In a recent email to students enrolled in the Undergraduate LLB program at JGLS, the institution claimed that "Jindal Global Law School's interdisciplinary research outshines faculty publications by the top 4 NLUs!" However, there was a degree of deception involved, as JGLS sent the press release to ANI, which ANI then syndicated to The Print, whose article was subsequently used by JGLS in the email.
The article (which was actually a press release) asserts that "JGLS researchers published over 175+ publications in a variety of Scopus-indexed sources in 2023, representing an increase of over 25 per cent compared to the previous year and surpassing the total number of similar publications from the top 4 National Law Schools in the country by over 60 per cent." However, doubts have arisen regarding the accuracy of these claims:
1) Is this information accurate? Can JGLS genuinely assist (or as they put it, 'inspire') their researchers to publish in reputable journals?
2) If so, then why are the so-called top NLUs (NLS, NALSAR, NLUD) unable to match JGLS, a relatively newer institution?
3) If not, then why is JGLS resorting to such tactics? Is it driven by desperation, or is JGLS genuinely striving to create a perception that it is superior to all other NLUs?
TL;DR: JGLS claimed superiority in interdisciplinary research over top NLUs based on a press release, it it accurate?
There is rank corruption in publishing and research. You have groups of people simply putting their friends on their papers in exchange for the same thing. You have fake journals , predatory/ paid journals and bad journals and the replicability crisis in social sciences research and you have skewed institutional incentives which makes the quantity of publications more desirable for faculty than the quality of them.
Leave aside all this “175 publications “ bravado. Tell me which Jgls prof ( a regular prof not a tourist ) has written something in the last year that genuinely made you think ? That you personally felt was a good piece of scholarship ?
JGLS has got over 300 full time law faculty plus at least a 100 RAs and other academic people. Going by that number, less than half of them published one SCOPUS paper in that year. Similar stats are available in most top NLUs nowadays. The JGLS number appears that high because their overall numbers are equal to 10 NLUs. However, consider this, despite getting much higher salary and perks, research support and way less teaching workload compared to public university faculty, more than half of the JGLS people are still not producing a single good (SCOPUS) publication in a year going by their very own stats. Ask the question why. Had similar facilities been available to the faculty from NLS, NALSAR, NLUD, NUJS, doubtless their faculty's publication output would have been much higher proportionally. This link is just more PR. In addition, current studies are also showing that a lot of SCOPUS publication by university faculty are taking the predatory route because of this false reliance on SCOPUS publication being a metric for meaningful or impactful research. Imagine something like Anup's P39A, that's way more worthwhile work compared to any faculty publication.
You know, CRK and PR's idea of bringing in students like they do at Amity or Symbi, focusing on numbers rather than picking out the cream of the crop like NLUs do, has totally changed how we hire faculty and what we teach. They've brought in a bunch of human rights and public law profs, led by CRK+PR themselves, which sounds good on paper, but it means we're not covering subjects that are actually in demand out there in the real legal world.
And don't even get me started on CRK+PR and Naveen Jindal's side projects! They've set up all these extra schools—public policy, psychology, architecture, liberal arts, journalism, you name it—which are bleeding us dry. We're having to pump money into them, taking away from what should be going into our core legal education and research. It's a mess, really.
Point taken, but that still doesn't explain why those HR and public law faculty cannot produce even one good publication per person in a year, despite having all the advantages mentioned above.
Completely agreed! Something like P39A is far more impactful than a random SCOPUS article.
That being said it's interesting to look at the gulf in student scholarship across NLUs and JGLS - which is exactly the opposite to that of faculty. If you look at major NLUs (or in particular NLS), the level of student scholarship is amazing. Students getting cited in petitions, publishing in Oxford journals, it is quite remarkable,
Even among the faculty, there is no gulf. At least that's what the commentator above had been trying to say (I think). Even in NLUs like NLSIU, NALSAR, NUJS, NLUD, around 50% faculty produce at least one SCOPUS publication every year these days. So do JGLS. Their absolute number is higher because they have more faculty, that's all.
The article (which was actually a press release) asserts that "JGLS researchers published over 175+ publications in a variety of Scopus-indexed sources in 2023, representing an increase of over 25 per cent compared to the previous year and surpassing the total number of similar publications from the top 4 National Law Schools in the country by over 60 per cent." However, doubts have arisen regarding the accuracy of these claims:
1) Is this information accurate? Can JGLS genuinely assist (or as they put it, 'inspire') their researchers to publish in reputable journals?
2) If so, then why are the so-called top NLUs (NLS, NALSAR, NLUD) unable to match JGLS, a relatively newer institution?
3) If not, then why is JGLS resorting to such tactics? Is it driven by desperation, or is JGLS genuinely striving to create a perception that it is superior to all other NLUs?
TL;DR: JGLS claimed superiority in interdisciplinary research over top NLUs based on a press release, it it accurate?
Leave aside all this “175 publications “ bravado. Tell me which Jgls prof ( a regular prof not a tourist ) has written something in the last year that genuinely made you think ? That you personally felt was a good piece of scholarship ?
And don't even get me started on CRK+PR and Naveen Jindal's side projects! They've set up all these extra schools—public policy, psychology, architecture, liberal arts, journalism, you name it—which are bleeding us dry. We're having to pump money into them, taking away from what should be going into our core legal education and research. It's a mess, really.
That being said it's interesting to look at the gulf in student scholarship across NLUs and JGLS - which is exactly the opposite to that of faculty. If you look at major NLUs (or in particular NLS), the level of student scholarship is amazing. Students getting cited in petitions, publishing in Oxford journals, it is quite remarkable,