Survey in IISc

I wish to congratulate the students who conducted the survey and benchmarked all the services offered in IISc. The results of the survey were published in Voices, which is hosted in NCSI. I read the article with great interest over the weekend. What struck me was not just the professionalism in conducting the survey but also the thoroughness of the analysis of the data. 

None of the services got five stars (excellent) or one star (very poor). Three services got two stars (poor). Of these three, the contract to two of these services may not be renewed next year and we will use this input by the students as a parameter !

I have only one suggestion: increase your sample size from the current 10%. Two ideas for doing this: (a) The survey was open only for a week. Send a reminder through the broadcast at the end of seven days and tell the survey deadline has been extended by two more days (and keep it open for three days :-) Most of us work only after getting a reminder. (b) Keep printed copies of the survey near the messes with the boxes to put them. Someone, of course, has to enter them in the online survey manually. 

I do not know whether anyone from the Voices team reads this blog. If you do, congratulations again.

Undergrad research in India

This will not be applicable to the undergraduates who will graduate from IISc !

If you are undergraduate (B.Sc/B.Tech/B.E) student and interested in doing research, read this post first. The post ends with, "spamming the inbox of professors with 'I want to do summer research' doesn't serve any purpose. Write compelling, personalized and relevant emails that convey your goals and intentions to specific professors whose work interests you. It shows when you have taken the effort to look through their website and read about the projects that they work on. Ask at least a few people to review and proof-read your application."

I could not have put it better. I receive around 10 emails a week from undergrad students for the summer project. Though our department website has clear instructions for summer trainees, no one seems to read them. Prospective candidates should at least read the websites of faculty before applying to them directly. I also request one should proofread the application. Grammatical errors can be forgiven, typographical errors can not be excused. However, this is not restricted to undergraduates. See the following email I received for a post doctoral position,

Hey prof.,

good morning, i introudce myself presently doing my post doctoral fellwo job at X (since 2006 begning), and seraching suitable position in india. I did my phD in IIT Madras. I read your aritcles recently due to curiosity of the name and I pubilshed. I am intrested to continue to my research area related to engery applicaitons, i am also intrested in fluides, i collected many articles recently. I need your suggestion regarding to apply for Reserach Associtate fellowship from IIS to work with you as my principle investigator for your convenice.

Statistics

Mark Twain said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." In an interesting article on QSAR, (QSAR is the process where the chemical structure is correlated with chemical or biological activity), the author shows a graph that shows a linear trend that shows that US Highway Fatality rate decreases linearly with an increase with the lemons imported to US from Mexico. He goes on to say, "By not following through with careful, designed, hypothesis testing we have allowed scientific thinking to be co-opted by statistics and arbitrarily defined fitness functions. Statistics must serve science as a tool; statistics cannot replace scientific rationality, experimental design, and personal observation."

While this is one end where the use of statistics is to bolster weak arguments, in India, we usually the follow the other end and disparage statistics that do not support the perceptions. For example, IISc and IITs are often compared with the top universities of USA. As a country, India published 43 articles in Science for the ten year period of 2000-2009 (this includes several articles which had a foreign collaborator). A single university, MIT, published 291 articles in the same period. The numbers are almost exactly the same for publications in Nature (45 and 295).

Other these top journals which are common to science, I have also taken the top three journals in each field of science and engineering. The numbers for chemical engineering has already been published and the rest will be published in a separate paper.

Open access

Yesterday, an open access proponent visited IISc and interviewed the Director and Associate Director. I was also interviewed on the applicability of open access and how it influences the research scenario in India. Unlike some academics who believe that scientists should publish in open access journals only, I have a different view as a researcher.

Unlike other professionals, research scholars write journal articles for free to advance knowledge in their field and, possibly, their careers. The entire process of writing a research paper, reviewing by other peers and editorial decisions are carried out at nearly no cost. There are four kinds of journals: (a) author pays, reader pays (b) author pays, reader does not pay (c) author does not pay, reader pays (d) author does not pay, reader also does not pay. Category (a) is followed by a few journals that are published by some societies. In this case, the author pays the page charges while the reader pays for access. Category (b) is the current open acess model wherein the author pays for publishing the article but the reader does not pay for access. Category (d) is a variation where some open access journals waive the payment for authors. These journals are generally supported by trusts. Category (c) is the most common and is adopted by all commercial publishers. Previously, when most the journals were available only in the print form, categories (b) and (d) did not make much sense and open access was not commonly used. However, with most journals going online and some journals going exclusively online, the cost of print is not an issue anymore.

Why is there such an uproar against commercial publishers and for open access? The average cost of a journal in chemistry, physics, engineering and biology are US$ 3490, 3103, 1919 and 1810, respectively, with an average increase of 5–9% in cost per year. The consumer price index (CPI) for the USA city average for all items is a widely used measurement for the general rate of inflation in USA. The Association of Research Libraries 3 USA mentions that the CPI has increased by 73% between 1986 and 2004, but the research library expendi-ture for journals has increased by 273% during the same period. These rapidly rising journal prices have thus battered the ability of researchers, libraries and institutions to access scientific publications. Global research article output is estimated to be around two million articles per year in around 18,000 journals (of which 8000 are indexed in ISI)and constitute an US$ 15 billion market. Researchers expect that the administration will subscribe to all journals that are available; librarians like to give access to all journals for the researchers,while the publishers would like to continuously increase their profit. With the current library budget of IISc at $ 2.4 million dollars per year, the efforts to contain bloating library budgets ultimately seem to rest on the director of the institute, who is unable to alter the dynamics because of resistance from every quarter. 

Thus many proponents of open access feel that scientists should publish only in open access journals. On the other hand, researchers in any prestigious institute like to publish their research in prestigious journals, which need not be open access. This is because publishing in a particular journal adds value not only to the journal but also to the publication. A publication in the top journal is likely to further the career of a scientist and he/she is not worried about whether the journal is open access or not. Therefore, a researcher, especially from South Asia/India, is likely to publish in a journal that is considered prestigious internationally, rather than just open access. Here is where an open access institutional repository will help. Almost all publishers (> 95%) of journals allow archiving a postprint of the research paper after peer review in an institutional repository. 

At the national centre of science information (NCSI) at IISc, we have the largest repository of research papers in India. Currently, the repository contains more than 11,000 full text research papers published by IISc faculty. The repository also contains the abstracts of all the 28,000 research papers published by IISc in its last hundred years. Because search engines like google index the full text of a paper that are available in these open access repositories, researchers using these search engines land up in the repositories rather than at the publisher site. Based on my analysis of the number of accesses and downloads of papers from the eprint repository of IISc, I find that people who search from developed countries see the paper in the repository but download it from the publisher site (for which they will access because the institution pays for it) while people who search from developing countries see the paper in the repository and download the postprint version of the paper. 

While agencies like NIH (and some NITs in India) have mandated that all publications should be archived in a repository, I am not so sure whether a mandate will be so effective. Instead of a top down approach, scientists should become convinced that deposition of their research work in an institutional repository will help. Why should the scientist take 10-15 minutes of his/her (or their student's) time to make the deposition in a repository? Other than the social issues aside, my analysis (not yet publishable) shows that the citations of a paper are bound to increase if it is available as open access in a repository. 

First the most prestigious journals in each field has to become open access. Then, the cost an author has to pay to publish in these journals should be reasonable. Till such time, scientists should be strongly encouraged to deposit their research papers in an open access repository. This would greatly impact the open access movement in India.

Why blog?

In a very detailed blog, Arunn discusses Indian scientists and science blogging. So, why do scientists blog? I believe in the Colgate's statement, "It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one’s thoughts.It saves one having to bother anyone else with them." Ben Franklin said, "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." Because I have not done anything for the latter, I attempted to do the former.

Seriously, I started blogging because several people asked me to write about factual data on publications, citations, higher education (numbers of graduates etc), pay scales etc. I am fascinated by statistics. I can sit for hours looking at numbers. I used to teach it as well but that is another story. The key is that the factual data is always missing even in the era of information overload.

For example, one newspaper report mentions that an assistant professor at IIT gets Rs. 12,000 while a IIT B.Tech graduate gets Rs. 1 lakh per month while another newspaper report says that IIT faculty can expect an 200% hike in salary with the basic salary going up from 12,000 to 37,000. Another report published today that discusses the Goverdhan Mehta report says that the basic has gone up from 20,000 to 48,000. These reports are factually wrong. The current salary for an assistant professor is 12,000 basic + 124% of dearness pay and dearness allowance. These are being merged into the new scale and thus the salary, which is already at 28,000 is going up to 37,000 and is thus an increase of only around 30%.

Even though we are in science and supposed to be objective, many scientists have no idea about the number of publications or graduates we produce or what comparable universities in US produce. Lots of ideas are based on perceptions and examples are given based on exceptions. It is surprising for many scientists to know that we produce less than 1000 doctorates in engineering and 50% of them are from IIT/IISc (Many IITs now produce more doctorates per year than IISc). Many refuse to believe that the number of engineering doctorates awarded to Indians in India is lesser than the number of engineering doctorates awarded to Indians in US universities alone.

