in the expanded study too ballooned from 17 to 121.
“The Lokman Meho Research Integrity Index provides important information about the ethical standards of research at institutions that a simple listing of large numbers of publications does not. It is often hard to find out how many papers from an institution have been retracted or are in predatory journals,” Dr. Gautam Menon, Professor of Physics and Biology at Ashoka University says in an email. “In general, we should move away from evaluating institutions based on just the numbers of papers they publish without regard to their quality.”
“Retraction rates and reliance on delisted journals alone were selected because they are empirically verifiable, resistant to manipulation, and widely recognised as red flags of compromised research integrity,” Dr. Meho says in an email. “More importantly, they reflect outcomes, not merely patterns of behaviour, which makes them suitable for institutional-level benchmarking.”
Explaining further, Dr. Meho says retractions and delisted journal publications are “clear, documented breaches of integrity, typically validated by publishers, bibliographic databases, and/or third-party monitors”. In contrast, he says other problematic behaviours, such as involvement of paper mills, citation cartels, citation farms, and hyper-prolific authorship, often reside in a grey zone where intent is ambiguous and detection methodologies are still evolving.
“My goal was to build a conservative yet robust diagnostic framework, one that minimises false positives (e.g., errors, mistakes, misinterpretations) and prioritises reliability over breadth,” he says. And to achieve that objective, the index was deliberately made “simple, scalable, and transparent, designed to function as an early-warning system rather than a forensic instrument”
Publication in delisted journals
Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, the share of papers published by universities in delisted journals dropped but did not stop altogether in most cases. The Chennai-based Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS) reduced the number of papers published in such questionable journals from 2,421 (79.7% of total output) in 2018-2019 to 874 (8.4% of total output) in 2023-2024. In 2018-2019, Saveetha Institute was ranked world number one for the number of papers published in delisted journals. However, in 2023-2024, Saveetha researchers published relatively less in delisted journals, and the world ranking improved to 14. “Saveetha Institute, while showing marked improvement, still ranked 14th globally by proportion and 4th by volume,” the preprint says.
KL University in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh came a close second with 2,550 (77.3% of total output) papers published in delisted journals in 2018-2019 to 1,576 (15.1% of total output) paper in 2023-2024. KL University’s world ranking for the number of papers published in delisted journals stayed in the second position in 2018-2019 and 2023-2024.
Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab came a distant third university from India with 517 (34.4% of total output) papers published in delisted journal in 2018-2019 to 281 (5.4% of total output) papers in 2023-2024.
Chandigarh University, Chitkara University in Chandigarh, and GLA University in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh had 299, 117 and 99 papers published in delisted journals in 2018-2019, respectively. In 2023-2024, these numbers reduced to 293, 182, and 180 for Chandigarh University, Chitkara University, and GLA University, respectively.
In comparison, IISc had 37 and 39 papers published in delisted journals in 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, respectively.
Retractions
While the number of papers published in delisted journals generally witnessed a drop in five years, the number of retracted papers increased exponentially, especially in the case of Saveetha Institute. From one retracted paper in 2018-2019, it increased manifold to 154 in 2022-2023. From 681th rank in retraction rate in 2018-2019, Saveetha Institute topped the list in 2022 and remained there in 2023-2024. Retractions per 1,000 articles for Saveetha stood at meagre 0.3 in 2018-2019 but ballooned to 46.8 in 2022 and reduced to 16 in 2023-2024.
Other indicators
Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, the universities chosen for the study exhibited substantial increases in research output, often far higher than the control group of national, regional, and international institutions. In the case of India, Chitkara University showed 766% growth in publications between the two time periods — 331 papers in 2018-2019, and 2,865 papers in 2023-2024, closely followed by Chandigarh University with 760% growth during the study period. In comparison, Saveetha showed only 243% growth.
The other indicator studied was the decline in first and corresponding author publications, which provide insights into where the core academic contributions originated within a publication. Among Indian institutions, first authorship rates declined by an average of 45% between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024 compared with national decline of just 3.5%. At 52%, Chitkara University had the sharpest decline, followed by Chandigarh University with 48% decline. Lovely Professional University had the least decline of 31%. In the case of the corresponding authorship rate, at 44%, GLA University showed the most decline, followed by KL University with 36% decline. Saveetha had the least decline rate of 8%.
