Month: April 2018

How to find a suitable journal from UGC approved journal list?

With the introduction of UGC Approved Journals List, the research students are privileged to get their paper published in good quality journals. Now, there is no old system or mandate by the universities for publishing in any particular journal. Instead, all universities and colleges are bound to allow their students to get published in any … Continue reading “How to find a suitable journal from UGC approved journal list?”

With the introduction of UGC Approved Journals List, the research students are privileged to get their paper published in good quality journals. Now, there is no old system or mandate by the universities for publishing in any particular journal. Instead, all universities and colleges are bound to allow their students to get published in any of the UGC Approved journals. On every successful publication in the journal, there would be an increase in the researcher’s academic performance indicator (UGC API).

The UGC Approved Journal List is a blend of national paid and unpaid journals, Anna’s annexure 1 or annexure 2, Scopus-indexed, SCI-indexed journals and other international journals. Due to this amalgam of the journals, the publication is made easy, but the journal selection process is made tougher than ever.

If you are an aspirant looking out for a suitable UGC approved journal, you need not worry about it. We have charted out the criterion to select a suitable journal from UGC Approved Journal List:

Step 1: Indexing and Subject-wise categorization
As of now, UGC contains over thousands of journals from almost every research area. Therefore, you are advised to browse the complete list on the basis of your interested subject area. By filtering the search, you can shortlist the top 50 or 100 journals falling under the particular subject area. Further, you can prioritize and select the journals as per their indexing. Suppose, your area of expertise is social sciences, and there are four journals having high impact factor but different indexing; two are Scopus indexed, and the others are SCI indexed. It is up to the caliber of your research paper to decide which UGC approved journal would be more suitable for publishing.

Step 2: Declared Periodicity
Let us take the previous example only. If you need to choose one between Scopus indexed journal and SCI-indexed journal, your next step should be to check the declared periodicity of the journal. Many journals are published more frequently, and many are published occasionally or monthly. Where the journals which are rarely published would mean that the journal is not active, frequent publishing of the journal is a sign of lenient assessment of the manuscript which always bears the possibility of compromising the quality of the content published. Therefore, it would make a good choice if you opt for the ones which are published not too frequently and not too rarely.

Step 3: Format of a Journal
Apart from the periodicity of the journal, you must also keep the journal’s nature of publication in mind. UGC Approved Journal List consists the journals which are published only online, only in print and online as well as in print. The journals that are published both online and in print mode have better visibility and reach amongst the researchers. Therefore, make sure you select a journal which is available in both print and online medium. However, if the journal is international and the publisher is located overseas, you may opt for the journal which is published online.

Step 4: Total Score of a Journal
If you have already chosen a particular journal to get published with, then you must check its relevance score. Following is the complete checklist which helps the UGC Standing Committee to determine a journal’s worth and assign them a specific score. You may use this checklist for getting an idea of which journal would be more suitable for you to publish with.

If a journal scores more than 5 point, it is definitely good to go option for you.

Publishing a paper with any journal from UGC Approved list would bring high academic performance indicator and credited as a reputed researcher-author. Hope this guide would help you select a good UGC approved journal!

How is a Review Paper different from a Technical or Empirical Paper

A Review Paper and a Technical or Empirical Paper belong to the same genre of writing, i.e. academia but are different concepts to know. Both have their significance in the field of research but it is important to understand the difference between the two, so that they can be handled accordingly. On one side when … Continue reading “How is a Review Paper different from a Technical or Empirical Paper”

A Review Paper and a Technical or Empirical Paper belong to the same genre of writing, i.e. academia but are different concepts to know. Both have their significance in the field of research but it is important to understand the difference between the two, so that they can be handled accordingly.
On one side when a technical or Empirical research paper is based on original research which may be different in its own way, depending upon the topic , a review paper has its foundation on other published articles and it is not a representation of original research. If one talks of the way to approach an empirical paper, authors have to collect and analyse raw data and take up an original study. The crux of the research paper is the analysis and interpretation of this collected data. On the contrary, review articles summarise the existing literature and give their current perspective on the understanding of the topic.
Review articles can be categorised in three ways:

There can be primarily three kinds of review articles:

Narrative Review: It explains the existing knowledge on a topic that is based on any kind of published research that is available on the topic.

Systematic Review: This tries to explore the answer to a specific question which maybe buried in the existing literature on a specific topic.

Meta Analysis: It does a thorough comparative analysis of previously published studies. The key objective mostly is to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific decision to be taken.

Well made review papers form a good repository of scientific literature as they summarise the gist of existing literature which makes it easier for readers to get an idea about the prevailing knowledge without having to read extensive literature individually. Sometimes review papers are also called as survey papers. This is mostly when the writer has reviewed survey related work. A good review paper is the one that is created in a way that it is able to contribute a small amount of knowledge to the existing pool by giving a taxonomy of the work.

The similarity that one can notice between both these kind of papers is the review of literature. However, researchers and authors need to comprehend that in an empirical paper the review of literature helps to identify the research gap and take forward the objectives of the real research from there. Ultimately the paper is based on the real research and literature review just forms a small part of the paper where as in a review paper, it is the main content and the author does not just attempt to find the gap in the existing literature but also give his critical perspective and summarise the existing research for the readers to be able to get it more crisply.

It is difficult to specifically segregate the journal on the parameter of accepting review papers or not. High indexed journals, listed in SCOPUS and SCI prefer research papers over review articles. The main reason being the element of originality and constructive input they add to the existing literature. However, they do accept Review papers, if they are written in a way that they can give an original and critical eye to existing studies and offer direction for future studies. That is why, it is generally more difficult to publish review articles, mainly for the reason it is very challenging and requires great amount of skill as a writer to create originality from already existing content. It is relatively easier to create a good quality original research paper. For a review paper author, one must have the maturity and expertise to create novelty.

If you are thinking in terms of easy publication, original articles are a better choice as compared to review papers. However, ultimately what is imported to remember is that the quality of your research and your presentation of the manuscript are the key determinants on whose grounds your acceptance of research for publication will be decided.