Some one in the administration told me we (in India) produce 30 lakh engineering graduates and 5000 research papers per year. A B.Tech graduate who works in the National Knowledge Commission told me that the number of engineering graduates produced by India every year is around 30,000. I was even more surprised when this person had written a booklet on how to improve engineering education in India ! The actual numbers are 6 lakh engineering graduates and 30,000 research papers per year.

When I expressed shock at these kind of statements to the director, he encouraged me to write a proposal to the government for a project to gather actual numbers for IISc, IITs, India etc. The government was most forthcoming to fund this. While some of the documents I write are indeed funded by the government, I felt the reports would be better disseminated if this was available freely (on a blog!) because there is nothing secretive about any of this. Thus, most of the articles on this blog are on higher education.

The more obvious reason I blog is because I write most of the time, whether it is proposals, projects, papers or reports. Having started reading books in pdf format, more than 75% of my waking hours are spent on reading or writing. So, why not write in a blog, whenever one finds time?

New pay scales for IIT/IISc

The new pay scales for IIT/IISc based on the sixth pay commission were proposed by the committee headed by the former director of IISc, Goverdhan Mehta. Here is the report that discusses the new pay scales for IIT, IISc, NIT, IISER and IIM. Please note that these are only the recommendations and they have to be approved by the government. Sometimes the government approves the recommendations (like the UGC Chhada committee) in toto for the salaries of assistant professor, associate professor and professor.

The basic pay for an assistant professor, associate professor and professor will be Rs. 38,000, 53,000 and 59,000, respectively. Institute professor will receive Rs. 75,000. For those familiar with the Sixth pay commission terminologies, an assistant professor will be in pay band 3 for the first three years and then moved to pay band 4 (PB-4). This is due to an excellent suggestion that was originally mooted by the director of IISc. 

For those unfamiliar with the terms in the report, IIT, IISc, IIM follow the four tier system (Lecturer, Assistant professor, Associate Professor, Professor) while NITs follow the three tier system (Lecturer, Assistant professor and Professor). An associate professor from the four tier system draws the same salary as that of a professor in the three tier system. 

There is also a higher scale than professor in IIT/IISc/IIM, which was termed as professor of eminence, superscale etc. Now it is called Institute professor. MHRD had previously regulated that only 10% of the faculty can belong to this cadre, but Mehta's committee recommends that only 3% be given this scale.

The increments proposed by the committee are that 25% of faculty will get 4% increment every year while the rest will get 3% increment every year. Though many faculty in IIT/IISc were expecting better allowances than that of UGC, all other allowances are the same as that of proposed by UGC. The only exception is that Rs. 4 lakhs will be given every three years as professional development fund that can be used for contigencies, travel and research expenses. Thus all allowances mentioned in my previous post (which were based on UGC) stand unaltered.

Graduate studies

My colleague in IIT-M, Niket Kaisare, talks about GATE, GRE and the flight to US and makes an interesting point,

We need to get the word out that doing a Masters (and even a PhD) at IIT/IISc is a viable option. Just to give an example, working with me for MS allowed one of my students to secure admission in a top-20 US university, which he otherwise would not have gotten based on his undergraduate degree alone. More of “Flight to US” will be dealt with in a follow-up post.

In fact, after my undergraduation, I could not get admission to a top 20 school in USA (I did get a few in 30-50) and, therefore, I joined IIT-M and then did my doctorate in a top 20 school in US. However, the situation has changed in that many middle class and upper middle class students who get admission in the top 20-30 schools in USA without financial aid still leave the country after getting loans. This was not common when I studied.

I am sure that all students joining the program in IIT/IISc know that getting financial aid in a top ten school requires a degree from IIT/IISc. Of the 32 master's students that I have graduated, 11 of them were interested in going abroad and all of them went to the top 20 schools in USA with financial aid. All of them published research papers with me and used it as a basis to get into the top schools in the US. Thus, IISc (or the IITs) has not been facing any problems in getting students for M.E/M.Tech programs. Our cut off is all India rank of 25 for admission in the M.E. progam in chemical engineering.

The problem is why these students do not continue to do a doctorate in India. Institute like IISc benefit greatly from a doctoral student than from a master's student. My colleagues often ask me whether I advise a master's student to pursue a doctorate in IISc itself and not go abroad. I do not.  I think facilities are now comparable and the quality of *some* faculty in IISc are comparable to that of the US. I, however, tell them the advantages of doing a doctorate in IISc (faster completion because they are already familiar with the experiments etc., closer interaction) and USA (more money, more independence from families (especially for girls)) and then ask them to decide.