The next indicator studied was the rise in hyper-prolific authorship, defined in this study as individuals publishing 40 or more articles in a calendar year. Saveetha had 16 hyper-prolific authorship in 2018-2019, which increased to nearly 35 in 2023-2024. According to the study, 80% of articles by hyper-prolific authors from Saveetha in 2018-2019 were published in delisted journals.
In the case of the highly cited publications indicator, Chitkara University and Saveetha emerged as citation hubs. As per the study, publications from these institutions contributed “significantly to their own highly cited articles and those of multiple other study group members”.
In the case of the inflation in discipline-specific research indicator, Saveetha was absent in the world’s top 1,000 most-published universities in any discipline in 2018-2019 but had four top-100 subject categories — chemistry, environment/ecology, material science, and pharmacology — in 2023-2024. Vellore Institute of Technology also appeared in four categories in in 2023-2024.
Optimism abounds
“Despite all stakeholders — ranking agencies, institutions, funders, and policymakers — deeply entrenched in volume- and visibility-based metrics, I remain cautiously optimistic that RI² can play a constructive role in encouraging this system toward greater integrity,” Dr. Meho says. According to him, RI² contributes to positive change in at least a few important ways — forcing accountability, providing leverage, and shifting the narratives.
“If the number of papers you publish, irrespective of quality, determine how your institution performs in rankings and external assessment, that is a metric that will definitely be gamed, as we have seen. Indices such as these can provide an independent assessment of research integrity. If Indian science is to be taken seriously, the drive for change must incorporate such assessments of research integrity,” says Dr. Menon.
“By making research integrity risks visible, RI² places institutions with anomalous patterns under public scrutiny. Even the symbolic discomfort of being flagged can serve as a powerful motivator for self-reflection and reform,” Dr. Meho says. “RI² reframes the conversation around academic excellence. It challenges the idea that publication and citation counts alone define quality and encourages stakeholders to recognise integrity as a core component of performance.”
The need for a metric or an index such Meho’s becomes particularly pronounced in the light of many universities in India maintaining a high level of publications without performing a careful assessment of their quality. “That they do this is indicative of the fact that assessments of institutions have reduced to little more than bean-counting and absolute numbers seem to matter more than anything else,” says Dr. Menon.
Dr. Meho does not believe that his index can change the system overnight, but strongly believes that the index can make a difference. “Systems like ORCID, COPE, and ICMJE once seemed idealistic too, but they gradually became norms,” he says.
Focus on Saveetha
On why Saveetha is specifically mentioned in the preprint text several times while Chandigarh University and Citakara University have not been, Dr. Meho says: “The focus on SIMATS [Saveetha] emerged because its data revealed particularly striking patterns across multiple integrity indicators, including exceptionally rapid publication growth, a high concentration of hyper-prolific authors, a substantial proportion of papers in delisted journals, and a notable rate of retractions. These pronounced trends made SIMATS an especially valuable case study for illustrating the systemic issues my research examines.”
He further says: “Both Chandigarh University and Chitkara University were fully included in all analyses, and their results are presented in the study’s tables and figures. While these institutions did show concerning patterns, their metrics were less extreme compared to SIMATS, which led to their more limited discussion in the narrative sections.”
While at least a few CSIR labs have had several retractions in recent years, the study has not included government labs coming under the umbrella of CSIR, ICMR and ICAR. Explaining the reason for not including government labs, particularly CSIR in the study, Dr Meho says: “The focus was specifically on degree-granting universities, as these are the institutions most commonly featured in global and national rankings, and the ones that often face the greatest pressure to increase their research output for reputational and financial gain. The current version of RI² was therefore optimised to examine integrity risks at the level of universities, particularly those that dominate publishing volume and rankings conversations.”
32 Indian universities in the red flag category
- Amity University, Noida
- Anna University, Chennai
- Annamalai University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu
- Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
- Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
- Chandigarh University
- Chitkara University, Chandigarh
- Christ University, Bangalore
- Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow
- Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management, Visakhapatnam
- GLA University, Mathura
- Graphic Era University, Dehradun,
- Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Anantapur, Andhara Pradesh
- Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad
- Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar
- Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Vaddeswaram, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh
- Lovely Professional University, Chaheru, Phagwara, Punjab
- National Institute of Technology, Patna
- Osmania University, Hyderabad
- Pondicherry University
- Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai
- SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai
- Symbiosis International University, Pune
- Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala
- University of Madras
- University of Mumbai
- University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun
- University of Pune
- Uttaranchal University
- Vel Tech University, Chennai
- Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore
- Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka
